A limit switch defines the outer bounds of a machine on every axis. Hit the limit switch, and the machine will stop abruptly. This mechanism acts as a fail-safe, ensuring that the machine will not attempt to exceed its own limits. Today’s machines are astoundingly precise, enabling manufacturing at the nanoscale that drives seemingly limitless technological innovation in applications ranging from medicine to military to consumer electronics. But from an ecological perspective, from an environmental justice perspective, and from a human perspective, there are real—if more permeable—bounds to this progress, whether or not we choose to heed them.
Using a comically lo-fi machine built from cardboard boxes, hot glue, dowels, found objects, and electronic parts, limit/switch inverts our normative relationship with machines. Taking inspiration from Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori from the turn of the last century, this modern-day noise machine is designed to be as inefficient and imprecise as possible. It has no practical purpose. And, far from autonomous, the machine requires a human to improvise and assist in sculpting its noise for performance and to intervene (or not) where the absence of limit switches could lead the machine on the path of self-destruction.
Special thanks to Miles Berry, Phillip Chao, and Nolan Chen, who helped to assemble this iteration of the noise machine and to Oberlin College for the generous grant funding that supported this project. Thanks to my early collaborator Jim Hart, and to all of my instructors at Lorain County Community College and Fab Academy for supporting the development of the first noise machine. Many thanks to Ross Karre for his feedback on this project iteration and his performance.
You can find a video of the performance, courtesy of Concert Sound at Oberlin College here.