This interactive sonic/kinetic sculpture is activated by a participant pressing the door bell switch which initiates the performance of a ‘sonic knock-knock joke’.

Curator Carina Evangelista, Gretchen Hupfel Curator of Contemporary Art at the DCCA, wrote about this piece and another piece as part of the exhibition SHIFT: Kinetic Sculptures, “In an age of heightened awareness of the need for recycling and in a culture that has heretofore been fed on the idea of infinite material abundance, Ashley John Pigford collects discarded computer hard drives and transforms them into kinetic sculptures. 28,770 Megabytes and Knock Knock Sonic Joke Machine feature exposed hard drives, switches, and wiring on unadorned found wood panels. Their naked physicality makes them interesting objects and their spinning and clicking alludes to the inextricable notion of work they represent. Their condition as discarded hard drives with stored or deleted data suggests a kind of mechanical melancholy but also signals a renewal and transformation in their new incarnation.” (see http://www.thedcca.org/Galleries/ham.html).

Installation View, New Wilmington Arts Association Exhibition, November 2008

This piece consists of 9 wooden “boos” (hallow wooden boxes each with a tongue cut into the open end to create different pitches), electromagnets salvaged from traditional door bells, a computer power supply, mosfets to switch the power to the magnets, a microcontroller and a door bell switch.

View of piece mounted on the wall of my studio