SexGodSex is a name of machines that I made and they have purposes for sounding heavy beats and extreme dry tones. The name is taken from a title of song of US band ‘Swans’. The machines are two types, one is straight type and another is folding type.

Those consist of simple parts – stainless wires, humbucking pickup microphone, stepper motor, stepper controller, spring coil, fixtures and some small parts. The system is very physical sounding system caused by the pickup microphone and the spring, which are moved step by step, and the vibrated stainless wires. The pickup microphone itself has any motion by making a balance of relationship between a pulling force by stepper motor and a pulling back force by spring. That action is complex, and the sounds vary every moment. In case of the recording versions which are released CD from Senufo Editions in 2014 Milano, my intention was to show the pure variations by relationship of those on the system. The sounds on CD are direct recordings from the each machines, they had no special editing and used no additional musical effector. You can hear the pure variations of sound caused by the machines.
In case of the performance, I often present natural feedbacks which appear on a relationship between pickup and PA / Guitar Amp as additional live effects. Over time, the location of the pickup is shifting, because the stepper motor is pulling it to upside. And the whole physical situation that involves spatial conditions of live space and conditions of the machine, is changed. By this, my system may create unpredictable feedback variations and SexGodSex machine itself will play own 'live' music.

The basic idea of SexGodSex had come from my different two ideas. One is my unreleased piece for sound that the sound is born from to trace any scratch of floor by pickup microphone. The microphone itself has a motion that is moved by a balance between a pulling force by stepper motor and a pulling back force by spring. Eventually the plan has been realized as my other installation piece called “surface: on moving helical spring”. You can see the video documentation at the following address.
youtube - http://youtu.be/8aa_o9_sQqA

Another of my ideas is coming from my musical preference. I love slow tempo music. And I love heavy low sounds and dry tones. I realized that the sound, born from my idea of a performance piece which accompanies with slightly irregular and inhumane sounding phenomena, becomes a great music.

As my artistic attitude, my intention has tried to deal with various relationships between natural phenomena and general concepts as theoretical or scientific idea on human being. I have often tried to show some views about those ways into my installation and performance piece.
On the other hand, at my performance piece SexGodSex, my interest is slightly shifting. I’m recently thinking about mechanism of 'composition' as musical sense. I guess this has somehow concerned with finding of some 'repetition' into natural phenomena. Here, I’m not sure whether the word ‘repetition’ is best or not, because I have no idea for 'repetition' on theoretical or scientific sense, but I'm using it as ambiguous meaning. Furthermore SexGodSex is not natural, is artificial phenomena but that’s also physical things in which I have still interest. Probably ‘repetition’ may mean something amplitude range of distribution that we find frequent similarity of physical things, finding arrangement of tones into an event on space and time. It is similar as arrangement of sound as musical composition of rhythm or melody or harmony in traditional meaning. SexGodSex makes physical things that are made by frequent scratching of wires and made by resonate of spring. This has a certain repetition structure. And the sound has variations caused by situations of actual space and physical conditions of the machine, but also we may find some structure of musical sense there.
This piece is taken a different way from my general art works, but I’m also thinking about a relationship between a sound as phenomenon and an idea of human being. Whatever, the sound of SexGodSex is just a physical thing, but probably this would make some poetic image as music to audience.

text by minoru sato, 2016