A board full of nails. At the tip of each nail, there is a googly eye. The googly eyes are colorful, over a background of white and gray. A participant puts a ball at the top of the Parachinkoid, the ball drops, bouncing between the nails. As the ball bounces, the googly eyes move. It is exhilarating. Each time the participant drops a ball, they can hear a series of notes and rhythms, a “Pachinkoid piece”. Pachinkoid pieces are somehow designed, as I willfully chose the nail dispositions to accentuate certain sound patterns, and somehow random, depending on the path that luck dictates the balls will take. This randomness in the music experience is rarely seen outside electronic music pieces, and contributes to the participant’s enjoyment of sound-making, even if they don’t identify themselves as musicians.

The piece arouses the participants’ curiosity about sound-making. Why does the ball make so many different notes? Why so many different rhythms? It opens the opportunity for a discussion about the science of sound.

The deeper the nails are nailed, the shorter is the part of the nail that is vibrating. Short, light, objects vibrate fast, and they produce high pitched sounds. The rhythm is influenced by the distance between the nails, fast rhythms when they are packed together, slower when they are spread apart. The movement of the eyes also connects the experience of sound with its physical correlate of vibrations.

Parachinkoid is inspired in the Japanese game of Pachinko, in which thousands of balls fall through mazes and nails. But Parachinkoid has been modified to accentuate the musicality. The idea of controlling the pitch using the depth of the nails was suggested by Bill Wesley’s fantastic nail organs.

Parachinkoid is the first piece in a Pachinko-inspired series. Putting nails on boards not only allows me to play and explore the sounds of bouncing objects, it also allows me to explore the visual aesthetics of this miniature forest-like structure.

Gluing objects to the top of the nails  allows to draw a connection with kinetic art, and creates an interesting two-layered structure.

To see and hear the piece, visit here.

Parachinkoid was featured in the San Diego Reader.