Pyramid Suddenly Appears on Sidewalk, Makes Strange Noises

Melbourne now hosts the fairly peculiar sight on something literally out of science fiction movies or, more to the point, something that produces the sounds from old sci-fi films.

One would probably not expect to be walking along a bridge, by an inanimate, pyramid-shaped object, and get startled by sudden noises, but this has happened to more than one person by now.

Currently, Melbourne, Australia, is hosting the Melbourne Music Week, and the theremin, for that is what the pyramid is, will be there for the next three months.

Making strange noises is really the only purpose it has, besides looking like it literally came out of a movie.

Then again, for people who watched the films of the 1950s, the sounds probably won't seem strange at all.

The theremin will activate whenever someone gets close enough to it and has several minutes' worth of noises to make.

It is about seven meters tall (23 feet) and was invented by artist Robin Fox.

“The relationship between sound and light in the projects I do is really simple, it's really one to one, there's no complexity there, it's almost like a natural phenomena. It's about the experience people have, if the technology can't create a simple and beautiful experience then I think you're getting stuck in the process,” Fox says.

“Even though everyone does now have these capabilities, there is still something magical. Every time I turn the theremin on and somebody walks into the tracking area and realises that they're playing sound, there's a simple sense of wonder about it that that is just wonderful.”

The theremin doesn't employ the same principle as the original, the one that Russian physicists Professor Leon Theremin made in the 1920's.

That one considered humans part of its circuit and created tones based on human movement, captured through electromagnetics, but Robin Fox used a camera to capture those movements and responded with previously recorded sounds instead.

“Our research showed that if we were to make a seven metre tall theremin, that was pumping out that sort of electro magnetic field, we'd probably microwave people, so that wasn't really practical.”