Following Drifting Pulses: Fire, there was another insight: why restrict ourselves to electronics? In the tangible world, inaccurate periods exist everywhere. Just look at the swaying trees. The chirping cicadas. Look at the sun, the moon, the planets and stars. Look at our own bodies.

This second interpretation, Drifting Pulses: Wind, tries to embody such physical variations. It consists of sound- and light-emitting balls hanging down from a rack. As a ball swings past the lowest point, it gives a sounding tone and a blink of light. The whole installation is similar to a wind chime; the tiny differences in each ball's swing naturally create a desynchronising ensemble. To invite participants' interaction, the rack carries a line of plugs, each denoting a tone in the common major scale, and the participant can move the balls around different plugs to change the chord in play.

I cannot deny its resemblance to my previous NIME project Malletwand, where a handheld pendulum becomes the music's metronome, or to some extent, the conductor. However, in this project (this Drifting Pulses series in general), I'd like to focus more on the musical phrase morphing on its own, during times without human intervention.

The electronic implementation will consist of two parts, the rack unit and the ball unit, connected through a 1-metre TRS cable (so that the period is 2 seconds — note that the pulses happen every half period). The cable will deliver power as well as identify the plug's index. The circuit boards will arrive very soon; the wind's voice awaits.