AUDIO:
Hi,
So last week Appendix had a show. Maybe you read about it from the link Josh posted. Anyway, I was pretty excited about how it went and wanted to share some pictures of my installation. Hopefully others will write about what they did, as I don't have any documentation of the other projects– in fact it's thanks to a girl named Celeste taking pictures as part of a product design course that I have any pictures of that night. Hopefully I will also be getting some video footage from Ledah.
For the installation, I wired contact microphones into two brooms and filled the installation space with different textures. Viewers were encouraged to interact with the environment by using the brooms to explore the sonic textures of the materials, and create a collaborative musical score for the room. I wrote about designing the sound for this project a few weeks ago-- what ended up working best was to use an echoing delay on the brooms so that people could build up layers of sound texture (again, thank you peter). There are more pictures on my recently finished website. I like you guys. Talk soon,
-Cara
2 comments:
Oh man that's so great! It's funny that it starts to sound like the ocean, even though that's sort of the opposite of what's happening (schiff interjection: it's not actually the opposite, since the waves "brush" the sand, making a noise). Cool project.
Cara! i love this piece. I'm sorry that i didn't get back to you on your first post, life was a little hectic, but it looks like you did perfectly without my input..... i have a few technical questions about the setup, mainly what you were using for processing and what external hardware other than the piezo discs you were using. (did you get an external sound card, or was everything running through a mixer?)
as best i can tell, this piece has 2 directions that you could take it. my first impulse is to design the processing in a manner that's more sympathetic to the sweeping motion, like the convolution of a noise signal triggered by broom input. this method takes the sound from the broom, and uses it to extract and reinforce certain frequencies from a full spectrum noise signal (akin to dirt/surface). as the brooms are swept, then they would gradually "uncover" the sound of the material they were sweeping, the convolution would "sweep away" the unwanted areas of the spectrum until a resonant pattern was established.
this however, focuses the piece on the technical aspect of the processing, and gives a little bit of the black box style presentation that computer music is so troubled by. i really like the simplicity of your pieces, as it makes them accessible with out a degree in nerd stuff.
i'm also interested in how the placement of the peizo on the broom effects the sonic output. i'm sure a lifetime of study could be allocated to this problem..... have you experimented with also contact micing the surfaces to be swept? the contrast between the sweeping and the being swept might influence the sound in a cool way.
soooooooo, this is a really sweet peice, and i cant wait to see/hear more from you!
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