Meditation on Form and Measure (2014)
Text-based audio installation with optional audience participation.
This installation aims to create an immersive and meditative sonic environment, that also allows for the potential for active visitor participation. It combines Text and sound in iterations that constantly change, while simultaneously having a repetitive quality. The primary source material consists of recordings of various text materials (poems, short plays, etc) and simple sinusoidal tones. The title of the installation is the title of one of the poems I used for source material, a poem by Charles Wright.
The selected texts were carefully chosen for their evocative nature (imagery, sound, etc). The recorded text is broken up into fragments of different durations, ranging from single words to sentences lasting up to 10 seconds. These fragments are continually shuffled and reorganized in repeating, quasi-random iterations of regular durations. The structure is organized according to implementations of rules of cellular automata, and managed by Max/MSP. The text fragments are also layered on top of sustained tones that create an undulating texture with limited variation, which serves as a sonic theatre for the text fragments to interact on. As the words and sentences mingle in unexpected and unpredictable ways, new sonic and syntactic intersections arise. The fact that the iterations are all of identical durations gives the installation a regular pulse and overall order that juxtaposes the potential internal irregularity and occasional chaos of each iteration. This regularity also lends the installation a meditative, almost hypnotic quality that allows the listeners to immerse themselves in its varying sonorities.
The installation is set up in a closed room with dim lights. The iterative and generative nature of the form permits participants to come and go as they please. The installation also has an added level of interaction that allows for listeners to engage with it by contributing their own voice. Listeners wishing to participate can draw from a stack of cards, each with a prompt on it (ex.: answer a question, think of a favourite word, read a printed line, etc), then record their voice into the computer. The recorded sound file is added to the pool of text fragments available for playback by the computer. Depending on the duration of the installation and the number of participants, these contributions have the potential to significantly change the syntactic and sonic landscape of the installation.
The audio sample below is a 2-channel reduction excerpted from a two-day setup of the installation at the SEAMUS conference at Virginia Tech University in 2015.
The selected texts were carefully chosen for their evocative nature (imagery, sound, etc). The recorded text is broken up into fragments of different durations, ranging from single words to sentences lasting up to 10 seconds. These fragments are continually shuffled and reorganized in repeating, quasi-random iterations of regular durations. The structure is organized according to implementations of rules of cellular automata, and managed by Max/MSP. The text fragments are also layered on top of sustained tones that create an undulating texture with limited variation, which serves as a sonic theatre for the text fragments to interact on. As the words and sentences mingle in unexpected and unpredictable ways, new sonic and syntactic intersections arise. The fact that the iterations are all of identical durations gives the installation a regular pulse and overall order that juxtaposes the potential internal irregularity and occasional chaos of each iteration. This regularity also lends the installation a meditative, almost hypnotic quality that allows the listeners to immerse themselves in its varying sonorities.
The installation is set up in a closed room with dim lights. The iterative and generative nature of the form permits participants to come and go as they please. The installation also has an added level of interaction that allows for listeners to engage with it by contributing their own voice. Listeners wishing to participate can draw from a stack of cards, each with a prompt on it (ex.: answer a question, think of a favourite word, read a printed line, etc), then record their voice into the computer. The recorded sound file is added to the pool of text fragments available for playback by the computer. Depending on the duration of the installation and the number of participants, these contributions have the potential to significantly change the syntactic and sonic landscape of the installation.
The audio sample below is a 2-channel reduction excerpted from a two-day setup of the installation at the SEAMUS conference at Virginia Tech University in 2015.