AWT4 – Sound Installation

Overview

Groups of 3-4 students will collaborate to create an ambient “soundscape”.  The works will be installed in Room 243, using 2, 3 or more computers for the performance.

Details

Here’s a description of one recent ambient sound performance in Toronto (http://www.obliquepoetries.blogspot.com/)

Using radio as their starting point, Debashis Sinha and Ben Grossman explored a range of moods drifting across the airwaves. Amidst the buzz and hum between channels, Sinha and Grossman created sound points of startling beauty. From snippets of talk radio to ragtime jazz, these sound points presented sonic snapshots of radio culture through the decades. Layers of percussion heightened the effect of their ambient atmospherics.

 

Your job is to create a sound installation using multiple sources:  recordings you make yourself (at the computer and with a recorder), and snippets of sound from the internet, CDs, Ipods etc – anything!

The idea is to create the aural ambience of a certain place/time/mood.  Your audience will walk around our room surrounded by your soundscape from at least 2 or three computers.  You will also show related visual images on the screens and/or the projector.

For instance, it might be a maritime scene, with gulls, foghorns, ghostly voices of lost fishermen, sails flapping, waves lapping and so on.  Or you might re-create a busy street corner, a restaurant, a farmyard, or a deep jungle.  Or you might go for a more urban or high-tech ambience, such as a factory, a club, or a futuristic or gathering of robots!  One thing you cannot do is just play DJ, spinning your favourite tunes – you have to create a whole environment

Whatever you choose, you have to put a lot of your selves into it, through original recordings, finding and editing lots of sound sources, figuring out how to make use of two or more computers during the performance, and linking in some visuals.

 

 

More to come on evaluation, deadlines etc.  For now, you have roughly a week to complete this, and marks will be for originality, effort, use of available technology and sources, and of course the quality of the final result.

 

A couple of starting points, food for thought:

http://www.theambientping.com/

http://www.quietamerican.org/vacation.html