Take a Deep Breath; Breathless
My creative practice is increasingly focussed upon bringing together the physical and ecological environments together with our social and cultural contexts.
Using the media of multichannel sound installation; data sonification and sonic cartography these hybrid works are designed to create new forms of sonic space in which it is possible to experience, examine and reflect upon the complexities and consequences of our interactions in an increasingly chaotic world.
Take a Deep Breath; Breathless was commissioned by the Sound Reasons, Sonic Cities Festival 2012 and took place in Delhi, India under auspices of the SARAI new media foundation.
Check out the Sound Reasons site.
Take a Deep Breath; Breathless is part of a research series that investigates the sonification of environmental data and how the resulting sound works can be installed into public or architectural space.
Conceptually the work is similar to VoxAura commissioned by Turku, European Capital of Culture 2011, in that it is structured in two parts, one originating in a social and cultural context, the other ecological and environmental.
The aim of the work being to integrate and interrogate the relationship between these spheres, and present them in an outdoor urban environment and/or architectural space.
Recording with school kids in Sawda, a slum clearance community of very basic means.
Take a Deep Breath; Breathlessconcerns the atmosphere, the breath and the act of breathing. Breathing as meditation, as respiration, failing breath in respiratory diseases, the breathy sounds of our voices, of song and flute – ultimately the metaphor of breath as life itself.
During my sojourn in Delhi I recorded a large audio library that embraced a wide range of ambient, vocal, environmental and musical sounds, in effect an AudioPortrait of the environment.
Divali drummer.
Atmospheric data was sourced directly from the City’s environmental monitoring system providing a constant and somewhat alarming stream of digital information on the levels of pollutants in the Delhi atmosphere.
Ironically during my visit to India New Delhi experienced the worst air pollution on record and I came down with Bronchitis!
Read all about it.
From a technical perspective the system consists of two components ~ firstly a large audio library that is capable of being updated via wifi – the second element being a correspondingly large library of environmental data-sets which can be accessed either in realtime (online) or updated via wifi on a regular basis.
The system computer selects a sound file and data file at random and convolves them to render two stereo audio streams to the speaker array which was installed in the gallery space of the Portuguese Embassy’s Cultural Centre.
The Installation.
One stereo pair of speakers plays the unadulterated audio file whilst the other plays the harmonic data-music that simultaneously renders some of the data structure, but which also has a sonic imprint of the audio original.
Recent Post
- Sonus Maris; the concert!
- Sonus Maris_V2
- The Past is our Future; The Future is our Past.
- Freeze Frame
- Scribbly Gum Suites
- Virtual talking in 2020
- Sonus Maris
- The Oratorio for a Million Souls
- Two Islands
- LandFall
- The Deluge Ark(ive)
- A Dissimulation of Birds
- The Biological Mixer
- Landscape/Portrait
- Heavy Metal
- CultCult – audio illumination from the Ocean
- BioLogging Retrofit
- BioPods_V2 The Nebuchadnezzar Suite
- NomansLanding
- BioPod
- Eine Kleine GeneMusiK
- Songs from the UnderWorld_v3
- Architecture for Bees; Bees for Architecture
- Bristle
- Breathless; Take a Deep Breath
- Public Art concepts
- Ars Memoriae Mexicana
- Float like a Butterfly; Sting like a Bee
- Supereste ut Pugnatis (Pugnatis) ut Supereste
- Songs from the UnderWorld_V2
- WYSSA – All my love darling
- Songs from the UnderWorld
- BeeWork
- Milk and Honey
- Weeping Willow
- VoxAura
- CrayVox
- Bio_Logging and Under the IceCap
- Radiolarians
- New Host_V6
- Law of the Tongue
- VoxAEther
- Padme
- New York Drawings
- Adrift
- EcoLocated
- Zephyr II
- BioSonics
- GhosTrain
- Run Silent Run Deep
- Sculpture in the Vineyards
- WA Marine Facility ~ Ondes
- AudioMaze
- Quint de Loup II
- The Wireless House
- Talking Stick
- Syren for Port Jackson
- Factory Spirit.
- Swarm
- What Survives
- Spinner
- Lotus
- KellerRadioActive at IASKA
- Magnus Opus
- Preaching to the Converter
- Virtual Spirit
- Models
- AudioNomad + Syren
- Theorem
- LifeBoat
- An Unrequited Place
- Voyages from Eden to Utopia; Hercules
- The Transit of Venus
- Toll
- A Symphony for Other Cultures
- The Lament
- Sonic Landscapes
- Siren Song
- Seed
- Ship to Shore
- Oracle
- Re-Entry Vehicle; Natural Science in the Spirit World
- Naughty Apartment
- Mute in TalkTown; the sweet warm breath of science
- Meta-Diva
- Metamorphoses
- Leaven
- La Zona del Silencio
- Host
- Gyro-Diva
- Haiku
- Everything’s Nice with American Rice
- Silent Forest
- Drift
- Dual-Nature (Ebb and Flow).
- Din
- Die Melodie der Welt; Bringing Home the Bacon
- Aura
- Sample Content Of Radio Works as MP3
- Big Bell Beta