Negotiating the space between creator, listener, and technology

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Sound installations, by definition, are located within a space. This seemingly obvious statement is in fact loaded with theoretical and practical information and controversy, and can tell us much about the fundamental questions that this art form poses. Chion, Neuhaus, and others argue that sound is defined by (and defines) time, and by extension music and sound design are thus fundamentally linear art forms. However Alvin Lucier, and to a lesser extent R. Murray Schafer, showed that sound is constantly giving us information about space and our place within the surrounding environment. Space, which Foucault describes as "the anxiety of our era",¹ is intricately linked to personal as well as cultural tastes and convention.

Clearly sound installations must therefore strive to combine time and space. Adding an interactive element to an installation furthers this by giving the user a certain agency and awareness of themselves within the space. This, then, is nothing if not the beginnings of a musical instrument of sorts. However it is a musical instrument where the control is distributed amongst the user, the creator, and the technology. In the ideal interactive sound installation, this distribution is as even as possible, providing a clear and compelling illustration of the intersections between space, time, technology, sound, and music.

Sound in space...

Max Neuhaus is credited with inventing the term "sound installation", to describe sound placed in a space rather than time: "My major jump was flipping sound out of time and into place."² His works toy with the idea of re-imagining and re-appropriating the sound of a place, such as his "Times Square" installation, which can only be heard whilst standing directly on a ventilation grating in the middle of New York City. In this installation the sound is constant and unmoving, asking nothing of the users:

The piece isn't meant to startle, it's meant for people who are ready to discover. In fact I never do a work where everybody stops and notices it in a public place, I want at least 50% of the people to be able to walk through it without noticing it, without hearing it.³

Thus the work of Neuhaus exists in a secretive world, waiting to be found and appreciated. He views the shaping and placement of sound as the next step in music, continuing along the path forged by Var�se and Cage.⁴ However this continuity comes with the price of a certain arrogance and many lost possibilities. It is a waste to consciously design something that will ignore, if not alienate, over half of its audience. Moreover, a work that appropriates a public space without inviting any interactivity on the part of the inhabitants of that space is, in a way, pretentious and dangerously dismissive of the power of the users as well as lacking in humility on the part of the composer.

While Neuhaus' works are designed to be discovered, installations like Bernhard Leitner's 'Sound Chair' are meant to be experienced by a user actively participating in - but not interacting with - the work. An ordinary reclining chair is fitted with speakers mounted all around the body, covering you in sound. As a work it is remarkably personal and body-oriented, designed to make the user aware of sound around and within the body as a space: "Understanding is touching, becoming aware of the body. The sound chair is a condensed form of the triple relationship of sound, space, and body."⁵ In some ways it is the opposite of 'Times Square', in that it is designed for one person at a time, and each user is consciously making an effort to embody the sound, and thus accepting the creator's vision (similar in some ways to Chion's idea of audio-visual contract). It is a very passive experience, however, not demanding any interactivity from the user, and not offering any customization. While it changes the physical experience of listening and makes the user aware of space and sound, it does not challenge the boundaries of composer and listener, with all of the power structures contained therein.

On the other hand demanding, or at least requiring audience participation is certainly a difficult path to tread. Among many artists attempting to do so is Bill Fontana, whose Harmonic Bridge at the Tate Modern in 2006 encouraged listeners to explore the space in and around the Turbine Hall and the London Millennium Footbridge. The bridge was covered in accelerometers and microphones, which were transmitting data and sound to speaker systems in the London Underground as well as the museum itself.⁶ The movements of the bridge, primarily caused by footsteps and wind, were thus translated into sound in real time. A similar project by Fontana was his 'Sound Island', at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris⁷. There, sounds from various locations around Paris and off of the coast of Normandy were transmitted live to speaker system in and around the Arc. Both of these projects share similar themes, including the exploration of place and time with sound, and in particular using the effect of sound in real time to heighten awareness of one's current and past surroundings. In a sense these installations are pseudo-interactive, in that the listeners can become aware of the possibility of their own agency; if they walked across the bridge to the Tate, they may learn that their footsteps had been responsible for some sound in the Turbine Hall. But the nature of these projects means that someone can only ever be on one side of the microphone/speaker divide.

A relationship between time, place, and sound...

As I mentioned earlier, sound is often discussed either in terms of time or space. The 'time' argument is often the more traditional one; thinking of sound as linear and musical, something one listens to within a set timeframe. The 'space' argument is rather newer, and was perhaps born out of increasing levels of sound within our own personal space, not to mention the birth of the idea of personal space in general. Schafer illustrated the massive shift in aural landscape in the last two hundred years in "Soundscape":

The Industrial Revolution introduced a multitude of new sounds with unhappy consequences for many of the natural and human sounds which they tended to obscure; and this development was extended into a second phase when the Electric Revolution added new effects of its own and introduced devices for packaging sound and transmitting them schizophonically across time and space to live amplified or multiplied existencies.⁸

Schafer's argument is in one way weakened by his romanticizing of "natural" sounds, but the existence of his argument shows how inextricably linked sound and space have become. Perhaps increased overall sound levels and more exposure to industrial sounds has made us more aware of the relationship of sound and space, to the point where it is as important as the relationship of sound and time.

Sound's apparent dual nature, in terms of existing both as time and space, is certainly up for debate, but reading Foucault can place this argument within a far wider context: "One could perhaps say that certain ideological conflicts animating present-day polemics oppose the pious descendents of time and the determined inhabitants of space." He later argues that unlike time, "contemporary space is perhaps still not entirely desanctified."⁹ This is certainly an argument that could be applied to sound, if only because the interactive exploration of sound in space is a rather new phenomenon. Foucault goes on to describe what he calls "heterotopias", special places within a society where rules are changed and conventions shifted.¹⁰ Cemeteries, libraries, and museums are all heterotopias, and artistic installations (in particular dealing with sound) would almost certainly qualify as well. If sound is a definer of space, as described by Neuhaus and others, then a sound installation is by definition clearly delineating a space where it can be heard, and thus shifting the rules about what is reality within that space. Adding an interactive element to the space further bends reality and empowers the user to own the place, to make it their own.

Several of Foucault's principles regarding heterotopia are applicable to sound installations in general, for example his third principle that states that "the heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces...that are in themselves incompatible."¹¹ This is in a way one of the fundamental concepts of sound design in general, and can be seen in the hotel room scene in Apocalypse Now (which contains the sounds of an invisible jungle), as well as Bill Fontana's 'Sound Island', which places the sounds of crashing waves in the center of Paris.

Interestingly, the fourth heteropian principle is that they "are most often linked to slices in time...the heterotopia beings to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time."¹² If one accepts that time is one of the fundamental qualities of sound and music, then sound installations become the ultimate heterotopia - a space where time and place are reorganized and reimagined, where rules are bent or broken and our preconceptions challenged.

There is a certain inherent weakness, however, built into any critical discussion of 'sound art' or 'sound installations'. As Max Neuhaus explains, those terms fundamentally limit the possibilities of critiquing sound as an art form, just as referring to any artwork that uses steel as "steel art" would not only create a false category but possibly even dismiss any use of steel within a different context.¹³ Sound, Neuhaus argues, should be treated not as the defining characteristic of the art, but as a material or tool that is used to create an artwork. Thus, some efforts have been made to place sound installations within an existing framework, such as sculpture or architecture.

Maryanne Amacher, among others, uses the term "aural architecture" to describe her work:

I actually do think of it more as an aural architecture. I think of it quite literally in terms of architecture itself. I was always interested in the spatial aspects of sound. I discovered that maybe if I put the speaker in there, the way that you heard it from another room became much more rewarding. I could make a virtual meta-space...¹⁴

While a useful metaphor, describing sound as architecture is not necessarily terribly accurate, at least in the sense that Amacher describes. Her sound installations, for example a house with carefully placed speakers and choreographed sound, function only in a predefined space and architecture. While manipulating sound within that space makes the listener hyper-aware of their own relationship to the architecture, and brings out architectural elements that may not have existed before, it is all entirely dependant on the pre-existing space. Indeed, sound in general is entirely dependant on the space in which it originates and propagates, to the point that a place like outer space can exist with no sound, but a sound has never existed without a place to contain it.

The use of the term "aural" is, if nothing else, historical interesting. When it first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century it was initially defined as "of or pertaining to the ear", with no reference to the act of hearing. The act of hearing and listening was physically described as auricular. Sterne writes that "auricular carried with it connotations of oral tradition and hearsay as well as the external features of the ear...aural, meanwhile, carried with it no connotations of oral tradition and referred specifically to the middle ear, the inner ear, and the nerves that turn vibrations into what the brain perceives as sound."¹⁵ In Amacher's case the use of the term "aural" is quite fitting, then, since much of her work involves manipulating the physical nature of the ear.

A particularly important aspect of Amacher's ideas of aural architecture is her approach to the use of speakers in a space. She has expressed frustration at the quality of speakers in general, particularly in terms of a studio (as opposed to an architectural installation). Much literature has been written about different types of speaker setups, from mono to stereo all the way to 10.2 or ambisonic systems. Sound engineers have experimented with multiple speaker setups since the 1930's, when engineers from Bell Labs searched for the optimum number of speakers needed to generate a convincing spatial image across a stage (three appeared to do the job nicely)¹⁶. Since then, a number of different multiple channel setups have come and gone, with 5.1 being the latest (and possibly most successful) standard. Ultimately, though, artists like Amacher will not (in the foreseeable future) be able to experience an infinite number of speakers producing perfect sound - "I wish you could just spray [sound]. Just get into the ions, excite the ions."¹⁷

Speakers, therefore, can be viewed as one of the fundamental problems in the creation of a piece of sound art. Since speakers do not faithfully reproduce sound, any attempt to use them transparently can only be detrimental to the overall effect. This line of thought is a slippery slope, of course, and I do not mean to imply that speakers should not be used in an artistic endeavor, but as with any art form the artist must necessarily be aware of the dangers inherent in a dependence on a technology. It is no accident, then, that some of the most powerful sound installations are ones that bypass speaker systems altogether, relying instead on the 'analog' production of sound, such as the Baschet Brothers' Hemisfair Musical Fountain, which generates sound and music based on jets of water at metallic cones.¹⁸

Working towards a musical relationship between time, space, and sound...

This extended discussion about space, place, and sound, is of course important only in terms of its effect on the listener. While sound installations offer a particularly powerful way to challenge a user's perception of time, space, and body, giving a certain amount of control to the person in the installation allows for an arguably more rewarding experience. Perhaps an ideal situation would be a discussion between creator, user, and technology, where all three have an equal voice. While the degree and type of user interaction required is often a source of bewilderment, that in of itself can be the power of the interactive installation, as Winkler states in the introduction to his book on the subject: "Interactivity comes from a feeling of participation, where the range of possible actions is known or intuited, and the results have significant and obvious effects, yet there is enough mystery maintained to spark curiosity and exploration."¹⁹

I first noticed the power of movement and place in a sound installation while testing a very simple prototype, where a voice (myself reading 'The Invisible Man') changed volume and timbre seamlessly depending on the listener's distance to the speaker. When far away the voice screamed quite loudly, when a few meters away it spoke at a normal volume, and when you placed your head right near the speaker the voice turned to a whisper. This proved to have a magical effect on everyone who tried it - partially from feeling and hearing a difference based on their own location, but also because of how personal it felt. A whisper is often the sound of a very private and secretive moment, and it is quite unusual to be able to experience that thrill simply by moving within a space. This idea shaped the design of my installation, both physically in terms of placing the speakers in corners in order to accentuate the separate worlds that one could enter, and also sonically in terms of the secrets that are revealed when approaching the speakers.

One way to encourage audience interaction with a piece is to appropriate a familiar tool - one example of this is Simon Morris' 'Musique Concrete', in which a skateboard is transformed into a musical instrument by attaching photo resistors, flex sensors, and piezo transducers to the bottom. "The result is a musical composition which transforms the skateboarder into a composer. It aims to provide an audience of all ages with a stimulating experience of new media, skateboarding, the city and sound."²⁰ It is effectively a musical instrument designed to explore space and time, and illustrate that journey through sound.

There are many reasons, both theoretical and practical, for creating sensor systems for use within a sound installation. One reason that is often cited is a sort of musical simplification - making a system for people to create music, even if they have never learned how to play an instrument:

The idea of these installations is that it is good to bring back participatory music-making among the general public, and that it is interesting to explore new means that present-day computer and music technologies have given us to do so. It is often difficult for non-professionals to acquire the manual dexterity needed to play acoustic instruments in a satisfying way. Computer technology can ease that barrier in situations where the right context can be set up.²¹

On a somewhat different level, this concept is present in the explosion of music-based video games over the past three years. Games like Guitar Hero²² and the upcoming Wii Orchestra²³ allow for a sort of fantasy-musical fulfillment (without the annoyance of having to learn an instrument). They provide the illusion of musical ability by neutralizing most of the variables inherent in creating music. Behrman talks about a "dexterity/musical result curve", wherein the system must be set up to provide the "sense of accomplishment which is essential to good music-making".²⁴ In a sense, musical video games are at a fairly extreme end of that curve, since they have set up a system for playing along with someone else's music with minimal dexterity and accuracy. An ideal system, on a musical level, would be one that is constantly challenging yet rewarding each and every user.

However the fundamental problem of building and programming an interactive sonic or musical installation is that it is virtually impossible to separate the creator from the interaction. While any user interacting with the installation may have the illusion of having complete power over the sound (or think that something is not working!), in fact they are interacting with an invisible programmer. In that sense an interactive installation cannot truly be compared to a traditional instrument, except perhaps for the creator himself.

This therefore raises the question of the use of technology as an instrument in general. There are many musical and theoretical pitfalls in this domain, not the least of which is the idea of foregrounding, the use of "the latest and most advanced means of production as an end in itself."²⁵ The dangers lie not only with the creator, however, but also with the users. It has often been noted that a double standard exists for listeners of so-called "electronic" or "modern" music:

"Less informed criticisms of this type tend to view the quality of technology as being somehow responsible for the positive attributes of a work whilst its failings are often ascribed to the quality of the composer's intervention."²⁶

On a meta-level, however, neither the creator nor the user of the system is in control, but rather the computer, software, and sensor system dictates what can and cannot be done.

Part of this I experienced myself, when my initial grand designs didn't fit into the technology as I had imagined it working. The difference between artistic vision and technological (or practical) feasibility is perhaps where the non-human element exerts the most control:

"The definition of appropriate strategies is often at the level of a form of compositional metaphysics and it is in the 'gap' between a philosophy of composition and the realization of an individual work that the studio environment exerts its most profound influence."²⁷

When my ultrasonic system didn't work as planned, for example, I was forced to use a different type of sensor, which then changed my programming system and fundamentally changed the sound design I had planned. Thus, while I would like to think of myself as a composer and my system as an instrument that can be played, a certain amount of humility is required, or at least an acceptance that all three players (the user, the creator, and the technology) have an equal part to play in the development and experience of a sound installation. It could be argued that this can be applied to any musical instrument, but nowhere is it more striking than in an interactive media installation.

The creation of 'You are here'

The term sound installation has been defined as "an acoustic space where sound, space and time converge in interesting and challenging ways for the listener/perceiver."²⁸ Indeed, by definition sound installations take place within a space and require at least one listener, and thus automatically explore the intersections between a user's body and a spatial-temporal sound environment. In my installation You are here I wanted to limit myself to one listener at a time, in order to create a more personal experience. In addition, the installation is designed to make the user aware of how their movement is being translated into sound, particularly in a musical sense.

The installation itself, in the Alison House in Edinburgh, consisted of a small covered cubicle area with four speakers, one in each corner. Two ultrasonic and three infrared sensors tracked the movement of the user, and used that data to manipulate the sound environment in real time. The sound itself was comprised of three sections: a six minute composition entitled 'BeepBeepBeepBeep', which explored (and heavily critiqued) Schafer's idea of "soundscape", and two original pieces of music. 'BeepBeepBeepBeep' was born out of conversations with fellow sound designers about the differences between sound in the country and sound in the city. Recordings of the conversations were combined with field recordings from Edinburgh, the Water of Leith, and the Borders of Scotland. In addition, several tracks of piano were mixed in with these recordings to emphasize the musical qualities of the city and country sounds. By moving around the space the listener triggered different parts of the conversations, as well as different field recordings -thus changing "place" both physically, by moving around, and virtually by changing the sounds they were listening to.

The software system was also keeping track of how much the user was moving around the space. If they stood still, or only minimally explored the area, they would hear 'BeepBeepBeepBeep' in its entirety with no interruption. By exploring the extreme edges of the installation, however, they could trigger one of two pieces of music - 'Head Home', a folk style song, or 'Nights When I Am Lonely', a beat-heavy instrumental piece. The room then became something of a three dimensional mixer, in that moving around the space brought out different aspects of the music. For one song being on one side of the space changed the mix so that only pianos were heard, for example, while on the other side the mix was more guitar-heavy. In addition, filters, delays, gates, and other effects could be controlled by the movements of the user.

I settled on using 4 speakers, partially because of a potential compatibility with 5.1 (I could potentially produce a 5.1 disc using only the four channels), but mostly because it is a remarkably efficient and versatile layout. Four evenly spaced speakers create three distinct "zones" on each axis, and each speaker can obviously be used separately, which already gives us nine sonic locales. In addition, placing a speaker in each corner of the room accentuates the rectangular nature of the space, and encourages the user to get close to each sound source. This fit very well with the overall aesthetic of the project.

There would have been some advantages to using a 5.1 system for my installation. For one thing, it is now an accepted standard and thus has a large body of literature and a certain protocol that I could have followed in terms of mixing. More importantly, I could have produced 5.1 mixes of my installation that anyone with a standard surround setup could have listened to. A long-term goal, then, could have been to create a sort of package that would contain the multi-channel CD, the five sensors, and a decoder box. The user could then set up their own Interactive Sound Room around their existing 5.1 setup. However a 5.1 system struck me as being a very arbitrary and uneven number of speakers, whereas I was striving to cover the space evenly with sound.

The programming of You are here was mostly done in Max/MSP. The sensors were run connected to an Arduino I/O controller board, and the data fed into Max. The data from the ultrasonic sensors in particular was rather difficult to use, and required a good deal of smoothing and averaging. As I mentioned earlier, I suffered some setbacks upon discovering the ultrasonic sensors would not work quite as planned, and I was forced to use infrared sensors to fill in the gaps. In order to generate useful data from the infrared switches I set up a system that interpolates the user's location, generating a relatively smooth and continuous axis.

While initially the sound playback was entirely contained within Max/MSP, this proved to be a laborious and needlessly time-consuming process, particularly as the sound design grew to 15 or 16 independent stereo tracks. Keeping the timing and balancing correct was taking more time than was necessary, and any change in the sound design required shutting down Max, opening a sound editor, re-rendering the edited track, and restarting Max. To get around these problems I began to use Ableton Live to arrange all of the audio files. As a result, the software I built in Max became more of a MIDI controller than a standalone instrument, as the envelopes generated by moving around the space sent MIDI control data to any parameter I wished to assign in Live. This allowed me much more flexibility and experimentation, with no more restarting or re-rendering. It freed me up to concentrate on the actual sound, rather than waste time programming something that would do what Live is already designed for.

Does it work?

My initial plan for 'You are here' was to create an interactive composition that was dependant on the movement and location of the user. I wanted it to be a virtual discussion, using sound and music, between technology, creator, and listener.

On a purely technical level, the installation worked quite well, although not quite as accurately as I would have wished. The space as able to track the movement of one person at a time accurately enough to manipulate sound in real time and make the user aware of their own effect on the sound. The ultrasonic sensors, while extremely accurate on their own (they work at distances up to 6 meters at a resolution of 1 centimeter) had trouble working in groups, since they were all working at the same frequencies. To make up for this I had to implement various smoothing techniques in Max that had the consequence of bringing down the response time, creating an unfortunate latency between a movement and a response. However, by carefully choosing which parameters were associated with the ultrasonic sensors this latency could seem minimal. Infrared switches, meanwhile, are blunt instruments that can only detect movement. However combining them with the ultrasonic sensors provided me with the sufficient coverage of the space to convincingly track one user at a time.

Early on I decided to limit myself by not providing any visual feedback - the user was only aware of the effect of movement in terms of the changes in sound. In addition, I wanted to have a minimum of directions and instructions on how to use the piece. This was partially because of wanting to concentrate on music and composition rather than any visual elements, but also as a bit of an experiment. I wanted to see if people could react to sound alone, whether my sound design would be powerful enough to encourage people to stay and explore on their own. This turned out to be perhaps the greatest challenge of the installation. The first question many people asked during the initial testing of the installation was "what should I do?" This bothered me, because I wanted people to satisfy their own curiosities in whatever way they chose, and thus be involved in the creation of the sound and music without any preconceived directions about what "should" be done. People not familiar with sound and music tended to have trouble with this concept, though, and needed some direction and encouragement whilst using early versions of 'You are here'. In the final version this was solved using various techniques I will discuss later.

Even minimal direction and encouragement unbalances the already precarious equilibrium between creator, user, and technology, and thus makes any installation less of an instrument and more of an experience. The linear nature of the composition (BeepBeepBeepBeep and the two songs) meant that many of the parameters were unchangeable anyway, meaning that most of the power was held by myself. Since many of my decisions were dependant on the technology, then the listeners can be viewed as not much more active than they would be sitting at a concert. However I do believe that placing the music within a specific place, and asking a user to explore the sound within that space, can make a listener more aware of sound and their own relationship to it.

I tested my installation in the Alison House for several days towards the end of August 2007. At the last minute I ended up covering the small area where it was set up with white and black fabric. This was initially conceived as a way to create a neutral environment which did not effect the interpretation and interaction with the sound, but it had the unforeseen consequence of creating a separate world. With the space covered, the listener became less self-conscious and much less worried about moving in the "correct" way. Several users mentioned that it felt like the "forts" they would build when they were children, and this aesthetic appeared to encourage people to move around and explore the space with lowered inhibitions.

As mentioned before, I did not want to give too many directions. I therefore only posted a sign outside the space that said "Come and explore...this odd looking contraption is the installation I've made for my final project. One person at a time can go inside and turn on the switch that hangs from the ceiling. Moving around the space will change the sound and music that you're hearing. More than one person can go in if you like, but it will probably get confused." This proved enough for most people, who quite happily went inside and flipped the switch.

In my initial designs the switch turned the sound on right away. When testing that version, however, I noticed that people would freeze and not want to move around, or would even ask what was meant to be done. For the final version, however, the switch turned the system on but no sound was emitted until the user had reached the extreme edge of the space. This successfully showed the listener that their movements were having an effect on the system, and as a general rule encouraged them to move of their own accord. In addition, the first thing that was heard was myself explaining to a friend what I was trying to do. This was purposely left unedited, just as it had been recorded during the informal discussion between friends. This was meant to give the listener the impression they were eavesdropping, walking into the middle of a conversation, rather than listening to staid directions:

I'm making this, kind of, dimensional composition, basically. Where a composition is going, but the user who's walking around the room will access different dimensions of the composition...

The covered area, subtle sign, delayed startup, and recorded explanation integrated within the sound environment proved to be enough to encourage most people to move around the space without external encouragement.

As a general rule I wanted to make the effect of the movements on the sound design evident but not always direct. A certain amount of mystery had to be preserved, or else it could have a "mickey mousing" effect, where every gesture is mapped to an obvious parameter. While that sort of design would have been somewhat fun, listeners would probably not last very long in the space, as it would get mentally and physically tiring. By keeping some parameters obvious (filters mapped to the ultrasonic sensors, for example), but some less obvious (the triggering of the music), the listeners took longer to figure out what was doing what, and thus stayed in the space for a surprisingly long time.

But did 'You are here' fulfill my requirements for a truly musical experience by being an equal discussion between creator, listener, and technology? In this case the balance was certainly tilted in my favor, as the creator, and I was in turn quite dependant on the technology - even my decision to use Ableton Live to trigger the audio affected my sound design by allowing me a vast number of channels with little effort. The listener, on the other hand, was a mostly passive actor in my installation. While they were able to control certain major aspects of the sound and music, such as the timing, triggering of different songs, arrangements and so on, these things were all set up very specifically for them to be able to control and thus their agency can be traced back to the creator. However in practice the installation proved to be a resounding success, with users often exploring the space in surprising and unexpected ways.

The use of movement and motion tracking in terms of sound and music does have some very useful applications, notably in terms of education and entertainment. I can envisage a museum exhibit, for example, that allows a user to explore the different layers of music that exist in a Beethoven symphony or a Dr. Dre rap song simply by moving around a space. Listeners would gain a new awareness of composition and music production. A motion tracking system designed for multiple users (and with sufficient visual feedback) could have massive potential for use in music or club venues, wherein the movements and locations of dancers would manipulate the music in real time, encouraging movement and exploration of the space.

A note about presentation

This project revolved around an installation, and it is hard to understand exactly what the space was like without experiencing it for yourself. Of course, most people will not be able to see the installation in person, so I therefore made a short movie of several people trying it out. To give the illusion of being inside the tent I gave each person a pair of binaural microphones to record what they heard whilst moving around the space, and used that audio as the soundtrack to the movie. Listening on headphones, then, gives the impression of being inside the space.

A video of others using an installation, however, is a poor imitation of the real thing. For one thing, it is hard to imagine four speakers surrounding you with sound, not to mention the visceral feeling of your movements changing some aspect of the music in real time. Unfortunately it is the most practical way to show off my project.

This project was demanding, partially because of the vastly different things that needed to be done; building an Arduino Box and recording the Water of Leith are quite different things, for example, and I had to have a very fixed goal in mind in order to keep my scheduling and ideas together. However it was also hugely rewarding to finally turn on the switch and realize that not only was everything working, it even sounded interesting and was fun. One very late night towards the very end of the project I left the installation up and running and went out to get a coffee. By the time I had gotten back several people had gone through the installation on their own, turning on the switch and exploring the space. At first I was just excited that it had worked without a hitch, but later I realized that the real victory is attracting and keeping a listener, even if only for a few minutes. Creating an installation that arouses curiosity, and then allows someone to actively participate in the satisfaction of that curiosity, will almost certainly lead to the user picking up on the themes that the creator intended - in this case the relationships between space, time, music, and technology.