“cello” closed-up

The central character is a little ultrasonic robot named “cello.” The physical distances between “cello” and the spectators are detected and used for remapping the sonic environment inside the robot’s house. The circuit corresponds to the acoustic memory of four streaming nodes at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. Between the 14th and the 24th of May, 2009, these four nodes in “cello’s” house streamed real-time recordings of passersby to four speakers that emitted this generative music of the building itself as a resonator. After the 24th of May, one no longer hears real-time happenings from these zones, instead a very fresh and rather short-term memory of “cello” and triggered speech extracted from mis-readings of the book, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, by R. Murray Schafer from 1997.

View from inside of “cello’s” house face to the door

Stand

syzygy was first realized at the Cite Internationale des Art, Paris in 2007 before it was realized the second time at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 2009.

Software

PureData for audio processing and control signaling
JAVA applet for Open Sound Control signaling
Arduino IDE for sensor’s communication

Hardware

Ultrasonic Sensor for distance detecting
1 Arduino microchip
1 Audio computer
1 Streaming computer
2 Multichannel sound interfaces
6 Speakers
4 Microphones

Main interface indicated separator’s position and extracted words that reacted

“Cello’s” pictography: 14, 16, 21, 22, and 24 months

Referential Media

This piece is the final mix-down of eight simultaneous recording tracks without post-production, using a three-floor building as resonator in which various live recordings from the Unterer Hirschgang, Foyer, first floor, and occasional soundings of the second floor sculpt an acoustic environment. Originally exhibited as a reactive installation at Unterer Hirschgang of Akademie Schloss Solitude between May 14th and July 4th, 2009, the recording date is shown as the track title. The title indicates the true time when the recording begins. The content itself is a division of absolute time that occurred at the above-mentioned location. This was an experiment in attempting to merge several interconnected spaces through sound. The original sequences contained:

Track 1 & 2

Weeder (microphone’s position: foyer towards courtyard)
Resonance of tracks 5 and 6 (speaker’s position: left and right end of the foyer)

Track 3 & 4

Passenger’s movements (microphone position: first floor’s stairway pointing down to basement)
Resonators of tracks 7 and 8 (speaker’s position: centre of first floor)

Track 5 & 6

Mis-reading words excerpted from the book The Soundscape; female voice: Kerstin Meyer, male voice: Tobias Scholz; each specific chapter of the book and its word triggered by the spectator’s distance to the central character in the Unterer Hirschgang

Track 7 & 8

Generative computer music of electronic birds triggered by spectator’s position inside the installation in the Unterer Hirschgang

Mixdown

Pattern 1

Pattern 2

It is important to stream each individual track separately, as well as the mix-down, to recreate the space of the sound happenings.

Further information about the project is available at this website:
http://www.little-object.com/tiki-index.php?page=syzygy

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