HERALDING BEYOND - ACOUSTIC INSTALLATION

This project was done as an exploratory experiment for a Master of Architecture thesis project.

A series of acoustic devices was developed to rehearse the beginnings of an architecture of displacement. The installation functioned as follows:

Sound was generated by a microphone worn on the foot that registered the subject’s footsteps, giving a straightforward and simple entry point into the work while implicating the subject of the piece. The sound was then played through a resonating chamber that also collected ambient noise in order to give it a spatial character; in one instance, a tape delay mechanism was used as a scaling element to artificially extend the space of the resonator by suggesting an echo, further characterizing and altering the soundscape. Sound was collected by three microphones embedded in different locations within the resonator; one microphone was placed in each of three spaces in the resonator formally and acoustically corresponding to the ideas of immediacy, projection, and feedback. Each microphone then transmitted sound to a corresponding parabolic acoustic projector. These projected sounds across the sand in a controlled manner, producing fields of dematerialized auditory space (of both subtly coloured ambient and novel sound) that resembled and reassembled the spaces of the resonator on the beach.