About This Project

When the Veil is Thin

October 2008

Size: Installation Variable

Materials:  Sound, Speakers, Computer, Microphones, Audio Hardware

This piece is a live 8-channel sound installation in the boiler room of the Distillery Building in South Boston. Microphones installed in the neighboring gallery pick up live sounds, which are then manipulated in real-time on a computer using the software Max/MSP configured with a system of randomizing parameters. These sounds are then fed to eight speakers installed around the perimeter of the room using more randomized parameters, creating a wide sense of motion and dynamics as the sounds appear fly around the space.

The space is transformed and recontextualized through the fracturing, reforming, and re-integrating of living sound captured by the microphones, which have themselves been transformed and transplanted. The soundscape’s textures and motions continually change in unpredictable ways, creating evolving and surprising forms that inhabit the site with new life and presence while also remaining symbiotically linked to it.