Where: Jacopic Gallery, Ljubljana

Year: 2012

The Exploded Sound explores the possibility of walking around inside a frozen moment of sound. Initially inspired by Cornelia Parker’s famous piece Cold Dark Matter in which a moment in time is frozen in space, the installation lets visitors walk around inside the structure (partials) of a frozen moment of sound. Each of the 60 small speakers presents only a single partial (or sometimes two) in a short looping fragment. The composite sound is experienced while moving closer to individual speakers brings out corresponding elements of the sound. In order to introduce a temporal dimension, there are six basic sounds, three orchestral chords and three vocal. The gradually replace each other one speaker at a time. This introduces an element of dissonance/resolution as a sound gradually approaches completion. The piece was developed during a research fellowship at CRiSAP and premiered in Ljubljana as part of the EarZoom season and ISEA2012.

A full technical description can be found in this paper.

I also discuss the piece in this talk at the ZKM starting at 10.33 with a demonstration in their 23 channel mini-dom.