I think I know you (you think I don’t)

discoverable, immersive sound installation
8-channel Parabolic Speaker Array
 
site-specific (~600 square feet)
 
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 2007

Using a custom designed and constructed 8-channel, parabolic speaker system, this piece grapples with the possibilities of soundscape composition placed within an already rich sonic environment. Instead of using field recordings of environmental sounds, or even recordings of the environment where the composition was ultimately situated, the source material was derived from samples taken from sound effects libraries. Using these samples as the source material, a composition was made that focused on layering and juxtaposing sounds from each of the groupings in sonically rich ways— ways that might reinforce alignments and misalignments when heard in relation to the real sounds of the site. Using a Max/MSP patch, the composition’s 8 audio tracks were continuously re-distributed among eight speakers by randomly selecting from a predefined list of channel configurations. By diffusing the soundscape composition across the parabolic system on site, the piece became “discoverable” by listeners, and the sounds could possibly be misidentified as being of the site.