I conceived of the initial idea for this sound installation after hearing descriptions of the artwork made for the previous dinner. The artists for that event seemed interested in the artwork being a focus of attention. They had the guests interacting with the work based on elements of the ongoing conversation.
In the spirit of experimentation, I thought it might be interesting to move the work to the periphery, with the conversation and the food occupying the center of attention. I'd let the conversation feed my installation, which would in turn create an ambient soundscape, adding a tint to the environment. This atmosphere would affect the guests at the table, even though they probably wouldn't be paying conscious attention most of the time.
Triggered by sound levels and textures in the room, the completed installation recorded chunks of live sound from each end of the table, processed it with software-controlled filters and delays, and played it back at the other end of the table. The idea being that the audio environment at one end was controlled by the activity at the other end, while using the actual sounds from the other end as source material.
I knew going into the dinner that the quality of the soundscape would be different than anything I had heard while developing the piece, because of the quality of sound created by this large group of people, in tandem with new microphones and new room acoustics. I built a bank of controls into the software to give myself the ability to adjust the audio we heard, but there was still a large element of uncertainty. There were two things in particular which stood out as unpredicted. The first was that, although the volume of the sound varied, there was an upper limit to this, such that when the conversation got lively and spread out around the table, it tended to drown out the installation's audio. I thought this was great, since the conversation was the most important part of the evening. The second surprise was that the audio tended toward the higher frequencies, sounding more like chirps than the beeps and boops I'd been hearing while programming. Others commented that these sounds seemed bird-like and natural, as if the external world was being pumped into the gallery.
Neil had a great idea for dividers to place on the table, attached to the platters of food. These could be moved, but would restrict your view across the table. I think the dividers served as an effective counterpoint to my audio piece. They focused the diners' attention on the immediate interactions with those around them, and drew attention to the physical space between participants at the table. In contrast, the sound installation seemed to work as a sort of wormhole - bridging the different sections of the table by traveling outside of the intervening area.
In the end, I think that these two pieces combined to create a balance between working with conscious and unconscious attention. If I were to expand the sound work for a future event, I would concentrate on creating more complex and interesting ways for the installation system to listen and respond to the activity at the table. If I were placing it in conjunction with the dividers again, I might try to rig up a video system to allow the installation to monitor the current state of the dividers, using that as another source of input.
-- Matthew Shanley