Ordinary Aura

seems like the best tie to our subject matter using sound would be to address the possibility of sound for creating the illusion of presences, unseen events or bodies.

it's hard to fill a space with sound - technologically, you need a smaller space or some really big speakers.

so rather than fill the space, better to fill objects in the space - knockings, scrapings, bumps from inside/against the material surfaces of the place.

small speakers placed against walls from inside, or placed against the ceiling rafters, to where the sound comes from the object, not the speaker -

we could do this in the days before the opening. i could bring up the gear - mikes and such - we could all decide what parts of the space we want to "haunt," then record the sounds. I'd burn them to CDs. I could bring a bunch of crummy little speakers and all the cable we need. we'd just need to rustle up a bunch of cd players. you can drive 2 unique sounds sources from one cd player through mixing 2 mono into a stereo and splitting the signal (i can do this on my laptop). so if we could get say, 10 cd players, we could have 20 small sound events - they wouldn't have to happen all the time either. we could put lots of space in the cd's so the sounds would only happen every now and then.

basically, we'd be haunting the space. the question is - how hard would we try to hide the gear?

the ceiling would be a great place to do this probably - the illusion of birds (or Something) up there.

kevin
this sounds great
i love the idea of haunting as it relates to my interest in horror
also this whole endeavor seems like collaboration
uh-oh
but i like the possibility of making this together
also the stations of sound seem like a really interesting way of dealing with this huge space
the rafters seems just right
any thoughts on the telephone conversations as a resource

Im all for it. Thanks kevin. Let me know if there is any interest in pre-recorded stuff because I can do something here to augment/.add to the haunting. (I love approaching it as Haunting....remnants, echoes)

i'll probably have my piece be about phones. not sure yet though

i guess there's the possibility of that infamous twentieth century source of haunting - intercepted transmissions.

Maybe the rafters are antennas picking up signals.

It sounds like fun. Let's do it. I like the idea of using the rafters; I'm planning to do that with my project(s), which I'll describe in more depth soon (tomorrow).

But I also like the idea of objects in the space that are the source of noises, or inhabited by noise. Without getting too cheesy and literal about it, it would be cool to have some shapes around that have small sound experiences attached to them. Just enough of an object, like those moveable walls, to hide the speakers. Speakers in the rafters would give a sourceless feel to the sound, which sounds more like a soundtrack to me.

not a soundtrack - characters. mostly percussive. i'm thinking of how in seances they used to bump the walls and table to simulate the dead.

but maybe this would all interfere with your project seth - we can wait and see after you tell us.

oh, and i think the tech would actually need to be exposed, just not immediately eye-catching. you'ld hear the presence, then look around to discover the wires...

I should go into a just a little depth on my project here; What I'd like to do is to print out the dynamic maps I'm making onto some material that I can rear-project onto, and hang them just above wall height, so that the show continues there.

Optimally, these printed panels would have light sources shining on them both from behind, on the rafter side, and from the floor. The idea is that when people walk between the floor light source and the panel, their shadow is cast on the panel. The printout would be black on black material; the idea is that the text/images will only show up within the viewer's shadow.

I have yet to determine that this will actually work physically, but I thought I'd mention it now, in terms of using the rafters. I'd like some rafter space.

Also, in terms of floor space; I'm hoping a light source can be laid on the floor closeish to the edges, leaving most of the space clear.

Thinking of those lights, and also of sound objects, this idea just came to me. Is it possible/feasible/cool to build a sort of rack that would contain both sound equipment, like a speaker, and a light source for my project? Could it be dressed up to look cool? Is this a bad idea? Perhaps. But it would create an object that would be the center of a viewer experience.

Just thinking out loud.

i thought i remembered the ceiling being a LOT higher than the walls in that space, which could be a problem here - adam?

also the requirement to not put things on the floor.

would this be the map idea you were talking about earlier, the mapping of next-world geography onto present-world space? what's the dynamic part? do you mean that in the sense of the data changing?

as for combo lights/speakers, I guess that would be a different sound project. my idea was that we'd attach speakers to objects as a way of "sounding" the objects before sounding the air. the speakers would really just be a substitute for some mechanical object beating or scraping on them.