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DOME(s) multichannel sound installation (26 channel)

DOME(s) is one of a series of installation projects entitled GRIDs, large-scale multichannel sound sculpture projects united in their arrangement of loudspeakers in geometric arrays. My compositional practice owes much to the acousmatic aesthetic, around which a distinguished tradition of multichannel deployment in concert has become well established—one which demands very specific listening conditions involving darkened environments, fixed listening position/orientation and formal concert etiquette. GRIDs is designed to present acousmatic sonic art in new and accessible contexts within public spaces and, from my concurrent interest in soundscape practice and its concern with acoustic ecology, simultaneously encourage and widen public understanding of, and engagement with, the sounding environment.

DOME(s) comprises a series of geodesic dome structures with speakers placed in the vertices between the triangular panels of each. Listeners stand or lie within the domes, experiencing sound circumferencially and distally—always outwards/surrounding. The domes are designed to be unenclosed and thus acoustically transparent, enabling a listener within to experience the soundscape beyond the playing loudspeakers as an extension of the presented sonic environment; indeed, sounds from loudspeakers may be indistinguishable from those coming from the real world, affording the listener an experience akin to Mallarmé’s notion of ‘transparent prolongation’: a listening-through of the constructed land(sound)scape into the already-there.

DOME(s) position within GRIDs is discussed in an article for Leonardo Music Journal (2013). Aesthetic concerns addressed by these works are related to/developed from my ideas on fabricated landscapes and trompe l’oreille, and the transparency of audience in public art.

DOME(s) involved the development of N-CHAN, a suite of clippings based on the Max-native VIZZIE suite which comprises a series of modules for flexible multichannel use, offering commonly-needed functionality (input/output, record/playback, routing, multichannel panning and basic processing tools) along with sound design possibilities (sampling and granulation).