Output details

Ghost

Ghost is an 8 channel sound installation. At the heart of Ghost is a network of neurons embedded with 'sonic memory'. 'Consciousness as attention to memory' is a term that neuroscientist Eugene Izhikevich uses to describe a phenomena in which the cortex re-lives or re-visits a particular pattern of neural activity in the absence of sensory information. The model brain or cortex, deprived of stimulation journeys around its own temporal architectures conjuring past 'experiences' or 'memories', pulling them into the present. The neural code reconfigures the internal embedded sounds with externally stimulated sound causing a temporal and sonic overlapping of the neural past with the neural present, a rupture in the flow of sensory and endogenous information. When the external sound fails to reach a volume threshold the system journeys around its own neuronal pathways re-visiting older established routes using its 'memory' as buoyancy when the external sounds die away.

In the version presented at ISEA in Istanbul, eight microphones were suspended from the four high windows outside of Maksem in the centre of Istanbul. These microphones picked up the sounds of the street, the busy Taksim Square and a nearby mosque. The neurogranular sampler used in the system then reconfigured the internal, embedded sounds with external sound captured from the area via the microphones. Eight speakers were arranged at head height inside a building in a semi-circle, so that the audience might listen to them all from the centre or individually, close up.