Grégoire Lauvin
Aix-en-Provence, France
Split SoundScape, sound art installation, 2013
Gregoire Lauvin, artist and researcher, Locus Sonus Research Lab, 2012/2013.
Split Soundscape is a sound installation that provides a unique experience of urban sound space.
A series of microphones are displayed in a large space.
The sounds recorded by the microphones are streamed in real-time.
In the exhibition place, omnidirectional soundspeakers spread the recorded sound in real time. The setting of the exhibition place is made after that of the real geographical setting of the microphones ( to the scale). By moving through the installation, the audience creates its own mixing of sound sources.
Split Soundscape is the sound diorama of the a distant space, captured by a series of open microphones.
Sound sources are captured by networked streamed microphones ( Locusstream Box) composing as many pixels as those of a sound soundscape. In the exhibition place, the audience is made to listen to those sounds coming from the speakers as numerous as the sound sources themselves.
The setting of the speakers in the exhibition place reproduces that of the geographical position of the open microphones, thus reproducing the soundscape. The volume is kept low on purpose, so that the audience can perceive each source depending on the distance. Moving through the speakers, the audience can experiment an infinite number of listing sources. Their position creates the sound mix. A large number of sound viewpoints may be explored, depending on the distance from the source. There is no limitation of distance between the capturing point and the broadcasting point of sound.
No visual element coming from the recording places of sound is given, so that the audience can imagine and reconstruct their own geographical spaces.
Split Soundscape offers a double approach and reading of sound spaces, a unique experience of multi-sources acoustic space, pretty much like soudscape modelling. The installation reverses the link between the listener and the listening setting : the audience is not stuck in front of a unique sound source, but is on the contrary submerged into a large number of sound sources, moving its way and defining at the same time what is being listened to.
Splitsoundscape will make the different exhibition places of the Gamerz Festival listenable, thus creating the frame of an ephemeral soundscape only available in place and time of the festival.
Partners: Locus Sonus, Creative Diffusion, Echo-in Sainte Baume, M2F Créations.
Former student of Bordeaux and Aix-en-Provence (France) and Chicago (USA) art school, Grégoire Lauvin’s personal work take place in the field of new media art.
Exploring high-tech / low-tech or digital/analog duality, he make installations where electronics and living things, like plants or the visitor, interact to produce original output, making sensible the invisible process taking place within the machine.
