controlled atmosphere #10 RESITE
This sound installation was conceived for the inner city shopping area of Zeewolde, a small town in the Netherlands. It was part of an international group show of public art. To improve the atmospheric quality of the pedestrian area, the shop owners held an inquiry with the result that benches, trees and a speaker system playing muzak during business hours had been installed. We proposed to change the program one hour per day during the 120 days the exhibition lasted. We made use of the double meaning of the term “ambient music”, which describes both the kind of acoustic wallpaper and the ensemble of environmental sounds produced by a given site. For three days, we collected ambientsounds (water, harbor, skateboarders, shopping trolleys, air condition devices, birds etc.) and created a site-specific sound library. Together with Robert Henke, we wrote a computer program that automatically generated a new mix every evening. At the beginning the existing soundscape was merely reproduced. Over the time the sounds were gradually modified: rhythm and melody was added. The intention was to emphasize the existing soundscape instead of muffling it with pop music. We turned around the function of the speaker system for the time of the exhibition.
An audio CD with a documentation of the sound installation is available.