NMC Campus Observer

New Audio Art Installation in Spohrer Center

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jul 27, 2006 03:16pm

Whisper Box
Originally uploaded by NMC Second Life

A new musical art installation from Robbie Dingo- it senses the text chat and generate beat music based on the words. It is utterly fascinating.

We have an amazing new concept piece in the Spohrer Center- whisperBox by Robbie Dingo (the same creative mind that behind the musical instruments in Huntley Hall).

It is a challenge to describe in words,- Robbie’s note card refers to it as ” a 21st Century Folk Song”

Sounds of the whisberBox

Folk music can be loosely defined as music which is passed on (typically from friend to friend or amongst a community) by performance rather than through a musical score… whipserBox appears as a circle of seven loud speakers, arranged evenly on stands, facing inwards. The installation makes use of multiple sound emitters, linked, synchronized and working in unison.

When the installation is active it listens for conversation from near-by avatars. If detected, it will pick out certain words and/or letters and interpret these as different pitches for short percussive sounds which are distributed as a looped pattern of notes or rests around the seven speakers. The pattern created is directly influenced by local conversation in real time….

Additionally, when avatars enter the circle of speakers, after time they will also begin to hear feint whispering sounds, (and the installation will begin to store short snippets of their conversation, comments they might be making or individual words they are saying to generate musical patterns; this will occur in the background without their noticing). If they dwell for long enough (which I hope they will), very feint, mostly transparent text will appear around the speakers showing the conversation, comments or words said by previous visitors to the installation; this almost as if they can hear the subtle echos from an earlier moment in time. Clicking on a speaker that has text above it will also reiterate the comment as music, perpetuating earlier conversations. Many comments will come, and go.

So it creates an ambient music that is generated completely by the number, and amount of text chat conversation that goes in while you stand inside the circle of speakers.

It may not convery the experience, but we are including in this article a nine minute audio segment that was generated while Larry, Anya, Corwin, Danielle, and myself were conversing in the space.

Learn more about it from the write up and images in Robbie’s blog.

Or better yet, go to NMC Campus, find the Spohrer Center, and go to the entrance area near the Aho Museum (see map below).

You will be very impressed!

Story filed under: Arts,Audio / Video,What's Happening

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)