What sound can do
With the increasing of augmented reality, immersive experiences and artificial intelligence aimed to stimulate the senses; sound is becoming a key gateway to audiences. For multi-sensory experiences, vision is only one part of our experience of the world and what we perceive as reality. Laboratories, artist and designers are researching what sound can do.
Understanding
The interactive virtual environment laboratory (LIVELab) at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario is a research concert hall, focused on sound. The goal is to research the many ways in which humans interact with music, consciously and unconsciously. Researchers study why we spend so much time and resources on musical activities, how we make music together, how musicians coordinate their movements and the unspoken coordination music brings out. While the Lab is technically a research facility, it's also a concert venue, which is open to the public.
Artist that play
Haroon Mirza, the British multimedia artist, makes installations that test the interplay between sound and light waves and electric power. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, making it dance to a different song and using different instruments. Processes are exposed and sounds take up space. Mirza asks us to think about the distinction between noise, sound and music.
Spatial audio
The British composer Anna Meredith has developed the app Moonmoons AR together with designer Arthur Carabott. The app enhances the sonic experience of the listeners by placing six virtual speakers. These speakers resemble prototypes made by aliens, but are ceramic objects made by Anna's sister Eleanor Meredith. By physically moving between the different sound sources, users can craft their own personal "aural experience", changing the direction from which they hear the instrument and its volume, the closer they get, the louder it will be. This effect is called spatial audio.
Audible pleasure
ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is a pleasant physical or emotional feeling triggered most often by soft sounds such as vocal fry, rustling leaves, crinkling paper, or scratching dry skin. It has become a popular YouTube genre. Many people describe the feeling as “tingles” that run through the back of someone’s head and spine. Others say the feeling is deeply relaxing, and can even cause them to fall asleep. Femke Huurdeman has created “Feast your senses”, a whispery video for Shiseido’s DIY facemask, inspired by the ASMR phenomenon.
Furniture music
Sound artist and composer Yuri Suzuki tries to convert sounds that we regard as disturbing or distracting into more pleasant sound. The range of charming lo-fi devices suggest ways to improve the sound of domestic life. Furniture Music attempts to re-design the domestic soundscape and propose ways for sound to not turn into noise but rather help enhance harmony and comfort within one’s surrounding environment.
Furniture Music, The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Sat 5 Oct 2019–Mon 6 Jan 2020.
Sound design encourages an audience to connect with what they are watching. Sound can set a scene, can create an atmosphere and can tell a story in itself.