SOUNDS OF A MUNDANE ENCLOSURE

Fall 2022 ART 3799 - Digital Media: Special Topics (Sound Off)

Professor: Mark Grimm

Enter the house of your own isolation. Enclosed by 4 walls and nothing to do but the everyday tasks that sit in front of you, sit and listen to “Sounds of a Mundane Enclosure”. Click play and look at the renders of the space you are entering. How does it make you feel? Now close your eyes and just listen. What are you visualizing? How do the sounds take you there?

Pacing from side to side of the room and completing singular tasks, imagine the mundanity. Sounds of a Mundane Enclosure is designed to be an 8-speaker multichannel installation that immerses visitors in this soundscape experience. Each speaker is assigned to a piece of furniture or a region within the room. There are sounds of footsteps traveling from a random speaker set on the left side of the room, to a random speaker on the right side of the room. Once the footstep sounds reach the speaker, it triggers a sound of an activity taking place or a piece of furniture being interacted with. The sounds continue to bounce around from speaker to speaker, triggered by the sound of footsteps. Users interacting with the installation are encouraged to follow the sound around as it moves between speakers, tracing the footsteps of the person in this sonic space. The audio played was made from sampled audio files and foley sounds that were synthesized with puredata. Renders were made with Blender and Unreal Engine. 

This sonic experience was documented and replicated on to cassette tapes for visitors to take home with them once they leave. 60 mins of the audio is captured on the tape, 30 minutes each side. When listening with headphones, users can hear the footsteps moving back and forth between the left and right channels, coming out of only the left or right headphone, giving the illusion of space only through sound. Sounds corresponding to one side of the room will only play on that side of the room. The cover art for the tapes are renderings of the floor plan of the space with footsteps cut out, marking one of the many paths walked throughout the space. Listening to this tape users will get lost in the space as the sounds become apart of the background noise of their own mundane tasks.

Each tape has a unique footpath cut out. Half of the tapes cover art show the left side of the room, the other half show the right side. However, if you remove each cover, you can unfold it to reveal the full floor plan. The tapes are all reflective so that you can look at yourself as you enter the mundane enclosure, blurring all boundaries.