Sonar Piano Migration
Video of work presented at The Merlin Theatre, Frome, July 2009
In collaboration with Matthew Olden (aka “i am the mighty jungulator“). Matthew makes software that digitally manipulates sound and image on the fly, using manual controls, but also employing a certain amount of controlled randomness. For Piano Migrations, I invited Matthew to devise a way of controlling his software by using data gathered from the journeys the audience had made that evening.
Before the concert, members of the audience were asked to plot on a map the starting position of the journey they made that evening. These points were plotted onto a radar display and map to be used as points to trigger the devices attached to the hanging piano. These sounds were then instantly sampling and 'echoing' around the space in surround sound using parameters derived from the location on the map and it's proximity to the centre. The radar/map image is projected during the performance, allowing the audience to relate the trigger-points on the map to new sounds being moved around the space, thus making the sonification of the map data readable during the performance.
