No Time Like The Present
"The past is never there waiting to be discovered, to be recognised for exactly what it is...
The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act."
—John Berger
In April 2009, 45 of us from the Graphic Communication course at Bath Spa put on a really successful exhibition in East London called 'Progress'. The theme we decided to loosely base all our work for the show on was that of, yup, progress.
I knew a lot of people would exhibit pieces of print, which presented itself as an opportunity for me to try something completely different.
After a while, I came up with a title for the piece — "Progress in progress" without actually having any work behind it. Then from that wordplay, created a sound installation which would document the actual live sounds in the show, but desyncronise the listener from the present in order to give them a unique point of reference to the world around them.
The equipment used — Laptop, Boundary Microphone, Mic Pre-Amp, headphones and various cables.
The laptop was running Logic Express (music production software) which had 1 track constantly listening for an input (but not recording). This in turn ran a tape delay effect, which buffered the audio input by 3 seconds before playing it back out into the headphones.
It was popular with nephews and mums.
Despite having quite an abstract concept, people seemed to have fun with it. As a piece, it really depended on the interaction of people around it. If someone approached the plinth in complete silence, that's all they would hear, and they'd walk away in silence (with a raised eyebrow). If someone put the headphones on after talking to someone nearby, they got quite a suprise.
It was nice to see some work of mine have such a polarizing effect on people.
Try it for yourself with the purely software-based installation @ www.23kid.com
The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act."
—John Berger
In April 2009, 45 of us from the Graphic Communication course at Bath Spa put on a really successful exhibition in East London called 'Progress'. The theme we decided to loosely base all our work for the show on was that of, yup, progress.
I knew a lot of people would exhibit pieces of print, which presented itself as an opportunity for me to try something completely different.
After a while, I came up with a title for the piece — "Progress in progress" without actually having any work behind it. Then from that wordplay, created a sound installation which would document the actual live sounds in the show, but desyncronise the listener from the present in order to give them a unique point of reference to the world around them.
The equipment used — Laptop, Boundary Microphone, Mic Pre-Amp, headphones and various cables.
The laptop was running Logic Express (music production software) which had 1 track constantly listening for an input (but not recording). This in turn ran a tape delay effect, which buffered the audio input by 3 seconds before playing it back out into the headphones.
It was popular with nephews and mums.
Despite having quite an abstract concept, people seemed to have fun with it. As a piece, it really depended on the interaction of people around it. If someone approached the plinth in complete silence, that's all they would hear, and they'd walk away in silence (with a raised eyebrow). If someone put the headphones on after talking to someone nearby, they got quite a suprise.
It was nice to see some work of mine have such a polarizing effect on people.
Try it for yourself with the purely software-based installation @ www.23kid.com
