LAPS 2008, Installation sonore en réseau, Networked sound installation
Picture @ CIMATICS/IMAL Bruxelles & RIAM/MonteVideo Marseille 2008 [download pictures]
Video recorded during RIAM 05 [download video]
start of a cycle of audio streaming
end of a cycle of audio streaming
LAPS ¦ PROJECT DESCRIPTION [download pdf]
LAPS is an audio and visual installation that uses Internet as a resonant space. A sound is sent on Internet and returns into the exhibition’s space, then is sent back again. This cycle is reproduced ad infinitum. Feeded by the transmission errors, the sound material is shaped by its route on the network. This sound stream, played in the installation, is gradually structured and crystallizes the activity of a part of the Web at each moment. This "life" of the network is transcribed inside the installation under the shape of an imaginary brilliant landscape.
SYNOPSIS
SPACE | Internet network is here used as a space of audio broadcasting where the sound material acquires its identity. The sound is sent on internet and returns in the exhibition’s space, then is sent back again. This cycle is reproduced ad infinitum. Over the course of its successive «reflections», the sound becomes an acoustic signature of this space, it acquires a shape determined by the inner properties of the network.
EROSION | As a raw block suffering an erosion, the successive back and forth of the sound structure and dig the original material. Dynamically, the sound stream becomes a real-time sculpture, a weaving of successive levels of complexity, gradually modeling an acoustic portrait of the network.
TOPOLOGY | The geography of the network is in permanent movement. Web users’ activity has a direct impact on the features of this «resonant space» and thus, on the sound it produces.
SET-UP
LOOPS | The sound contained in the data packets travels between the installation and the data server. This process occurs simultaneously to several audio streams, following multiple paths through the network. At the end of this process, the sound is reinjected at the beginning of the path, as it were.
ERRORS | The temporal gaps and the packages transmissions errors are incorporated into the audio data and modify the sound material.
LANDSCAPE | At a given moment, the sound is compared with the sound material initially transmitted on the network, the distance between these two sources is graphically represented in the form of an imaginary brilliant landscape.
CYCLE | Laps lives in the form of cycles. Four pure sounds are sent on the network, then the loop starts. Depending on transmission errors, the sound racks itself, until it completely switches off. After a short silence, a new cycle is launched.
LAPS ¦ TECH RIDER [download pdf ]
BROUGHT HARDWARE
1 Laptop for processing, part of the installation :
MacBook Pro 2.2GHz, video out : VGA/DVI
1 Laptop to set-up the installation :
MacBook 2GHz
1 Presonus Firebox sound card
4 balanced jack out
NECESSARY HARDWARE
1 Video-projector ~ 3000 Lumens
1 ADSL connection (RJ45)
- minimum 500 Kb/s download & 500 Kb/s upload,
- (Test your connection : www.testadsl.net)
4 Speakers & 1 or 2 Sub-speaker
+ Appropriate audio & vidéo connections
BIOGRAPHY
Nicolas Maigret (http://peripheriques.free.fr), has been developing an experimental practice of sound and electronic images (performances, installations, programming, radio) since 2001. Researcher between art and science, his work takes the shape of a laboratory, decomposing technological tools to generate specific sonic or visual language from them. He tends to place audience in the situation of psychic and physical experience. Ex-member of the laboratory Locus-Sonus, he teaches the Intermedia at the fine arts School of Bordeaux at present.
(Festival du Cube (Issy les Moulineaux), Nuit Bleue (Arc et Senans), Interface (Katovice, PL), Digital Story Telling (Ludvigsburg, DE), BHV (Paris), Acces(s) (Pau), Bandits-Mages (Bourges), Galeria XXI (Varsovie, PL), Sonorités (Albi)).
Nicolas Montgermont (http://nim.on.free.fr), researcher and artist, studies the relations between art and sciences using the computer as a workshop. After a formation in signal processing, he studies sciences applied to music at the IRCAM center, being specially focused on real time control of synthesis. Currently, he carries out a PhD thesis on the analysis of the flutist playing at the Laboratory of Musical Acoustics (LAM) in Paris. His creating work is the search of a numerical aesthetics, using and developing personal tools to explore the specific possibilities of a computer. He works mainly on performances with the chdh collective and on installations in duo with Nicolas Maigret.
(Festival du Cube (Issy les Moulineaux), Nuit Bleue (Arc et Senans), Elektricity (Reims), Pixelache (Helsinki, FI), Scopitone (Nantes), NIME (Paris), Kassel DokFest (Kassel, DE), vision’R (Paris), simultan 03 (Timisoara, RO)).
This project benefits from the streaming servers of LOCUSONUS [site]
This project has the prize "Brouillon d'un rêve" from the Multimedia Author Civilian Society of France.
