Adjacent Frequencies - A collaborative interactive sound installation project created with Lewis Keller
Year: 2006
Medium: Custom Electronics, FM Transmitters, FM Radios, Lights, Sound System

Project Description

Adjacent Frequencies is an interactive mixed material installation created with Lewis Keller. As guests enter the room, they encounter a silent collection of four black poxes positioned on pedestals in the center of the room. Each box contains a variety of circuits that leak electromagnetic energy into the surrounding space. Guests are given a pack with headphones and phone-tap probes to listen to the various changing tones produced by the circuits hidden within. Unbeknown to the guests, the headphone packs have been fitted with FM transmitters, which broadcast the sounds collected by each individual over a loudspeaker system hidden in the ceiling just outside the room. Guests remain focused and intent on their personal sonic narratives, constructed from their interaction with the limited materials at hand while remaining isolated from each other and unaware of their collective actions becoming a public sound performance. The spectator, through participation becomes spectacle for those content to merely observe: a voyeuristic public. The piece addresses social and cultural ways of simultaneously interfacing with versions of the same experience while still remaining in isolation (television, movies, radio, etc.), techno-fetishization (as exemplified by the ever present "Black Box"), as well as domestic spying and right-to-privacy issues.

Note: This installation was installed in the Cal Arts "Wave Cave" exhibition space for sound art and in the 2nd City Council Art Gallery in Long Beach, CA for Soundwalk in 2006.

Video Documentation

Photo Documentation

image-001 :: Stina and Sarah
image-002 :: Lewis, James, Stina, Qasim
image-003 :: Doug (fore), Harris (back)
image-004 :: More Guests
image-005 :: Installation of speakers in ceiling
image-006 :: Speaker installed in ceiling
image-007 :: Ceiling space as acoustic resonator.
image-008 :: Headphone amplifiers and FM transmitter packs.
image-009 :: Custom headphone amplifier attached to kit FM transmitter.
image-010 :: Hand-etched PCBs - Control electronics designed to "leak" electromagnetic radiation.
image-011 :: Every custom circuit must be prototyped.
image-012 :: Emitters and things