LO 4 – Sound Art

As a student who works in the IDEATE space at CMU, I have really come to appreciate some of the creativity around our own University. A sonic art piece that comes to mind is in the stairwell of the Hunt library. A search on the Internet renders not much more than the name of this installation – “Acrylic plastic Ambient auditory experience”, but this product is cooler than it sounds. Using hanging light fixtures that extends from the top of the stairwell to the bottom, it responds to the sound of footsteps on the stairs and lights up the piece of the fixture closest to the sound. I really enjoy this interaction, and I think it’s a creative way to make such a boring space feel exciting and alive. It was created to emphasize the area of the library where you are allowed to make sound. In the publishing of this blog post, I have found more information about the piece – it was created by Jaime Chu and Robert Rudolph. Using clear acrylic, the designers were able to achieve and interesting floating lightbulb effect. See here: