Project 1: A Pittsburgh Soundfield


The above was recorded in the Media Lab 8 speaker arrangement with a H1 Zoom to recreate the sense of space experienced when listening to the piece

With our project, we created a narrative of different Pittsburgh residents performing different mundane tasks throughout their day, highlighting the certain beauty that can be overlooked during these events. Conversations in different languages or ATM sounds are something that the average person may experience, but there is a lack of attention given to them, something that we, as a group, wanted to highlight.
We further wanted to add a degree of movement and expressiveness with our recordings. Through spatialization, we were able to create a sense of motion by physically having the sound rotate around the audience utilizing the 8 speaker arrangement. This also forced the audience to pay particular attention to these sounds that might have otherwise become stationary. We also added a drone sound in the background of our piece in order to add a sense of cohesiveness between the range of sounds.

audience listening to piece in 8 speaker setting
Daniel John editing recordings
Josh Brown working on Max patch

screenshot of Max Patch
Max patch can be downloaded here.

Acknowledgements:

Daniel John – Recording, Sound Editing
Josh Brown – Recording, Max Patch Creation, Performance
Brooke Ley – Recording, Discussion Leader, Documentation

Higher Order Ambisonics – Multichannel Max Patch
Nick Ericson – Rotation Max Patch