The Forest
An interactive audio-visual experiment: we invite you to explore the sounds of nature vs. urban environments and create as a collective a soundscape harmonizing the two, often, opposing forces.
In this project we have two "pillars", one representing natural environments and the other representing urban environments/human activity. The aim is to create consensus art - the audio-visual results of social interaction between participants.
Sounds are generated from items that participants place on the pillars themselves. This will be a learning experience for participants showing how interconnected human activities are with the natural environment. The overlap between the two will show the harmony that can be achieved between the two seemingly different forces but also the chances of generating a cacophony if there is no equilibrium.
This is an art piece that provides the opportunity for people of all ages to understand the importance of interactions with our natural environment. We hope that this will also inspire children to follow STEM subjects showing that engineering principles can also be used to generate educational art and to provide solutions to climate collapse.
BUILD + DESIGN
The two pillars are constructed by laser cut plywood and acrylic plates which are stacked on a pole. Other natural elements such as willow are added to the pillars to enhance the nature/urban aesthetics. To generate our harmonies we will use 4 omnidirectional speakers on the top of our pillars. To control our pillars we will use Raspberry Pis. The sound generative items will relate to RFID tags to signify which melody should be played.
