year: 2000

Audio Grove

Interactive light and sound installation. Spiral/Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo. 1997.

The installation consists of a circular wooden platform 12 metres in diameter, on which 56 vertical steel posts extend 5.5 metres up toward the ceiling. Each of the steel posts is connected to a touch-sensitive sensor system. This forest of vertical steel posts is an interface through which light and sound can be physically experienced and controlled. Visitors touching the posts can evoke a soundscape which always results in a harmonic whole whatever the conceivable combination of interactions. To accomplish this, the acoustical structures were perfected within a physical modeling system.

The visual component of the installation is a lush, composable texture of light and shadows. Spotlights placed in a circle around the installation project through the structure of steel posts onto the floor of the installation. According to the visitors’ interaction with the poles, the spotlights illuminate different positions on the floor and draw shadow line textures onto the installation's "carpet of light".

Curators: Yukiko Shikata and Kazunao Abe
Composition: Ludger Bruemmer
Light design: Nathan Thompson
Programming: Sven Thoene
Hardware development: Wolfgang Schemmert Sound technology: Willi Bopp Production: Fumihiko Sumitomo, Wacoal Art Center