User:FluffyDunlop/Essay/1echap

.1 Chapter one (under edit)

My research focuses on what possibilities sonology & impulse response can offer for the development of sculptures, and how they can give a different awareness of places and spaces. My sculptures will give the viewer an object to look at. Through this sculpture a different awareness of that space is created.

Impulse response. The idea behind an Impulse Response (IR for short) is that a frequency sweep is played in a certain space. A frequency sweep is a sweep at a constant decibel level ranging from low frequencies to high frequencies. With using this method we are sure that every possible frequency is played in that space and it will give us a clear dataset of the reflective properties of that space.

An example if this method is the famous experiment I’m sitting in a room (1969) by composer Alvin Lucier. By recording a sentence spoken by Lucier and playing it back multiple times within a room. Lucier captured the acoustic properties in that room like an IR. After playing back this sentence multiple times a garbled recording is left with only vague sounds that contain only frequencies that reflect the best within that room.

My IR setup works the same but is only played once. The frequency sweep is played back in a space and is recorded through a microphone. The recording is put through a convolution algorithm where the acoustic data is captured. What happens through this process is that the original sound is “deducted” from the recorded sound, what are left is the frequencies that amplify or extinguish themselves within that particular space. The IR method has many appliances. In my own practice I use the IR method to give certain sound or dialogue room characteristics. Imagine a sound score that consist of sounds recorded in “dry” rooms that have no reflections. These sounds are like blank canvases that arehis method I frequently use in my sound design practice. With the information that the impulse response gives, a sculpture is created to visualize the acoustic properties of that space.

The sculpture will be calculated and constructed in a 3d model by a computer and could be made in a physical object. The way the transition of a 3d model to a physical one is conceived needs to be determent, there are more ways of doing this and the size of the sculptures has a huge role in this.

The outcome of this research will be presented in the exposition gallery. The form of the presentation could be pictures, sculptures or both

The research starts in two directions that need to be one in the end. The first direction is the place or space and the second is the method of visualisation. What I found in my prototyping research stage is that you can't finish one direction without another. So it is important to develop them both and see where the different directions merge.