Curious noise (day 20)

Today Miles and I talked about what an environment of mixed soundtracks might sound like.    In Breath I/O the videos and their associated soundtracks will 'swirl' around in the environment surrounding the lungs, mixing with each other.  When there is no video playing on the lungs it makes sense for the sound to be noisy with a slight foreground of interest, a hint of some of the soundtracks.   As more videos are playing, the noise retreats more and more to the background but is still present.  There is a seamless blend between when the soundtrack is fully audible and when it goes back as part of the noise.   All of this is in five channel surround sound.   One of the things we talked about is that the noise would be algorithmically composed of the granules from each soundtrack.  Much like the video pixels are being used to shade the atmosphere surrounding the lungs.  I like that parallel a lot.  Miles had some great examples of composers who work with noise and subtle foregrounds of interest.

One of the aspects of the atmosphere that we still need to develop is whether it will be influenced by some kind of action.   We've even talked about the possibility of the virtual affecting the real by being able to generate air currents in the installation space.   Personally I think it would be ok if the environment was like weather, unpredictable and interesting.  Something the lungs would be subject to.

A composition for this post (courtesy of Miles). 
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