The Sensorium.
The Sensorium brings a planted micro-environment, a camera and a sound system into relation. Changes in light are interpreted in real time and transduced into sound, while the installation continues to respond to the conditions around it.
MOVING IMAGE · SONIC ATMOSPHERE
Credits, materials & technical setup
Soundscape design: Parvin Diyanati (small-infinitive.com ↗)
Installation construction: Rommert Schrijvers
Location: Royal Academy of Art (The Hague)
Type: Spatial audiovisual installation
Dimensions: 2 × 2 × 2 m
Materials: Wood, glass, plants, soil and water
Hardware: iPhone (camera), laptop, four speakers
Software: Custom code in Processing
Techniques: Real-time light analysis, photographic transduction and sonification
Technical setup: An iPhone is placed inside the terrarium and connected to a laptop concealed beneath it. The laptop processes the camera images into a soundscape, which is played through four speakers.
The film runs silently by default. Choose “Hear the film” to stop the soundscape and hear the original recording. Some browsers require one tap before any sound can begin.
An environment in relation.
A space in which environmental conditions and technologies alter what can be sensed.
The Sensorium creates a space in which environmental phenomena such as light, humidity and plant respiration are brought into relation with sound. Rather than presenting the environment as a passive setting, the installation invites visitors to experience how sensing is shaped through the encounter.
When an environment becomes audible
The installation offers a sensory space where environmental conditions are made perceptible through a designed process of transduction. Light, humidity and plant processes do not simply become illustrations: their changing conditions enter a mediated field of experience.
The apparatus is part of that encounter. Its selections and translations matter, as does the visitor's position in the space.
What is made possible?
Rather than claiming to give the environment a human voice, The Sensorium asks what different modes of attention become possible when environmental phenomena can have consequences for sound.
This work is one temporary form within a continuing investigation of more-than-human narrative agency and the material conditions of perception.
Research into narrative agency — documentation in progressAnother relation.
Not a next step in a sequence, but something this encounter shares with work elsewhere.
RESEARCH / SHINKAN
When sound enters the image
Here, changing conditions become audible. In SHINKAN, sound instead participates in the formation of a photograph.
Follow this relation ↗
WORK / UNFIXING HORIZONS
An image encountered in space
A different situation in which the visitor’s position, movement and the available light matter.
Follow this relation ↗The main navigation remains available. You can follow a connection without losing your place.