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Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art. It is
organized as a post graduate lab by the Art Schools of Aix-en-
Provence (ESAA), Nice (ENSA Villa Arson) and Marseille (ESBAM) in the
south of France. We have a partnership with sociology lab CNRS, LAMES
Aix en Provence (who are interested by the way that practices related
to new technologies are creating modifications in artistic production
and the way that the public responds to these modifications), and we currently continue collaborations with the CRESSON, architecture lab CNRS in Grenoble (sonic spaces research centre), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and other international partners.
Locus Sonus is concerned with the innovative and transdisciplinary
nature of audio art forms some of which are experimented and
evaluated in a lab type context. An important factor is with the
collective or multi-user aspects inherent to many emerging audio
practices and which necessitate working as a group. Two main thematic
define this research - audio in it's relation to space and networked
audio systems.
The Locustream Project
In the fall of 2005 the lab started work on a group project with the
aim to involve the various different members of the group in a way,
loose enough, to not stifle individual creativity, while still
providing a firm basis for communal experimentation and exploration.
Locus Sonus is inherently nomadic in nature, shared between 2
institutions separated by several hundred Kms, we travel regularly to
meet and work together in and from different locations.
It was decided to set up some live audio streams, basically open
microphones which upload a given soundscape or sound environment
continuously to a server and from there available from anywhere via
the WWW. Our intention being to provide a permanent (and somewhat
emblematic) resource to tap into as raw materiel for our artistic
experimentation.
After setting a first permanent stream (outside Cap15 a artists
studio complex in Marseilles) we started by using the stream in a
performance/ improvisation type mode using the, now standard, laptop
and MIDI controller with homemade patchs to reinterpret the stream in
real time. This proved to be somewhat problematic because often
nothing in particular would be happening on the stream at a given
time when we were intending to work with it.
A discussion that followed this type of presentation led us to
believe that it was necessary to define the protocol (sound capture/
network/local form) that we were employing more precisely. One of our
problems was the choice of the stream emplacement - should this be
made in relation to geographical location or sound quality or some
kind of political or social situation... The decision was made to
leave this up to other people, a partly practical and partly
ideological choice. At this point we tidied up our Pure Data
streaming patch so that other people could implement it without too
much difficulty, boosted the number of streams which could be
accepted simultaneously by our server, and started stripping down our
ideas for installations, confident that the worldwide audio art
community (with a little help from our friends) would respond to our
call, which they did.
Various practices developed within the lab following the evolution of
the project.
Locustream tuner april 2006
Listening installation
• last version (Locus Sonus Roadshow, GMEM, Marseilles, F)
One installation with which we present the streaming project,
consists of a pair of wires stretched the length of the exhibition
space with a small ball threaded on them. The position of the ball
can be altered by the public acting like a tuner, an audio promenade
where users slide their way through a series of remote audio
locations. Multiple loudspeakers enable us to spatialize the sound of
the streams creating so that each different audio stream selected on
the wire emanates from a new position in the local space.
In order to make the installation function efficiently we were
obliged to incorporate a system allowing us to interrogate our server
and update the list of current streams (people go away or use their
streaming computer for a concert or a machine crashes...) we use the
list to provide visual feedback by projecting names of the places the
streams are coming from.
Locustream - soundmap, tardis july 2006
Open Mikes
• access to the soundmap
• Locustream audio tardis (on-line listening interface) (04/2008)
• list of the available streams
At one point it seemed necessary to provide the "streamers" (as we
have come to call the musicians and artists who've responded to our
call) with the possibility to access the streams themselves, not only
to hear their own stream but also those provided by other people. So
we made this animated map which shows the location of all the streams
and indicates those which are currently active with a blinking light.
By clicking on a chosen location one can directly listen to the OGG
Vorbis stream in a browser.
Community of streamers. Another interesting development arising from
the fact that we are involving other people to set up the microphones
is that we have found ourselves with a network of people - artists,
musicians and researchers, who are inherently interested by networked
audio. This has led to use of the streams for art forms, outside of
the lab itself (SARC in Belfast, Cedric Maridet in Hong-Kong, etc.).
Much of our research concerns the emergence of listening practices
which are based on the permanence, the non spectacular or non event
based quality of the streams. We have found ourselves creating a sort
of variation on Cageian (as in John Cage) listening, importing a
remote acoustic environment in a way which can be chosen by the user,
creates a renewed concentration on the local environment itself.
This has led us to reflect on a form which adopts a permanent or semi
permanent situation to present the streams publicly, and which
involves a relationship between the local and the remote environment.
Locustream Promenade july 2007
Listening installation
• prototype (GMEM, Marseilles, sept 07)
Our project which we call Locustream Promenade uses parabolic
loudspeakers which focus sound into a beam beneath a suspended dish,
only heard when the listener passes through it. We have equipped each
parabola with a mini computer (actually a hacked wifi router) and
sound card. Placed within a wifi network each dish connects to a
specific stream, provided with electricity it can be placed anywhere.
Locustreambox july/sept 2007
embarked computer/ mini-pc (Linux, Pd, streaming)
• prototype (GMEM, Marseilles, sept 07)
We are simultaneously developing a "streambox" - mini-PC equipped
with a microphone and configured to connect to our streaming server
as soon as it is plugged in. These boxes are equipped with a wireless
connection, they use very little electricity, they are also silent.
Given these improvements, we hope that by sending them to "streamers"
we will be able to ensure the permanent functioning of the open mikes.
Promenade in Paris 2008/2009
audio ambiances & field spatialization
The project involves setting up the parabolas of the Locustream
Promenade on the Parvis de La Défense in Paris. For those who are not
familiar with this space - it is quite unusual in that it's almost
entirely populated by people who work in offices around the plaza
(Several thousand people emerge from the subway station in the middle
of the area every morning, crisscross in different directions and
then return underground in the evening). The parabolic loudspeakers
will be distributed throughout the public space, each one relaying a
remote ambiance. The public will be able to hear the evolution of
the distant streams over weeks or months and at different times of
the day. The parabolas will be set up progressively as permanent
streams become available. The sociology lab LAMES wil be studying the
process of installing the streams and its impact on the population
frequenting "La Défense", the way in which they react to this
listening experience.
Wimicam june 2006
WiFi parabolic mike and cam
• in progress project
Parallel to the setting up and development of the Locus stream
project Locus Sonus lab started a simultaneous and complementary line
of experimentation related to the capture and amplification of sound
in relatively local space, an audio survey so to speak of a limited
perimeter around the amplification point, the auditors position. The
intention here was to experiment with making the sound flux mobile,
as a counterpoint to the "Locustream" project where the capture
position is fixed. Inverting the principal behind the open microphone
proposal by linking the point of capture to the deambulation of a
person (performer) the sound flux becomes a subjective selection and
therefore a personal representation of that space offered by the
person manipulating the microphone. The hypothesis being is that as
we (humans) render our own personal sound space mobile, via the use
of cellular phones, laptop computers, ipods etc. Could this very
principal become the basis for an artistic practice ?
Sound in Virtual Spaces may 2007
Research on remote ambient sound combined with an interest in
spatialization techniques and ways to interface with them has led us
to take an interest in virtual worlds and 3D environments.
Locus Sonus in Second Life (LS in SL), May 2007/ June 2008,
audio stream from a
virtual space
• in progress project
We looked at Second life in terms of a networked community, and we
started wondering if it would be worthwhile to create an extension of
our lab there.
The first action that we accomplished was to set up an interface to
listen to the locus sonus streams in SL. (Brett Ian Balogh, SAIC). We then
asked ourselves what the equivalent of an open microphone might be in
SL. It became apparent that the possibilities for generating audio
within SL are extremely limited, therefore we decided to create an
autonomous system which generates sound to be streamed to SL.
Our system was created as an extension of the real world into the
virtual world of Second Life. In SL, we fabricated a series of rooms
adjoining a virtual representation of a real place. In these rooms,
we placed objects, each linked to a sound. When an object in the
virtual space is moved, the sound reverberates through the virtual
architecture, and is relayed into real life, as if it were a physical
object. A microphone in the physical space plays the room tone and
synthesized sounds back into the virtual space, creating a closed
circuit between the virtual and real.
Today we are interested by the creative possibilities offered by this
project, exploration of possible permutations between the local and
the virtual space is just beginning. Using a virtual environment to
manipulate relatively sophisticated audio synthesis is exciting, as
is the relationship between a synthesized (imagined) sound and object
built in 3d. We are now intending to start work on our own virtual
world using a different platform for which we will provide a
downloadable client.
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