locus sonus > Productions lab

Last changed: 2012/03/06 23:33

{html}
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) and Nice (ENSA Villa Arson) 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. 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream">more info</A>

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
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

Listening installation 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream+Tuner">more info</A> 
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, Audio Tardis july 2006
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

Open Mikes 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream+SoundMap">more info : Locustream SoundMap project</A> (07/2006)
 

&bull; <a HREF="javascript:openstream3('http://locusonus.org/soundmap/','streamindex')">access to the soundmap</A> 

 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream+Tardis">more info : Locustream Audio Tardis (on-line listening interface)</A> (04/2008)

&bull; <a HREF="javascript:openstream3('http://locusonus.org/soundmap/','streamindex')">list of the available streams</A>

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
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

Listening installation 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream+Promenade">more info</A> 
prototype (Locus Sonus Roadshow, GMEM, Marseilles, sept 07 - Symposium Audio Extranautes, Nice, dec 07 - Portes ouvertes, ESA Aix en Provence, avr 2008)

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
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

embarked computer/ mini-pc (Linux, Pd, streaming) 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustreambox">more info</A> 
prototype Asus router (Locus Sonus Roadshow, GMEM, Marseilles, sept 07 - Symposium Audio Extranautes, Nice, dec 07 - Portes ouvertes, ESA Aix en Provence, avr 2008) 
prototype Alix (Workshop Le Fresnoy, nov 2008)

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
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">
<a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=La+Défense"><IMG SRC="http://locusonus.org/documentation/img/PROJETSLAB/defense2.jpg" ALIGN="left" BORDER="0" WIDTH="120" HEIGHT="71" STYLE="padding-right:5px;"></A>
audio ambiances & field spatialization 

<a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=La+Défense"> more info</A> (in progress project)

The project involves setting up the parabolas of the Locustream 
Promenade on the Parvis de La D&eacute;fense 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 D&eacute;fense", the way in which they react to this 
listening experience.

Wimicam june 2006
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

WiFi parabolic mike and cam 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Wimicam"> more info</A> (in progress project) 
prototype micro parabolique (Cap15, juin 2006) 
prototype wimicam (DigIt Festival, USA, ao&ucirc;t 2006 - Symposium Audio Sites, ESA Aix en Provence, nov 2006 - Locus Sonus Roadshow, GMEM, Marseille, oct 2007)

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 ?

LS in SL : Sound in Virtual Spaces may 2007
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

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 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=LS+in+SL"> more info</A> 
prototype Festival Seconde Nature, Aix en Provence, oct 2007

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.

<!-- Then the question became how about if we could get a stream out of SL. At this point it became apparent that the possibilities for generating audio within SL where extremely limited... We set about setting up a system whereby we generate sound outside of second life and then send it into SL as a stream. The basic archtecture is as follows &rarr; a mobile object representing a sound outputs its coordinates in relation to the virtual space. Theses coordinates are sent 
via http to an external server running an audio synthesis patch (pure data). The virtual space is divided up into adjoining rooms, for each space we calculated the resonant qualitys (reveberation in relation to the dimensions of the space) thus the sound from the object varies according to it's position in relation to the different spaces, infact if the sound producing object is several spaces distant from the listener, the result is an accumulation of the different reverberating spaces. 
In addition to the actual architecture of the spaces we also created "zones" which have a specific effect on a sound if it is introuced into it for instance the fire cooks the sound creating a distortion which varies depending on how far you move the sound producing object towards the center of the fire. 
Or a tunnel which resonates according to the harmonic nodes which (theoretically at least) would exist in such a tunnel. to produce such an effect we made calcualtions which, although they might not be rigourously correct they are totally plausible. Thus a sound which is introduced into the tunnel will have an harmonic reinforcement which varies cm by cm (floating point value) as you displace it. 
Another example is a dome which is plausible although ...

We recently made a first presentation of this work during the festival second nature in Aix en Provence. For the event we modelled the first life space in which we were doing the installation and include this in our second life architecture. We equipped the first life space with an 8 point spatialisation system and set up a projection screen at the far end of the space which provided a window (so to speak) onto the second life space. The listening point was calculated for the center of the real life space where we set up computers online with SL thus when visitors used their avatars to manipulete the sound objects in the modelised real life space they could hear the sound of that object moving around them. when they moved it into the other parts of the second life space they heard the result of the accumulation of the different virtual acoustic spaces coming from the area behind the screen. It was of course possible for anyone visiting via second life to participate and the sound of the from the middle of the installation was captured with a microphone, therefore mixed with the sound of the local environment, and sent as a stream into second life.

Today we are very interested by the creative possibilities offered by this project. Using a virtual environment to manipulate relatively sophisticated audio synthesis is exciting in itself as is the relationship between a synthesiszed or invented sound and an object built in 3d and of course our exploration of possible permutations between the local and the virtual space is just beginning. We do feel retiscent however about the use of Second life as a platform for this project, a/ because it's not a specially nice place to be and the ideaology behind it is somewhat doubtfull and b/ because it's rather badly designed and prone to bugs. 
So to conclude we are now intending to start work on our own virtual world using a different platform for which we will provide a downloadable client. -->

New Atlantis dec 2008
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

Sound virtual space 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=New+Atlantis"> more info</A> 
&bull; <a HREF="javascript:openpage('http://transatlab.net/','page')">Transatlab blog</A>

To create a virtual space that enables us to experiment with the possibilities between virtual architecture, sound synthesis and processing. This would primarily manifest itself through the notion of making the the space "playable," i.e. the notion that there is an architecture being created that also acts as an instrument. "Play" not in the sense of an instrumental interface or in a game/narrative structure, but from an environmental point of view. A visitor can take part in "re-arranging" the overall soundscape of in the virtual world by moving sound-objects through different acoustic spaces, creating a "musical" exploration.The end result would provide a playground for workshops that will enable participants, or teams of participants, to model 3d objects/environments and create sounds that are specific to them, as well as explore virtual sound spaces. This would ideally be a public space in which people anywhere could explore sound synthesis. 
We've got a nice notion of creating a virtual space that was not photorealistic, nor strived to emulate reality. With a highly stylized world, the participants/creators would be freer to concentrate on the ideas, not necessarily on the technical implementation.

We want to build a multiuser online world, but with capabilities for experimental audio work. Over the next three years, this project, which is code-named "New Atlantis", will grow to include a persistent, user-modifiable world and the ability to upload new content (3D objects, audio synthesis patches, etc). Basically it will be like Second Life, but it will sound a lot better. La Seconde Vie Sonore. 
The client software will be cross-platform, freely available, and we prefer it to be open-source. The same goes for the server, so that it can be used widely both for the New Atlantis world itself and for unique individual worlds.

The client/server architecture will probably primarily follow the usual model of a distributed shared state and scenegraph, with the simulation running dynamically on a master copy of the scenegraph and the changes distributed to the clients. The server will also maintain a persistent database (e.g. MySQL) of the world. Our current plan uses Apache/MySQL and something like Python or Java servlets (on the theory that having the data structure of the world actually in memory is faster than continuous SQL queries). We can look at the structure of other multiuser game engines, and also at toolkits like CAVERN/QUANTA which we have some experience with in tele-immersive applications.

The client will have two parts - the main visual client and the sound engine. We're currently planning to write the Client in Python using Panda3D, and use Pure Data as the sound engine. The client distribution will include these as distinct executables, but with a front-end shell script or similar mechanism that launches and connects them. It may at some point be possible to embed PD directly into another executable in the form of a shared library, but for now we expect that this method will work just as well.
 
The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon, 1614 
"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all 
sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not, of 
quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of 
music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with 
bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds 
as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make 
divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original 
are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and 
letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have 
certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; 
we have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the 
voice many times, and, as it were, tossing it; and some that give 
back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; 
yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate 
sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in 
trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.” 
<A HREF="http://art-bin.com/art/oatlant.html" target="blank">http://art-bin.com/art/oatlant.html</A>

NMSAT : Networked Music and SoundArt Timeline may 2008
<HR SIZE=5 COLOR="orange">

An overview of practices related to sound transmission and distance 

&bull; <a HREF="http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=NMSAT"> more info</A>

This timeline aims to provide an overview of the principal events and projects in the realm of networked music and networked sonic performances since the beginning of the XX° century. The overview covers various domains and types of events : technologies and softwares, forward thinking literature, musicology & ethnomusicology, sound anthropology and history of telecommunication & radio, contemporary music to soundart. The general form of this timeline is a database organized with various fields for structuring each entry. Most of the entries, such as events, works and technologies, have a short description and sources annotation, completed by other informations that can be used like criterias for occurrences search and navigation. The idea is to build multiple interfaces connected to the database that present various ways and representations for navigating and editing entries. In the primary text version, the historical timeline is divided in two parts, the first one concerns early history and literature until the 60s, the second one a chronological list of works and references between 1950 to present. It is complemented with a third chapter : an alphabetical list of scientific papers and publications. The timeline maps out a rich resource for researchers and artists, and reveals the links between technics & social shifts, anticipation visions, proleptic statements & anticipation, and artworks. The objective aims a better reading and analysis of the very recent history of soundart & music in networks technologies environments, in the context of today social stakes and of World & local environments’ perceptions, shook and modified by the Internet development. 
 
<a HREF="http://locusonus.org/nmsat/" target="blank">blog & database under construction</A>

{/html}

Password Edit summary

Lab 2013/2014: Elena Biserna, Stéphane Cousot, Laurent Di Biase, Grégoire Lauvin, Fabrice Métais, Marie Müller, (Julien Clauss, Alejandro Duque), Jérôme Joy, Anne Roquigny, Peter Sinclair.

2008/2014 — Powered by LionWiki 2.2.2 — Thanks to Adam Zivner
© images Locus Sonus webmaster & webdesign : Jérôme Joy contact: info (at) locusonus.org 2004-2014 Locus Sonus

locus sonus > Productions lab

Menu - Admin