Re: loop-based installations

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 21 jul 2007, at 23.42, Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill wrote:

> I'm currently doing first attempts in doing a loop-based sound  
> installation:
> What I'm trying to do is a setup with several microphones, speakers  
> and
> loopers.
> The microphones feed the loopers (which are set to feedback=0 in a  
> first
> try), the loopers feed the speakers.
>
> Did anyone of you gather experiences with this kind of thing?  
> Especially
> with regard to controlling signal levels and fighting feedback in a
> computer-based installation?
>
>       Rainer


Since you work with microphones I can give one advice, emanating from  
my own mistakes in the past ;-)  Watch out with standing resonance  
peaks in the room! It won't be dangerous if you stick with "feedback  
= 0" but if using a little more feedback it might bring some  
unpleasant surprises after a couple of hours installation time. I  
once put up two tape recorders with a five meter tape loop at a  
friends sculpture exhibition. A hidden microphone captured sounds at  
the entrance of the venue, one tape machine recorded it and it was  
transported along the tape loop to the second machine that played it  
back over a speaker. When it came back with the tape loop to the  
first machine it was not erased, rather overdubbed with new sound  
layers (type "feedback = 95"). It all worked fine at the morning of  
the opening day. However, after four hours a ghostlike scream started  
howling from the looping installation. I wasn't there so the owner of  
the venue had to unplug it because it scared the shit out of people  
that came to enjoy art in sculpture. What had happened was that a  
certain frequency happened to get reflected more in that room (a  
standing resonance peak frequency) and with each new layer these  
frequencies began to take over, eating up all other sounds - until  
only this alien scream was left. Since then no one have asked me  
again to set up a complementary sound installation at an art gallery ;-)

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)