Sound Art: Intersection

Sound art is an artistic discipline in which sound is utilised as a medium. Like many genres of contemporary artsound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid forms.”

 

I have Googled for sound installations and was drawn and attracted to particularly one of them. The artwork is titled Intersection and it is a sound installation by Don Ritter.

So what happens in this installation is that the artist uses only sound to interact with the patrons. The setting is in a traffic intersection. It is a dark room and patrons only use their sense of hearing to navigate through the space. There is basically 4 lanes of traffic being heard by 4 large speakers. So patrons will hear vehicles zooming pass them and once they are standing on the lane, the car comes to a stop. I find it really clever that the artist uses infrared technology to sense the patrons movements. So when the patron walks pass the lane, the vehicle continues to move forward. There are 4 lanes and patrons have to cross all 4 lanes to reach the exit.

This is how the installation looks like from above:

Speaker/Infrared >———————————————–< Speaker/Infrared

Speaker/Infrared >———————————————–< Speaker/Infrared

Speaker/Infrared >———————————————–< Speaker/Infrared

Speaker/Infrared >———————————————–< Speaker/Infrared

|——- Area of installation———-|

 

I would find it a quite terrifying experience as patrons are not able to see anything and all the hear is in the middle of an expressway where cars are travelling very fast. I could imagine that it will be very real that you think a car would knock you down.

Below is the video, do check it out!

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