Surface Resonance…

This sound art program developed from applied research into low frequency sound and sensation experience. Key ideas of interest included the way the body processes sensation, and the dialogue between the senses. I moved to the RMIT Arts faculty to develop composition around these ideas.

My Masters Sound Art candidature was a progression from earlier studies at the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL). I completed a Graduate Certificate, and was undertaking Masters, before moving departments to better focus my work on the aesthetic and creative outcomes of using vibration technology.

My Graduate Certificate related soundscape studies to the experience of low frequency sound, as part of contemporary music culture, and as noise in urban environments. I also researched psychoacoustics studies and engineering/noise studies around low frequency sound.

This research was combined with prototype design and testing of a small, low frequency sensation generating floor, with a group of participants.

The purposes of this testing were to evaluate how people responded to different frequencies and intensities of intense low frequency sound, and how this experience contrasted when the sound was presented as sensation, delivered through the feet when standing on the vibrating floor. Testing included combinations of sound and vibration; with swept, fixed or modulating sine tones, and a selection of bass heavy music with different frequency content.

The findings of my research covered technical application but seeded concepts relevant to later composition for sensation and hearing:

• technical understanding for design and application of vibration technology
• the various responses people can have to low frequency sensation, including bodily and hearing effects
• dialogue between the hearing and vibration senses

After conducting my testing and further masters research, I was starting on a composition pathway centred around low frequency sound and sensation. I felt however that I was best placed within an arts faculty to develop and explore compositional ideas in an appropriate environment.

I was not certain of whether I wished to apply my ideas in an installation or performance context, and was primarily interested at this time in the way vibration is activated in a space, and playing with the spatial composition based on this occurrence.

My application to the Masters Sound Art program outlined the ideas presented in the overview, with the use of max/MSP being an intended part of the program, for reproducing or synthesising the sound of vibrating building elements, and presenting these spatially, to evoke different spaces affected by low frequency sound. Inspired by the research I had conducted, and the musical contexts that gave rise to my ideas, I was intending to explore the continuum of musical to environmental vibration. This point represents the beginning of my research and this documentation.

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Background subsection:  Early sound and sensation research

SIAL testing

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