for 48.1 ch. kinetic sound system installation
solo exhibition / 48.1-channel audio
⟪Sweet Spot Inaccessible⟫
POST TERRITORY UJEOUNGGUK,
Seoul, South Korea
(Selected by the Arts Council Korea's 2024 Multidisciplinary Arts Creation Support Grant)
⟪Sweet Spot Inaccessible⟫ is an interdisciplinary project that explores new ways of listening to immersive sound through a kinetic sound installation. It is born from the artist's struggle with an incurable pain syndrome, which led to a questioning of the traditional audience's body shaped by institutionalized art appreciation. The project introduces 'multiple or shifting sweet spots,' challenging the passive listening norm that confines the viewer's posture to the 'sweet spot' when listening.
Jennifer presents 48.1 channels of immersive audio space in three different moving sound system installations. The intertwined pieces ('Feeler,' 'Fluid Balance,' and 'Transient Terrain'), totaling 25 minutes in length, form a multi-domain, with the components of each piece realized through ambisonic coded movements and the physical movement of the installation itself. The exhibition site is separated or combined into different sound fields through the movement of sound and the selective combination and use of speaker channels.
The exhibition encourages visitors to discover their own sweet spots. It attempts to recall the individuality of 'balance' and 'comfort' and restore the proactivity of the viewer's body, attempting a new definition of balance as dynamic and variable rather than a static and eternal state.
• Techniques Employed
SuperCollider
Ableton Live
Reaper (IEM Ambisonics plugin)
Raspberry Pi
Python
Arduino
Fabrication
- Kinetic sound systems
- DIY speakers
- Devices for listening
- Interactive light installation
• Credit
Host・Organizer – Youngjoo Jennifer Ryu
Director・Sound – Youngjoo Jennifer Ryu
Technical Supervisor – Joosun Hwang
Fabrication – FabBros Studio
Preface – Donghwi Kim
Graphic Design – Hezin O
Documentation – Minkyu Lee, Hojun Yoon, Seongyeol Lim
PD – Chaeyoung Lee
Thanks to – Young Lee, Heeju Kim, Woohyang Kim
Cooperation – Post Territory Ujeongguk
Sponsor – Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
Mixed media, Installation
Mixed media, Installation
Mixed media, 140*200*115cm
Wood and fabric, 194*70*53cm
Urethane, 2000∅*50cm
for Track0 ‘Feeler,' Track1 'Fluid Balance,' and Track2 'Transient Terrain
Sweet Spot Inaccessible project started in January 2024 and was exhibited at the end of August 2024 in Seoul, South Korea.
This project was selected and funded by ARKO (Arts Council Korea)'s 2024 Multidisciplinary Arts Creation Support Grant. The Multidisciplinary Art Creation Support Grant aims to discover excellent works in the field of multidisciplinary arts by supporting creative activities that cannot be defined as genre arts and creative presentation activities for types of creative works that are difficult to be included in the current support system, and to expand the scope of the Creative Support Project of the National Endowment for the Arts through support for experimental work creation, technology combination activities, and new audience development aimed at various artistic values of new approaches that are difficult to realize in existing traditional genres.
• Goals
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To explore positions where I experience pain and document positions that are comfortable.
- Experimenting with different forms of multichannel sound systems (including listening devices) - To see if multichannel playback is possible using only a Raspberry Pi and no mixer.
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To make multichannel sound more accessible and understandable to the public and to explore it as play.
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Allowing audiences to find their own way of listening outside of the typical listening method.
• Visual Motifs
The visual motif of the sound installations was a broken circle. In a typical multichannel virtual program, the sound field is represented as a circle within the speakers, and the circle's center becomes the sweet spot. In this exhibition, I wanted to talk about the variability of the center or the multiple centers, so I used the motif of the broken circle itself.
• Installation Design Process
The 32-channel double-sided kinetic speakers, 10-channel suspended kinetic speakers, and listening devices are composed of arcs that are part of a circle. In the case of the hanging speakers, the arcs are each driven by a motor at their center point, so the circle is constantly broken. Similarly, the layout of the exhibition hall is not perfectly circular, and the speakers are arranged in a slightly off-rounded manner.
The idea of a shifting, elusive, or unfixed sweet spot was a key consideration in the installation's design, so we came up with a double-sided speaker that plays different mono files inside and outside and a module with four double-sided speakers, the center two of which have motors connected to an Arduino that can be controlled by inputting left and right rotation values to move in time with the song sequence. The ambisonically coded sound source was then physically panned once more in the field. This kinetic approach to move the speakers physically was also used for the 10-channel suspended sound system, which consisted of three to four 3-inch speakers suspended from three arcs that formed a circle on the ceiling, each of which was physically panned by having the arcs slowly move through a minimum and maximum angle.
Whereas the sound system considered the movement of the sound source, the listening devices focused on the movement of the audience's ears. The semi-reclined device for listening is made in the form of a rocking chair, so when you sit down, the chair rocks, and the position of your ears changes constantly. Similarly, the fully-reclined device for listening, located directly underneath the suspended sound system, was a circular cushion filled with air, so even small movements while lying down would result in large changes in ear position.
Experiencing the sound difference from the change of the ear position allowed visitors who were unfamiliar with multichannel listening or who were unaware of the changes in immersive sound depending on the position of their ears to feel it with their bodies, giving them the opportunity to change their posture and actively explore the exhibition space.
In addition, for the 32-channel double-sided speaker system, I introduced the visual feedback system to show which speaker is currently playing as an interaction with the lights on the floor in front of each speaker. The lights glow softly by default, but when a speaker plays a sound, the piezo microphones inside the speaker pick up that vibration and translate it into a dimming of the lights, making them brighter or dimmer.
• Music Composition
For the music, I composed three tracks, cut them, and then organized them into an entire 25-minute piece with three tracks overlapping at times and playing individually sometimes. I extracted the STEM files of each track and grouped them according to their sound characteristics, and then divided the entire 25-minute piece into seven parts to determine which speakers to use for each part and which track, and distributed them according to the STEM sound characteristics. The hanging 3-inch speakers were used for the highs, as they lose a lot of low ends, and the 8-inch speakers with woofers inside the haptic device for listening were utilized for the lows. The double-sided 6-inch speakers were a baseline for their relatively average tone. I also took advantage of the fact that there are speakers on both the inside and outside of the room to consider reflections from the walls for the outside sound sources. As a result, I created multiple individual ambisonic files and exported them.
• Visual Guide for the Audience
I collaborated with a graphic designer to create a visual guide, thinking of it as a score, to visually communicate how the three songs overlap over 25 minutes, how speakers vary for each song, and which speakers are used for each part. We created a seven-part visual graphic with a different gray color for each song over the exhibit floor plan.