Room (2024)

The Room is an instrument I programmed in maxMSP that uses loudspeakers and microphones to scan a room for resonant frequencies. These frequencies are then stored and played back into the same room, reproducing standing waves which alter the spatial perception of the venue. In a concert setting, I scan multiple points in the room by placing the loudspeaker and the microphone at different listening positions. I can then use these scans and their resynthesis in order to combine and interpolate between different listening positions, translating multiple perspectives and auditory vanishing points of spatial and spectral accumulations and cancellations. These musical architectural alterations are superimposed onto the casual or direct apperceptions of the space, creating shifts in the cognitive rendering of the aural by the visual and vice-versa.

The reduced version with two independent scanners and resynthesizers. This version collects all the loudest incoming frequencies at once using FFT partial tracking. This is great to capture, synthesize and hold a specific tone color. Or, if timed well, in combination with an impulse in a room to create a reduced momentaneous impulse response.
In contrast to the other Version above, this patch collects the loudest frequencies one at a time. This works well if a loud sine sweep is played into the venue. But I use this also to resythesize and color other sources (for example to resynthesize the stretched church bells in my piece Midair entanglement II). In this version i can control the duration as well as modulation, multiplication and other things for each partial.