This was a collaboration with York University Associate Librarian William Denton and the students of my “Performing Telepresence” course. Denton created a real-time sonification of the library’s reference desk activity, called STAPLR (Sounds in Time Actively Performing Library Reference). Equal parts installation, sonification, and performance, the STAPLR Dispersion piece created a performative conversation with the library space, influencing the data streams and drawing attention to the practices and rituals of the library. We created sound and light instruments to receive the library data, which defined an immersive space within the DisPerSion Lab that spatialized the sound and light based on the library branch that the data was coming from. Twitter was scraped for hashtags and keywords, which modified the results and were displayed as part of the piece. Laptop stations showing the stream from the lab, the sonification stream and the Twitter comments were placed at five different library branches and students embedded themselves (quietly!) with headphones at each station. Library patrons were made aware of the ongoing activity and encouraged to join in and influence the piece either by tweeting or by engaging the reference desk, thereby altering the sonified data and engaging the public in a performative interaction with the library space. Various students and librarians moved between libraries and the immersive lab space, creating a meditative engagement with public space, data, archives and performative practices in everyday life.

A highly site-specific construction for the primary visitor’s elevator at the Tang Museum of Skidmore College, as part of their Elevator Music Series.

(The gallery website for my piece can be found here).

The following is the text from the booklet which accompanies the piece:

“Doug Van Nort has explored the resonant qualities of the Tang elevator by testing various sound sources inside it, listening to how sounds are transformed by the acoustic space and physical structure of the elevator. The result is a work, composed by the artist while inside the elevator, which blurs the line between sound delivery system and acoustic instrument in that there are no traditional speakers – but rather a set of physical objects, augmenting the elevator, which act as speakers themselves. A constellation of small objects are installed overhead to form a set of speaker-objects that are effective at transmitting crisp, distinct, mid-to-high frequency sounds. These objects are driven by a collection of audio transducers, which in turn vibrate the objects in the same manner as a speaker cone would vibrate the air in its path. Very low shifting drones are created by driving the elevator’s steel wall panels with a bass frequency transducer, allowing for a tactile experience that can include the rattle of the elevator itself. In this way, the resonant qualities of the elevator and the vibrating motions of the objects within it, come together with the sonic sources to define the piece. The minimal lighting focuses audiences on the sound phenomena without visual distraction. It further serves to evoke a sense of limitless space, encompassing the many constellations of sound that exist within the piece.

Constellate is an exploration of resonance, immersion, and the materiality of sound. It shepherds the listener through sonic terrains that are at once highly enveloping and filled with incidental moments, as it transforms the elevator into an electro-acoustical musical instrument.”

The piece was composed absolutely for the acoustic space and structure, and so was constructed while I sat in the elevator as in the below image. Additional images below show the vinyl label that provides the basic piece information, the piece in low lighting conditions, and also under brighter lights (when the elevator door was opened).

Audio documentation was also released as Constellate (Excerpt/Rework) on the Leonardo Music Journal 2014 Compilation “The Shape of Spaces yet to Come”

You can also see some basic video documentation taken with hand-held camera and built-in mic here.

I also gave a related workshop on sound sculpting with everyday materials.

This piece arose from a unique collaboration: I was asked to co-instruct a course at RPI which brought together architecture and media arts students. I then invited sound artist Francisco López to collaborate with myself, co-instructor Michael Oatman and the 16 students on a large scale sound project. The result was Blindfield – the name being a play on López’s practice of blindfolding his audience during his electroacoustic performances, and the architectural scale at which we were working. The piece presents a radically transformative environment in which a dense forest of panels in very low lighting conditions gives rise to a highly immersive environment that is led by subtle light and diffuse sonic qualities, having an enormous sense of scale. For my part in the project, I focused on designing a work in which the architecture itself could be performed, sonically, in a very tactile, diffuse, spatialized manner that would provide a beautiful sense of spatial-sonic blurring. We achieved this through a design of speaker-objects driven by inexpensive transducers and constructed from MDF wood and opaque fabrics. The play of light and sound, as one adjusts to their surroundings, gives rise to a very productive state of disorientation that (as is typical with sound installations) was hard to capture on camera.

The below video is the only known documentation of this experience, and also shows elements of the panel designs.

This piece resulted from a collaboration with the Topological Media Lab (TML) and XS lab of Concordia University. Sonic Tapestry is the composition and sound/interaction design by Doug Van Nort for the instrument known simply as the Tapestry (or Sensate Tapestry), created in the context of the WYSIWYG project, with Electronics by David Gauthier and Elliot Sinyor (TML) and tapestry weaving by Marguerite Bromley (XS).

Sensate Tapestry is a 20′ x 6′ ornate fabric created from conductive thread, which senses human proximity and touch. For this piece, Van Nort exploited the very volatile and nonlinear nature of the design in order to compose an interaction that changed depending on the nature of one’s touch, where gestures such as bunching, rubbing and lightly stroking all led to different sound worlds. The energy and number of inter-actors also defined the complexity of the sound evolution over time.

Below is a video that demonstrates the responsiveness of the piece and the reaction to different gestures, and then moves on to a situation in which the presence of more hands direct the piece into a different state, wherein the tapestry exhibits more life and complexity

This piece was first shown at the Remedios Terrarium gallery show (2007) at Concordia University, and later at the International Computer Music Conference (2009).