Echolocation

Echolocation is an interactive installation that creates an immersive sonar environment for the viewer, allowing them to spatially explore and engage with aural/kinetic events of their own creation.

This audio/visual installation exaggerates fundamental acoustic principles, causing spatial perceptions through the observation of sound in a quadraphonic, panoramic setup. Using the experience and perception of a bat as a foundation, the installation examines how different species share the same physical laws, but utilize them in different ways – in this scenario, the sense of hearing. Echolocation is not meant to be a direct simulation, but rather a stylized, abstracted representation that works to translate the dominant perceptual system of a bat (hearing) into the dominant perceptual system of most humans (sight).

The lights are turned off, creating a near-dark situation. The space is set up with four microphones and four speakers to create a surround sound (quadraphonic) environment and allow for real-time playback of sounds emitted by the user. All audio information is captured by the microphones into the software Max/MSP/Jitter where it is processed. It is then output through the speakers with a delay/reverb effect that is reflective of a participant’s spatial orientation. As a visual component, each wall of the structure (which comprises of a video camera and a projector screen) projects the captured event of the user emitting sound and plays the footage in sync with the audio playback. The footage and audio are both stylistically delayed with feedback to emulate the reverberation of audio that is experienced by bats. Only the event of the participant emitting sound is displayed, but from multiple perspectives played back at distinct times, which are respective to each camera.

Echolocation takes advantage of the simple fact that when a user is closer to a microphone, the incoming signal is louder, and conversely, when the user is farther away, the signal is quieter. This is how a sonar sensation created, because the location of an emitted sound within the structure determines the rate of delay/feedback. Louder sounds create a quicker delay playback because like the sonar created by a bat, the sound takes less time to travel to a surface and reflect back to a listener in comparison to a surface that they are farther away from. Therefore, the rates of delay assigned to the spatially separated microphones correspond to the volume of the incoming signal, which is a representation/substitution for the acoustic conditions within a room that create our aural spatial perception.

Aligned with the placement of the microphones are four infrared (night vision) cameras that capture the participant from four angles simultaneously. The room is lit with infrared light to maintain a dark ambience and allow the cameras to detect the participant within the space. Each wall of the room projects the captured event of emitted sound and plays the footage back in sync with the audio playback, including the delay/feedback effect (which is visually represented as ghosting trails of the participant’s action when they emit a sound). The video playback contains only the events of sound being produced by the participant. Each of the four video channels has their own fluctuating luminosity, which is affected by the amplitude of the audio produced by the participant. Because of the surround audio/visual design, one can imagine being in a mirrored room, except that the “reflection” of the participant’s actions is temporal. Therefore, the “sound event” is thought of as being perceived by each input “simultaneously,” but is actually received at different rates and represented as such. Therefore, Echolocation translates the user’s human behaviour into a visceral, tangible representation of how bats perceive their own spatial location.

During the development of this project, Kyle Duffield received the Sumo Art and Technology Scholarship (2009), the Integrated Media Faculty Award (2011) as well as an honorable mention for the 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize during the 96th annual OCADU Grad Show The Show Off. Kyle Duffield's Thesis essay, Echolocation was nominated for OCADU's Fourth Year Liberal Studies Award.

A modified version of this project was featured in Videodrome 2011 at the MOCCA

I wish to also note that the Max/MSP patch that runs the project uses Michael Puckette's fiddle~ object