Can technology empower collective awareness?
Collective Consciousness of Listening
A 2011 participatory installation, Meditation Technology invited and challenged a group to hold attention together—a kind of collective consciousness—to arrive at a stable sonic environment.
Through sonic feedback, participants ascertain the subtleties of both their personal and shared space. Focused, still meditation provides tonal clarity, while disruption increases noise in the environment. The entanglement of technology, somatic experience, and social performance sits at the center of the work: how, if at all, a technological system can support both inner and group transformation. Participants quickly become aware of their own movement, and the movement of their three other co-meditators. Through this sonic feedback, Meditation Technology enables collective awareness through a technologically mediated system.
Interactive Feedback System
This interactive installation creates an environment of simultaneous relaxation and heightened awareness. Slight physical motion creates change in the ebb and flow of spatialized sonic harmonies, providing participants audible feedback on their current state of focus.
The sounds featured in this piece are recorded from a by-product of technological innovation in the silicon industry. The ringing crucibles, similar to crystal bowls, were used to forge microprocessors in California over 20 years ago.
Spatial Audio Installation
The space is filled with the sound of crystal crucibles being struck or rubbed, inviting participants to experience the interplay of frequencies and beat patterns in the air as the sound slowly pans across four speakers in the corners of the room. Participants sit on four metal mats positioned in the four directions on the floor, each with a piezo microphone sending audio signal to a computer for processing.
Responsive Sonic Environment
Through a custom software patch, the computer measures in real time the amount of movement and restlessness on each mat. Based on this varying level of energy, the sound increases in spread across the four speakers, or in cases of more disruptive movement, begins to distort.
Project Credits & Information
- Project type
- Exhibition
- Partner
- Perception Lab
- Agency
- —
- Role
- Artist, Coding, Installation
- Credits
- Maximilian Lauter. Special thanks to Pall Thayer, Daniel Lauter, and Seth Powsner.
- Press
- —
- Website
- —
- Date
- 2011
