Microphone, custom electronic processing, loudspeakers, dark space.
Dimensions: variable.

Produced for BIG Torino 2002, curated by Chistian Marclay.

echo room view
photo by OOTAKA Takashi

detail

technical setup

Interactive audio installation consisting of one microphone on a stand (to be used by the public), illuminated by a soft light projector, electronic audio processing equipment (installed in a hidden technical area) and loudspeakers. The installation room is dark and be the least reflective for sound as possible (ideally all covered with black cloth, the floor covered with black carpet).

The sound from the microphone is processed (by a voltage-controlled filter modulated with low frequency and random signals) and altered in real time, being in turn fed into a digital delay device, which plays back the processed sound after a few seconds and is then fed back into the processing circuit. This produces a (de)generative cycle, which will tend to naturally fade away into silence, after the first sound was re-processed many times in this feedback loop.

Echo Room is open to multiple uses and readings, being among other things a comment on the media's habit of exaggerating, reducing or otherwise misusing individuals' statements so that they can better fit the same media's view or bias on a subject. It's also a reference to technologically mediated communication with its difficulties and failures, suggesting the need for quality in communication in our age.
On a very different level, Echo Room is a process to spontaneously create music from a vocal speech input, in both surprising and humorous ways and inviting the public's creative participation.

Rafael Toral
Lisboa, May 2001

echo room exhibitions

2003

"Sounding Spaces", ICC, Tokyo (Japan)
curated by Minoru Hatanaka

2002

"BIG Torino", art biennale, Torino (Italy)
curated by Christian Marclay