Advice needed! Sound art installation hardware

[rlin]

Hello, everyone.
It's been a while since my first visit, but I'm finally back and hoping to get some advice about a recent artistic undertaking.

I'm in the process of throwing together a grant proposal for a sound art installation at a gallery space. The show will take place sometime in late winter/early spring (i.e., between the end of January and the middle of March). Grant application should be in as soon as possible just because the earlier I send in a proposal, the more chance I'll have of there being money available to support my project.

I'm exploring the workings of biological and emotional memory through creating an immersive sound environment that plays on scientific ideas neural circuitry, as well as the more subjective and personal qualities of memory. The idea is this: between 35 and 40 tracks of mono audio meant to be played over 35 ~ 40 small and mid-sized individual speakers arranged around a gallery space (some hanging from the ceiling, others positioned on the walls, in the floor, and so on). I'm building false walls and a false floor to cover the sides of the gallery space so that speakers can be embedded easily within all areas. The goal is to create a completely immersive soundscape within that particular room, and to do so in such a way that visitors can navigate throughout the room and tune in to specific single tracks of the layered audio in chorus (thus the choice to do a collection of mono tracks vs. 5.1 surround sound and similar stereo sound setups). I have a flexible budget but I would like to get the best sound for the best bargain for small to medium sized speakers that might be easy to manipulate and install.

Suggestions? Ideas? Anything would help!

Best,
-Rachel

[Alex_UK]

Hi again Rachel, sounds like an interesting project. Sorry to ask a stupid question, but will the 35 - 40 tracks be music (as we know it!) or something different? The type of sounds you are proposing will no doubt have an influence on the recommendation for hardware, although to be honest, 35 - 40 tracks playing simultaneously will probably negate any recommendation we can give about sound quality! ;) Have you already sorted out amplification and source components? How big is the proposed space you will be doing this in?

[The Grand Wazoo]

Hi Rachel,
I think we all may be needing a little more information to be clear here.
Are you intending to play a recording made up of 35 - 40 different tracks, each over a separate speaker (eg - bass guitar coming from the speaker in the front left, keyboards coming from the one that's front right, bass drum behind you & a little to the left etc etc all making up something that when put together makes sense, but if you stand in front of the sax players speaker you can follow the part he's playing).

Or will it be 35 - 40 completely unrelated tracks that when put together make ...........a noise!

????

Are you expecting your speakers to play from behind your false surfaces? If so, depending on what they're made from, you may find it's difficult to tune into a specific speaker.

Hope we can help more!

[rlin]

The tracks are not just music as most would know it, though there are bits and pieces of music and musical sounds occasionally included that shiver in and out of the space. I have included everything from field recordings and human voices to Foley sound and generative, sensor-input-initiated audio.

There are moments when the combination of noises will simply sound like--- well, noise. And other moments when a group of tracks all combine in chorus to build a recognizable element-- like a human voice, a phrase-- something recognizable. Some tracks are actually musical, recordings of me playing cello and piano, bits and fragments of music, seemingly out of sync but falling into sync at key points during the piece, which is a 30-minute duration loop.

All tracks are "playing" at once, but there are very long pauses between audible elements in each track, so there will be moments of quiet to emphasize, say, a single track or two working in contrast to one another on one side of the gallery, or a response to those tracks on the opposite side. Likewise, there are other moments when that synchrony falls apart completely and the sounds become much more aggressive and dispersed. The volume of each track varies throughout the piece, and also considers the size and shape of the space. Certain key sounds will occasionally "travel around" the gallery-- that is, dart suddenly from one speaker to the next to the next and so on to create a sense of movement.

The gallery space is rectangular, around 30 feet wide and 50 feet long. Sound quality in the room is really great from what my tests have proven. I am also making another down-scaled version of this piece for a 14 x 27 ft gallery space in another spring show opportunity.

Speakers will simply be nested in little spaces in the walls, but they will be visible. I guess I'm not trying to hide the fact that they are speakers, necessarily, nor do I want solid walls to muffle any of the sound.

Speakers in the floor will be placed underneath steel grates, so that people can stand as they normally would with space between the grate and the speaker itself, plus room for sound to travel effectively. Speakers beneath people will be primarily drone-like sounds, with some skittering, electricity-like noises that will be entirely generative, based on pressure sensors embedded in the floor and ultrasonic sensors placed on the walls so that those tracks will be triggered to play based on the proximity of people to a sensor.

All of that said, I don't want to create solid walls of sound that drive people out of the gallery, nor do I want to damage anybody's hearing!
I'm really pushing myself to create an audio space reminiscent of the working of synapses, with (hopefully) an organic quality to the way the sound seems to swell, breathe, travel, and interact with the participants.

One big hardware question for me will be frequency range. Some of the sounds that I'm working with are rather deep and will require a speaker capable of reproducing low frequencies without being damaged. Of course, I'm not going to blast those speakers as loud as they can go, but I don't want to damage any of the equipment I purchase through such fiascoes.

[The Grand Wazoo]

OK Rachel, thanks for that I understand what you're trying to do a lot better now!

[The Vinyl Adventure]

If it doesn't need to be too loud I'd go for cheap little "class t" of "tripath" amps search on eBay, you can get stereo amps for as little as £30 and I bet if you orderd 20 (enough for 40 mono channels) you would get a deal if you messaged them asking for one.
As for speakers, skytronics make ceiling/wall speakers for £25-50 a go...
If you are clever and record everything at the right relative level then it doesn't matter that you are using stereo amps. As for actually playing the music, it's gotta be computers or those cd players that do flawless looping (I can't remember what they are called - they are sometimes used for answer machines)

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Oh and if you wanted extra rumbly bass I'd get an extra sub woofer cleverly placed... Trying to make all the speakers capable of good bass would be very costly indeed!

[Rare Bird]

I think you may need PC based MIDI automated set up ..You'll need to read up on MIDI controllers i sugest I can PM you some extensive notes if you wish

35-40 tracks is a lot of channels to be running at once.