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SONOMATERIA

SONOMATERIA is a multi-user sound sculpture, installation, tangible sound interface and intersensory composition. The work aims to explore the mutual reinforcing effect that the manipulation of tactile and auditory perceptions can have on each other in the context of art and design.

SONOMATERIA takes the form of a tangible interface that allows spectators to manipulate digital sound via tactile interaction with a selection of physical objects made of distinct materials. It is a tactile composition interconnected with a dynamic sound palette, inviting multiple spectators to navigate through, re-arrange, deform and manipulate a pre-existing sound composition.

The interface responds with tactile and sound feedback, attempting to position the spectator in a loop of intersensory synesthesia. The work draws upon and extends surrealist cut-up techniques popularized in the late 1950s by writer Willam S. Burroughs. The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text (or multiple texts) is cut up into smaller portion at random, and rearranged to create a new text. In SONOMATERIA, this technique is extended from the literary domain to the musical domain, and instead of words, big portions of sound are cut down to small fragments. The audience is invited to interact with the fragments via a tangible interface that invokes tactile sensations, and thereby access an intersensory composition coded into a hybrid of touch and sound.