Mærk Dig Selv

An interactive sound-art installation, made on the Dynamic Sound Design course together with students from Graphic Communication.

A small, deliberately claustrophobic room. The visitor walks into an overload of sound and video: fragments of online culture, technological noise and musical texture, built as a perfect loop so the room is never quiet. Four cardboard boxes stand in the room, each a portal into its own sound world. A sensor notices when a box is opened and the room changes. A phone box, a snus box, a beer box.

The fourth box is the heart. When you place your hand on it, all the sound stops. The video turns to warm colours, and a heartbeat, ambience and a calm voice come forward. Then it is your choice: stay with yourself, or go back to the noise.

My role

The concept was mine. I took on leading the group: distributing the work, writing agendas, keeping the core of the idea intact. Each of us made a track for one box; I assembled and mixed all of them so the room held one consistent sound, and I built the heart box from everyone's stems. Ludwig Madsen Barbagallo did the Arduino and TouchDesigner work.

The group: Bjørk Duevang, Andreas Rantzau, Ludwig Madsen Barbagallo and Matteo Brancaccia. Marie Stephensen was brought in to record the voice-over.

The hardest part

Two things. The group had no clear lead at first, and that caused confusion and argument. I learned that a project like this needs one named coordinator from day one.

And the night before the deadline the sensors burned out. We had none left, so we switched to light sensors and rearranged the whole room. It never looked the way we designed it.

What happened

It was made for young people, but older visitors were hit just as hard. One man came out of the room crying.