Living Room Pieces is a sound installation that explores listening in the home - its special modes and attributes - reinventing the living space as a place of engagement and discovery. You set it up and start it and occasionally, unexpectedly, it makes sounds, always in different ways. Its huge inventory of sounds and the unpredictability of their occurrence create a listening environment that transforms one’s relationship to physical, architectural, social and aural space. Sounds from the installation interact with a room’s ambience; their timing and placement reinforce a listener’s sense of being “in the moment” - aware, attentive, resilient.
Living Room Pieces is a computer-generated, multichannel, long-form composition. Its structure is built on rules - for timing, for various types of signal processing, for spatialization - executed in “real time”, that create continuous change while maintaining the sense of a single, unifying, purposeful idea. On the one hand, every sounding moment is unique, never to occur again, on the other, the algorithms have a consistency that suggests, reassuringly, an underlying organizational intent.
The composition’s form, in the broadest sense, is a seven day repeating cycle, instantiated each time the software is launched. In theory, this need only happen once, as the piece will run without interruption for as long as there’s power to the system.
An edition of 10 pieces, created in 2021, has been in circulation, moving from one household to another in a kind of chain, as one user suggests another and so forth. As we seek to expand this project, making it accessible to more people, we are partnering with institutions who will act as distributors of the system, which consists of a small Raspberry Pi computer and 2 loudspeakers.
If you are interested in acquiring Living Room Pieces, either on loan or to purchase, it is possible by contacting the Harvestworks in New York. As a loan, you will need to provide a credit card for security against return of the equipment. For purchase, please enquire about pricing.
Support this project with a monthly contribution on Patreon.
If you are an arts or music organization interested in supporting this project, please contact the composer.