BCNM Seed Grants 2017: Ed Campion and the Sound Habitat
This year the Berkeley Center for New Media offered four faculty research grants to seed ambitious academic projects in the field. Our alumni voted on the applications and awarded $5,000 to Ed Campion (Music) to build a sound habitat with Ron Rael (Architecture). Read more about the project below!
Ed Campion, Director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies and Ron Rael, professor in Environmental Design, are investigating ways to revalue sound and situations for sound to create art. Their end goal is to design installations that reflect this revaluing.
Currently, Rael is designing a 3D printed structure that will house speakers, while Campion designs sound components for this habitat. Campion’s components include a self-regulating automated installation, using new software technologies that use and process multichannel audio. Visitors will be able to contribute audio to this system, which will then be processed to create spatial sounds.
Campion is interested in emerging technology and its transformative effects on production and consumption. He believes that as audio has become increasingly universally accessible, it has lost some of its potential. The question for him then, is how to find spaces where sound can be revalued and reinterpreted. This installation is one such site, as it encourages listeners to reevaluate their consumption of sound and music.
Concurrently, Campion is investigating how you can manipulate space itself to create sound. While there is a large history of acoustic research surrounding churches, halls, and housing, Ed is particularly interested in designing structures around sound itself.
In the future, he plans to install a sound object on the lawn of CNMAT. It will use ultrasound in conjunction with solar powered speakers to create a unique experience for visitors.
Learn more about CNMAT here.