Gathering

Gathering is an interactive installation that explores the sense of hearing. It inquiries into our awareness of sound and the way our relationship with it has changed over the past two years. Loud rooms full of people conversing became something rarely experienced due to isolation.

Gathering sit in the crossroads of discovering how our perception of sound has changed and the distance people have grown into from not being in these environments often. Memory of a singular sound is something easily recalled, but memory of complex sound environments is a different relationship. The audio from the speaker is that of a room full of people talking creating indistinguishable chatter of voices.

This project is focused on bringing these concepts together, using a directional speaker hung from above the viewer. Viewers interact with the sound by walking underneath the speaker into the architectural sound space.

The speaker is made of a three foot PVC pipe with a speaker attached at to a housing on top creating directional sound that showers the viewer from above. This method of producing sound from above is intended to give an architectural feeling that creates “room” of sound within a physical space.