Summary

Murmur is an exploration of sonic locative immersion. It plays with the notion of sensing place with sound and construction through a performer's past and present actions.

Faculty/Staff Researchers:
Marc Ainger, Department of Music/ACCAD
Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Department of Dance/ACCAD
Matthew Lewis, ACCAD 

Student Researcher:
Benjamin Schroeder, CSE

Project Description

Murmur is an exploration of sonic locative immersion. It plays with the notion of sensing place through sound and the construction of place (a cartographic act) through a performer’s past and present actions. Murmur seeks to enact a kind of virtuality grounded in experience-the visceral memories sensed through the sounds we encounter and imagine in our journeys through lived environments. The places we have been reside in our tissue and can be re-experienced and re-enacted through sound.

Murmur is built around an infrared vision system that tracks performers’ location in three-dimensional space. Position, speed and the amount of performers’ actions control various aspects of the (multi-channel) sound. Sounds and voices recorded from various locations throughout the world mapped to the performance space. The software used for the performance is the ubiquitous Max/MSP/Jitter.

Murmur was developed by Marc Ainger, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, and Matthew Lewis at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) of the Ohio State University, supported by the OSU Arts and Humanities Seed Grant program as a part of a series by Zuniga-Shaw entitled "The Living Map".

The August performance of Murmur was the result of a week-long residency with the circus performers at the International Music Conference 2007 in Copenhagen. For this performance, recent field recordings were gathered in locations throughout Copenhagen and mixed with recordings from other locations throughout the world.

Performances:
- Premiered 2/07 at the DragonFly in Columbus, Ohio
- Performed 8/07 in Copenhagen, Denmark at the PLEX Theater with performers
  from the New Circus

Completed in 2007.