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LOCUS SONUS IN SECOND LIFE
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| LOCUS SONUS LAB |

BACKGROUND

Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art, as such it is officially

recognized and receives funding from the French Ministry for culture. It is

organized as a post graduate course by the Art Schools of Aix-en-Provence (Ecole

Superieure d'Art d'Aix-en- Provence) and Nice (Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Art

Villa Arson Nice), France.

Two main thematics define our research - audio in it's relation to space and

networked audio systems.

Over the last 18 months the Locus Sonus Lab has been focusing on a process which

revolves around a network of audio streams. The audio source for each stream is

simply an open microphone which continually uploads chosen soundscapes or

sound environments, as playable material. We have now established a worldwide

community of streamers each person being responsible for the installation and

maintenance of his mike. Several different art forms have developed from this

project - A dynamic world map which allows access to the streams online an

installation where visitors are invited to traverse the different audio streams by

sliding a ball along a 150-ft wire, various performances and concerts and most

recently we created an interface allowing access to the streams in second life.

Unadulterated physical world sound pierces the virtual world creating an almost

John Cageian perception where the act of listening is modified by the cumulated

real and virtual distance. Increasingly interested by these notions of space and

distance we now wish to pursue this research by increasing the porosity between

the physical and virtual world.

Second Life urls:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Redear/5/242/54/

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terminus/146/210/27/ (test place)

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECTS CORE CONCEPT

Locus Sonus, has set up an extension to its physical world lab in second life, with an

aim to experiment with permutations between the physical and the virtual world

using audio as the main vector.

We are currently developing physical modeling techniques as a way of making

virtual spaces acoustically resonant and using streaming techniques to port audio

from the virtual to the physical world and visa versa. To present this work we are

proposing a gallery show installation which will reproduce, using deliberately

lightweight materials, a decor from our space in second life. Visitors to this

"physical" space will be incarnated in second life as avatars (using video tracking

techniques) and the manipulation and moving of sound objects (physical sculptures

modeled from an audio wave) will cause the corresponding sound to resonate

within the virtual volume. Visitors could also talk and hear their voices

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reverberate synthetically within the virtual volume. There will be no (audio)
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barrier between virtual and physical visitors, so avatars visiting from second life
LS|SL_DESCRIPTION side will also be able to manipulate sound objects. In the gallery the virtual

LS|SL_REALISATION acoustics will be reproduced using spatialization techniques, second life sounds

(footsteps etc) will also be spatialized. Although a virtual world can respond to the
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physical world by simple immitation it is also possible to construct from abstract or
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LS_WORKS EXAMPLES physically impossible resonant spaces will influence and mix with the local acoustic

space leading to a paradoxical hybridization possibly placing the user in both

places simultaneously since the synthetic acoustic space will exist as sound waves

in three dimensions within the installation.

DETAILS OF HOW THE PROJECT WILL BE REALIZED

Audio capabilities in Second Life are relatively limited, beyond spatialization and

file playback there is little else, certainly no possibility for sound synthesis or

serious audio manipulation. We are currently working in collaboration with SAIC

(School of Arts Institute Chicago) to develop an audio server using Super Collider

version 0.1 which, when given the dimensions and other descriptive details

(surfaces etc) of a given virtual space, will generate, the corresponding resonance

using physical modeling techniques. The resulting audio signal will then be

"streamed" into second life

The basic concept would be - URL requests sent from SL as PHP commands -> PHP

to OSC -> to audio engine (SC/Max/PD) -> Icecast/OGG -> SL streaming +

installation streaming.

The generated audio signal will be experienced within the virtual space but also in

the physical world (being presented alongside our open microphones for

example).

Spatialization techniques which will be used in the installation result from an

collection of objects for PureData version 0.39.2 or Max MSP version 4.6.

We are already familiar streaming techniques and have access to a server with no

limits on bandwidth. Custom streaming software will be built using PureData. The

decor representing the second life environment will be printed onto plastic canvas
then stretched on frames.

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NAMES OF COLLABORATORS AND THEIR SPECIFIC AREAS OF
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EXPERTISE
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Locus Sonus
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Jerome Joy (Professor ENSAN, Composer)
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Peter Sinclair (Professor ESAA, Digital media and Sound artist)
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Samuel Bordreuil (Professor CNRS/MMSH/LAMES Univ. de Provence, Sociologist)

Anne Roquigny (Administration)

Nicolas Bralet (Artist, Musician)

Sabrina Issa (Artist, Philosopher)

Esther Salmona (Landscape Architect, Artist)

Lydwine Van der Hulst (Musician, Composer)

Collaborators

SAIC (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Robb Drinkwater (Professor, Sound - Super Collider, Linden Scripting)

Ben Chang (Virtual Reality)

Brett Ian Balogh (Artist, Sound, Engineering)

GMEM (Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Marseille)

ENSAN (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice – La Villa Arson)

Jean Louis Paquelin (networks and systems administrator)

Independant

Stephane Cousot (PHP development)

Creacast / Gilles Misslin (streaming server)

nujus.net (PHP, MySQL, web server)

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LOCUSONUS & COLLABORATORS / DEVELOPERS' TEAM
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Peter Sinclair (Professor ESAA, Digital media and Sound artist) - Site
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Jerome Joy (Professor ENSAN, Composer) - Site
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Robb Drinkwater (Professor, Sound - Super Collider, Linden Scripting)
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Ben Chang (Virtual Reality) - CV

Brett Ian Balogh (Artist, Sound, Engineering)

Nicolas Maigret (Sound Artist, Assistant EBAB) - Site

EXAMPLES OF PRIOR WORK

- LOCUSTREAM PROJECT

- LOCUSTREAM TUNER

- LOCUSTREAM MAP

THE LOCUSTREAM PROJECT | 2005...

In the fall of 2005 The lab started work on a group project with the aiming to

involve the various different members of the group in a way, loose enough, to not

stifle indvidual creativity, while still providing a firm basis for comunal

experimentation and exploration.

Locus sonus is inherently nomadic in nature, shared between 2 institutions

separated by several hundred Kms, we travel regularly to meet and work together

in and from different locations.

It was decided to set up some live audio streams, basically open microphones

which upload a given soundscape or sound environment continuously to a server

and from there available from anywhere via the WWW. Our intention being to

provide a permanent (and somewhat emblematic) resource to tap into as raw

materiel for our artistic experimentation.

After setting a first permanent stream (outside Cap15 a artists studio complex in

Marseille) we started by using the stream in a perfomance / improvisation type

mode using the, now standard, laptop and MIDI controller with homemade patches

to reinterprate the stream in real time. This proved to be somewhat problemetique

because often nothing in particular would be happening on the stream at a given

time when we were intending to work with it. This led us to follow various leads:

The first was to develop a stream which using a denoiser and a sampler

continuously renewed a data base of the "best of" current sound events or

"objects". Although this made the stream much more listenable to (and usable as

musical materiel) it did pose some conceptual problems, in that the sound was,

pre-composed at it's source and with the development of the project it has now

dissapeared to be replaced with the unadulterated "open mike" once again.

Other developments included an activity developed by one member of the group

(Nicolas Bralet) which he calls "mémoires de stream" . It consists of listening to the

streams on a regular basis from where ever he happens to be at the time and

producing a short composition using a mixture of sounds gleaned from the stream

and those of the local environment, simultaneously a idealised projection of the

remote site and a reflection on the schizophonic* aspects of the whole project.

At the same time another member of the group (Ester Saloma) conducted a similar

activity but in this time in a literary mode, listening to and describing the streams

as she switches from location to location, a sort of laptop tardis with which she

could make instantaneous hops (without stumbling around every time she lands)

ex of text.

Our main efforts have gone into the development of a spatial form proposing a

suitable interpretation of the streams in the local environment. The first attempts

involved using resonating wires - long piano wires strung from wall to wall were

set into vibration using piezo transducers at one end the resulting modified sound

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being captured at the other end using guitar pickups. This set up allowed us to
LS|SL_DESCRIPTION perform the streams by touching the piano wires and thus modifying their resonant

qualities. Using a I/O board we increased the effect by detecting when a specific
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wire was touched and increasing the amplitude of the audio signal in that wire. By
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this time we had three streams up and running (Marseille, Aix en Provence and

LS|SL_CV Chicago) in this first version we used the wires to map out the virtual network,

pointing the wire in the direction corresponding to it's provenance with an angle
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that represented relative distance.

A discussion that followed this presentation led us to believe that it was necessary

to define the protocol (sound capture/network/local form) that we were employing

more precisely. One of our problems was the choice of the stream emplacement -

should this be made in relation to geographical location or sound quality or some

kind of political or social situation... The decision was made to leave this up to
other people, a partly pratical and partly idealogical choice. At this point we tidied

up our Pure Data streaming patch so that other people could implement it without

too much difficulty, boosted the number of streams which could be accepted

simultaneously by our server, and started stripping down our ideas for

installations, confident that the worldwide audio art community (with a little help

from our friends) would respond to our call, which they did.

LOCUSTREAM TUNER

In its present version, the installation with which we present the streaming project,

consists of a pair of wires stretched the length of the exhibition space with a small

ball threaded on them. The position of the ball can be altered by the public acting

like a tuner, an audio promenade where users slide their way through a series of

remote audio locations. Mutiple loudspeakers enable us to spatialise the sound of

the streams creating so that each different audio stream selected on the wire

emanates from a new position in the local space.

In order to make the installation function efficiently we were obliged to

incorporate a system allowing us to interrogate our server and update the list of

current streams (people go away or use their streaming computer for a concert or

a machine crashes...) we use the list to provide visual feedback by projecting

names of the places the streams are coming from.

LOCUSTREAM MAP

At one point it seemed necessary to provide the "streamers" (as we have come to

call the musicians and artists who've responded to our call) with the possibility to

access the streams themselves, not only to hear their own stream but also those

provided by other people. Our website now offers an animated map which shows

the location of all the streams and indicates those which are currently active with a

blinking light. By clicking on a chosen location one can directly listen to the OGG

Vorbis stream in a browser.

Post-grad cursus : École Supérieure d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence (School of Arts), École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice Villa Arson (School of Arts), in association with

CNRS/MMSH/LAMES Lab Univ. de Provence (Samuel Bordreuil, Sociology Research Lab).

Coordination : Jérôme Joy, Peter Sinclair.

Administrative coordination : Anne Roquigny.

2006/2007 Locus Sonus Lab: Nicolas Bralet, Sabrina Issa, Jérôme Joy, Nicolas Maigret, Esther Salmona, Peter Sinclair, Lydwine Van der Hulst.

Conseil Scientifique 2006/2007 : Samuel Bordreuil, Philippe Franck, Bastien Gallet, Christophe Kihm, Bernard Stiegler, Raphael De Vivo, Michel Waiswisz.

Webmaster : Locus Sonus lab.

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