English | Deutsch
Developed around the sonic event of trains passing by the stratozero.net art
center this web art project engages the infrastructures of a connected world
in the contemporary moment. It encourages reflection about ideas of mobility,
energy and the natural environment through the contributed sounds by a group
of international artists. Key aspects of stratozero.net's philosophy -
interdisciplinary collaboration at the intersection of art, research, and
education as well as a merging of physical and digital contexts - are also
at the core of this work.
Ecophone 03 builds on a collection of related artworks also found in Singen,
for example Joseph Kosuth's Located World, Singen (1999) at the Singen
City Hall, Harald F. Müller's SINGEN (2000), installed in its vicinity,
the train stop Singen Industriegebiet with its color concept developed by
Harald F. Müller and Fabian Winkler (1998) and Studio McMullen_Winkler's
National Security Garden (2012) installed in front of Singen's City Hall.
We installed a microphone (streambox) underneath the billboard sign outside the stratozero.net building. The sounds recorded by this microphone are streamed live on the internet using the locusonus network (https://locusonus.org/soundmap/). A prominent sonic feature of the soundscape outside of the stratozero.net building is the sound of passing trains. We developed a webpage that monitors the acoustic features of the live stream. Whenever the sound of a passing train is detected, it triggers an algorithmically composed set of prerecorded sounds contributed by one of the participating artists. This process creates the impression that a passing train brings sounds from far-away places (existing in the physical world and digitally generated) mixing them with the local context of the stratozero.net sonic environment.
Clicking on the button above opens a new web page with the hybrid soundscape. Once the page opens hit "Play" in the top left corner to start the sound playback. NOTE: this work is best experienced on a computer, hovering the mouse in the bottom left corner of the window gives access to a button (+) that opens a panel of options for sound adjustments.
