Before I visit Vidarbha: a sound installation
Across last month at Khoj, I worked on a processing sketch titled, “Before I Visit Vidarbha.” It attempts to carry forward my exploration of urban food systems as a part of the PetPuja project.
Background: Some 90,000 farmers have killed themselves in parts of India. Many reasons have been ascribed to this. And the government has gone from denial to acknowledgment to offering limited solutions. The media has of course been following this extensively. Some deeply, some not. More can be read about here, here and here.
This project explores how highly complex issues like this could be experienced in some interactive sonic/musical way.
Description of project: This is a musical instrument which sonically interprets the farmer suicide cases reported in the English media. There are two two layers of sound, one a chant and the other a groan. The buttons at the corners of the red triangle can be pressed to add sounds to the soundscape.
The comment here is on the way grassroot situations are dealt with at macro/governmental levels it becomes a play, a game. The visitors to the installation were invited to similarly play with the situation. The way they want. The repetitiveness of the keywords which are picked up from news reports hints on the limited vocabulary the media works with to interpret this situation.
Technical description: RSS feeds of news reports of the farmer suicide cases are pulled in (thanks newsrack) keywords are extracted and built into a chant (using the text-to-speach for Processing: RiTa). The groan is built by chanting the same words very slowly (words/minute). The buttons manipulate Sine waves of different frequencies.
Documentation:
the program starts. the green circles represent the character-lengths of extracted words.
more and more circles… (a lot of words)
photographs of farmers and their families are pulled in from flickr
when the red buttons on the triangles are pressed they become gray. you can add sounds to the soundscape by pressing the buttons.
this is how it was installed. the canvas was projected on a wall and it could be controlled using a mouse on a “wobbly” surface
This is the recorded sound of one of the sessions: vid1.mp3
The project works best when run as a desktop application:
Prayas - Cool sketch wish I could have seen the installation. Although there is a lot of theoretical rigor and this sketch has allowed you to gain some technical expertise I am wondering about the experience of the viewer/user. I downloaded the app. and my experience was one of being caught in the empty cold cybernetic void of the electronic media. I am no closer to empathizing with the farmers or understanding the root causes of their suicides. Does repeating the inability of the english-language electronic media really increase our understanding or make us more cricitcal about the media? Is this project the answer to a different question than the one you have asked?
While this instrument ‘displays’ a datascape of the farmers suicides portrayal in the media, I am wondering if it really “interprets” these events. That would require a point of view and an editorial tone, which you would take, or co-create with you users (if the piece is interactive and activley co-authored).
In actuality, the experience of using the mouse on a wobbly surface strikes me as being one of the most elegant parts of the installation. The challenge or frustration of navigating the datascape creates some parallel with the struggle you are sonifying.
The soundscape itself uses the usual pedestrian elements of interactive audio: sine waves, slowed down voices, and text-to-speech synthesizers. However, all of the elements of this project have great potential, and it is an excellent sketch. I look forward to seeing if you pare down this baroque installation to something more direct, or if you spend more time massaging the elements into something both beautiful and haunting.
However, you are off to great start.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions Zack. I agree about your comments about the elements I used, also your “leads” about ways I could develop these further are valuable. Am trying to understand sound more and the way people could interact with it… ideally the sketch should have interpretive details and aesthetic impact at the same time. The physical installation should allow viewers to delve into both.
Sophea Lerner (a sound artist from Australia) who visited Khoj on the open day also critiqued me on using these elements. She also gave some good feedback on the way the speakers could have been installed. The way I installed it was producing a lot of reverb.
I am working further on this. I would actually aim to install it again at CEMA/srishti this semester once it is refined further…