Author Archives: Jay

About Jay

Forging a career in sound design

Thursday 23rd May, 2013 – Spring Into Summer and Interactive Soundscapes.

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Interactive Soundscapes

As you may know I am really getting into adding interactive soundscapes to my work.  These ideas enable me to provide an experience that is immersive and totally takes over your mind (not in a sinister way of course!).  This all stems from my initial interest in creating immersive music after being unsatisfied that most commercial bands/music ‘artists’ seem happy to create background music.  Sound defines every aspect of our lives, consciously and subconsciously and getting to the bottom of how and why, and using these ideas, fascinates me…  enter my interest in soundscapes.

Tea Dance For Little People

Some of my latest soundscape work has been with creative play company Tea Dance for Little People (TDLP).  TDLP are a social enterprise who aim to improve health and well-being of families with young children through creative play.  They have an expansive area of work which includes creating immersive experiences, home-based parties, workshops and even party bags.

Spring Into Summer

The current project I am working on is an interactive adventure called ‘Spring Into Summer’:  firstly, Marigold the fairy tells the story of how time was created.  The children then get to play with the confusions of time in the Timekeeper’s laboratory. They help to save him from getting lost in the future forever by helping to solve codes and puzzles, conduct experiments, and add their ideas to the development of a new time machine.

The production really is a feast for the senses and I am very proud to be asked to provide three soundscapes and some interactivity to help create three distinct areas of the production.  My first soundscape creates a time hole where there is no past, no future and no present – just a hole in time.  This section uses a surround sound effect and includes some audio interaction that the children wont be able to resist.  My second contribution is the creation of Professor Waitaminute’s time laboratory while my third is the creation of his new time machine that will enable him to get back to the past… which is the currently the future… and will soon be the present…

I cant give too much away but the emphasis on all these soundscapes was to create very separate areas and atmospheres within interlinked spaces and to create spaces that the children would find wondrous, fun, crazy and intriguing.

I will talk more about the soundscapes and their reception after the performances…

If you have children aged 0–8 and are looking for something very cool to do in London this half term then definitely check it out! The experience lasts an hour and costs £6/8 per child.  Follow this link and search for Spring Into Summer to book tickets!

Thursday 9th May, 2013 – Interactive Soundscapes

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developing Interactivity 

Some of my blog readers will know that I have been playing around with prototype micro-controllers and the computer programming platform Max/MSP for use with my soundscapes.  In my quest to create immersive atmospheres I have been looking at ways that people can interact with audio to provide an experience that is even more enveloping.

But what do I mean by prototype micro-controllers? And what is Max/MSP?

Arduino

The micro-controller platform I have been playing with is called Arduino, a system devised at an Italian university in 2005 to make interactive electronics projects more accessible.  The hub of the system is basically a small computer housed on a small electronics board.  To this board you can attach any electronics you wish: temperature sensors, light sensors, pressure sensors, movement sensors and the various other components that will allow you to get a working circuit.   As well as this, you can hook up things like speakers, screens, lights etc.

An Arduino board also contains a USB connector to hook the board up to a computer which allows you to transfer programming code to it.  This is where things get interesting.  You can effectively take data generated by sensors or interaction, process it in any way and use the results to control any output you wish.  Hobbyists can make burglar alarms, thermostats, weird and wonderful toys and many other things.  Of course, among all the hobbyist projects there are some very useful and practical applications too.  Once you have tied up such projects in pretty enclosures you can have something far removed from a hobby.

Max/MSP

Max/MSP is fairly similar to Arduino in that it is a programming language that you can use to process data from input sources.  However, instead of using an outboard microprocessor, Max/MSP is installed on your home computer and gives you the opportunity to create on-screen software that people can interact with.  As well as this, through USB or Firewire, you can attach anything to your computer to use with the software.  As an example of an application, imagine a drummer that has hooked up their drumkit to a series of lights.  Each drum can have a different light so that when the drummer plays their kit, lights flash along with their hits.

Arduino, Max/MSP and Soundscapes

So, I am currently developing a number of ideas to make my soundscape installations more interactive.  For one soundscape project, I am taking data produced by an Xbox Kinect to produce an electronic instrument that is played by moving your body around in front of the sensor.  Moving your left arm up could increase pitch, while moving your right arm from side to side could change volume, echo or any other effect.  In fact, any limb can be tied to any type of audio manipulation.  Such an installation could be a part of a wider soundscape idea:  maybe some kind of magical audio fills a room and maybe the kinect can be used to change one aspect of that soundscape.  Such an application could have practical uses outside of music and fun; used with young children, it could teach them how their body works in relation to their environment.

Other ideas include using Max/MSP and Arduino to create a totally wireless surround sound system that can produce surround sound with any number of speakers; a great tool for totally immersive soundscape.  Simpler ideas include using motion sensors to turn on aspects of a soundscape when a certain prop is approached or when a pressure-sensing mat is trod on.  The idea in general is to add detail and interactivity to audio soundscapes and can be used to enrich an experience of any kind whether it’s commercial or aesthetic.

You can also think big…Imagine dreamy synthetic audio filling a  arge darkened room; musical drones and sparkles with maybe the occasional subtle melody.  Maybe one part of the room contains some kind of dark forest installation.  You can hear some animal noises coming from inside but once you approach it these noises turn into something else; maybe mood lighting moves among the trees as you wonder through it.  As you walk through one part of the room maybe you discover that your body seems to be influencing the localised sparkly sounds as if fairy dust is falling from your clothes. Maybe sitting down on rocks around a campfire triggers a colour change in the fire and the start of a spooky campfire story.  My imagination could run wild with ideas for hours! Is there an experience that you could dream up?  If so, using tools like Arduino and Max/MSP would probably enable it’s implementation.  Get in touch if you would like me to tell you more about these processes.

 

Thursday 25th April, 2013 – The Lack of Innovation in Local Live Music Events.

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Amateur music events

You may or may not be familiar with your local live music scene and it’s related events.  Whether it is a dusty local pub or a dusty, prestigious Camden venue they generally work in the same way for amateur musicians.  My experience on the lower rungs of that system is probably as good as anybody’s.  This is because local, live music seems to be stuck in a perpetual loop.  Masses of bands play events in London’s live circuit, throughout the country and throughout the world over and over again.  The vast majority of bands don’t go anywhere and are eventually spat out of the spin cycle to make way for others.  Bands end up this way for a number of reasons but it is my personal opinion that the ‘live circuit’ is archaic and is holding innovation, and therefore good bands, back.

In the UK, bands hope that if they play enough gigs they will be given the right opportunities to turn their pre-career into a full blown music career.  The better, more professional bands that also produce exciting events rise to the top, gain fans and eventually gain a record deal.

Well, since music teamed up with the Internet, the idea of aiming for a record deal has pretty much been dispelled as an ineffective myth among bands.  With online promotion and recording technology now open to all with a fairly modest amount of cash, it is now possible to go it alone and the influx of web-based knowledge on the subject has dispelled the romantic rock-star myth.  All this is very old news now though and behaviour has developed accordingly.  However, this change in ‘business model’ for amateur musicians doesn’t seem to have updated throughout the entire system – namely the events that host the bands.

Promoters and their ways

Promoters still seem to be running events with these old rock-star ideals.  As somebody that got involved with finding gigs for my previous bands to play, I ran into many promoters asking the band to play shoddy gigs or replace last minute drop-outs.  Because their business is rightly very much bums-on-seats driven, they force you to bring x amount of fans although they give you little financial reward.  However, instead of money they do dangle the possibility of playing with the bigger bands if you do what they say.  Quite demeaning really, as ideally they should be judging such possibilities on your performance not on whether or not you can appease the venue owner.  It’s music they love right?

This all brings you to a situation where bands do whatever it takes to please the promoters in the hope of gaining ‘great gigs’, ‘great opportunities’ and the ‘possibility to take your career up to the next level’.  Of course, these promises rarely materialise.   If they do, the exposure gained isn’t really worth that much anyway; it’s usually over-hyped in an effort to persuade the band to fill a slot.  Among all this, the promoters always put the emphasis on the bands to bring fans, telling you they wont let you play their events anymore if you don’t fill your quota.  Maybe these promoters aren’t sure of what a ‘promoter’s’ role traditionally involves and that good promotion doesn’t really equal a Facebook page, a few posters and placement in the swamped gigs section of the local newspaper?

The Reality

Maybe things work like this because it’s so hard to get people to come out and see bands play.  The venues and pubs are under pressure to keep open, the promoters are under pressure to please their venues and the bands are therefore pressured to make sure that people come to see them and buy beer etc.

This is mostly fair enough really as the system is dictating that the people caught within it act in a certain way.  What is clear though is that the system is perpetual.  Bands come, bands go, occasionally a band makes a bit of money and are able to grow; but the promoters seem to stay where they are, churning out faceless bands at every event.  This system does seem to be stacked in their favour but whether that is true or not, the system doesn’t work for the cornerstone of the live music scene – the bands.

What can be done?

Maybe promoters should focus on providing good events rather than piggybacking off the friends of the bands they work with?  Maybe they should think about how they can make their events more interesting?  Maybe prolonged efforts to produce events people want to go to will enable them to provide their own audience?  Music isn’t always enough to sell something, which is why bands also sell various add-ons in addition to their music.  So therefore maybe promoters should think about adding value and intrigue to their events; maybe the ‘unknown band in pub’ idea isn’t a good business model?  To be fair though, some promoters do a great job of innovating: one of the most memorable gigs I played involved comedy acts, burlesque and also allowed us to have an improvised jam with our audience.  The audience loved it!

If the music industry hadn’t spent so much time and money creating gods out of ordinary musicians maybe amateur musicians would be more cynical about promoters dangling fame and fortune in front of them like a glittering carrot?  (Notice that even the music industry has to sell image and not solely music – no matter how ‘indie’ the band is).

So, how can the local live scene break its cycle of mediocrity?  Maybe educating young musicians on the realities of business will allow them to add reality to what promoters tell them.  Maybe this will force promoters to offer new rewards to young bands and maybe they will have to start providing interesting content rather than relying on bands to bring their friends to buy drinks etc?

What does innovation mean in practical terms though..?  As marketing and more mainstream events companies now practice, people should think about every sensory aspect of the event and focus it towards their brand or theme; a gig can be more than a band/act and some booze.  Contrary to popular belief, adding creative flair doesn’t have to be expensive, just thoughtful.  I doubt things will change any time soon but maybe this thinly veiled rant will be food for thought…

 

Thursday 11th April 2013 – Immersing Your Audience (part two)

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Previously…

My last blog post was all about some talks I attended on ‘Immersing your Audience’ .  The talks were given by experiential marketing agencies RPM and Sense and the immersive theatre group Punchdrunk.  Last week, I mentioned the general concepts that I learned so this week I thought I would talk about my thoughts on these ideas in relation to getting creative with immersive audio.  These ideas could be used for any kind of experience and even song-writing to give the material a better chance of communicating your ideas or message.

The Importance of space

I mentioned that the key thread throughout all these talks was the idea of dipping your audience into a different reality based around a theme.  Audio really is vital to achieving this.  Sound defines any space we are in, whether we notice it or not.  The way sound bounces around a space gives our brain little queues through our ears.  Because the part of our brain that deals with sound has good connections with our emotion centre, these queues spark emotional responses and this is one of the reasons why spaces all make us feel different.  Of course, other factors such as light and previous memories have a say in this but sound is an important piece of this puzzle.

How can this be used in staging events?  Well, you could physically choose the right space to host your happening; a claustrophobic theatrical piece could utilise a series of small, enclosed rooms or an air of freedom could be created by large spaces or even the great outdoors.  Artificial audio could also be used to achieve these effects.  Choosing the right audio, echo/reverb and sound-wave frequency emanating from hidden speakers would all contribute to the desired atmosphere.

Tailor sound to emotional direction

Next, I talked about direction.  This is vital with any aspect of a project really but is more than just choosing the right thematic sounds that fit in with it.  An experience is always more than it’s theme so you are not always just pointing towards ‘burlesque’, for example.  How do you want your audience to feel?  Define the emotions and then tailor the work to these while using the burlesque theme.  Again, use of sound frequency, echo/reverb and the right audio will all contribute.

Realism

Realism and appealing to all of the senses was mentioned next.  The great thing about audio, as is seen with music, is that you can evoke emotion without the audio sounding like a real-world occurrence.  Of course using realistically accurate audio will have advantages in some situations but the sound palette doesn’t stop there.  Think about how a piece of classical instrumentation can make you feel, or the fact that gunshot sounds used in film are far more exciting and very different from the sound of a real gunshot.  In terms of the senses, the realistic crackle of bacon cooking can evoke the idea of the smell of bacon (if the audience is familiar with it).  Music can also be used to approximate the senses; sounds can be warm or cold, pungent or smooth.

Attention to Detail

The last posts mention of detail and backstory is the same with any medium.  Subtlety and attention to detail will enrich any experience and also make it seem more real and natural even if your chosen atmosphere isn’t real at all.  Many sounds are present in every environment and they all contribute to your experience of that environment even if you are not conscious of them.  The background rumble of traffic, for example, will be a cue that you are not in the middle of a jungle but you may not consciously recognise it’s affect.

Understand the Audience.

Knowing your audience is also vital to any experience.  This is probably most obvious with the use of music; different people have very rigid expectations of what they perceive good music to be.  They can’t all be right can they?  That very fact shows you that the definition of ‘good music’ is subjective and, ironically enough, not very useful in actually determining musical quality.  Replacing the idea of good music with the phrase ‘music this group will like’ is much more helpful if you plan to use music in an event.  Customer profiling will help this and to an extent a good result can be achieved using such scientific means; TV adverts show how successful this method is.  The music industry has tried very hard to mystify music to make it more appealing.  Releasing yourself from these shackles will make creative use of music much easier; think about the perceptions of your audience rather than providing ‘good music’.

And finally…

The last idea that brings all of these threads together is simplicity.  Of course, this is a relevant idea for most things – the most elegant solution is always the simplest one!

My experience has shown that audio and how it can be used in creative applications can mystify people.  Whereas this post hasn’t really unlocked tools of the trade, I’m hoping it has shown that audio isn’t so scary after all: you can think about it like any other creative aspect of a project.  And of course, there are always content providers like myself who are more than willing to delve deeper into the ideas behind audio use when needed.  I also hope the ideas I have written about here have given you food for thought as well as giving you ideas that you can take away with you!

Thursday 28th March 2013 – Immersing Your Audience (part one)

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THE POWER OF SOUND

As anyone that regularly reads my blog will know, my main interests in sound (and music) involve total immersion.  This stems from the idea that music is escapism and how this might be perfected.  The ability of music to provide such immersion is somewhat limited due to the ugly apparition of devout taste and the fact that this and other factors give it a limited scope of expression.  I therefore enjoy learning about what can be done with sound as a general medium and my adventures over the past couple of weeks have involved taking inspiration from ideas that are linked but don’t specifically deal with soundscape.

 

CROSS-POLLINATION 

Recently, I visited International Confex 2013 and the Live Experience Expo as well as an event at Discover Children’s Story Centre.  Confex and the Live Experience Expo were large trade events at the ExCeL put on for the events industry and Discover Children’s Story Centre puts on immersive experiences for children.

The talks I attended were all very different but they all had one thing in common: Dipping your audience into a different reality based around a theme.   Below are the main lessons I learnt from these talks and a few of my own relevant thoughts.  You will notice that I don’t really mention sound in the context of these ideas; I want to emphasise that you can gain inspiration from areas other than that of your own work.  Therefore, this post will be about the general ideas and next week I will work on connecting these ideals to sound.

 

DIRECTION

Before a project is worked on, there needs to be direction.  There might be a rough idea or theme that you want to create but this should all be distilled into one specific target.  This way, everything about an experience will be pointing in the same direction.  However, from personal experience, there is a lot to be said for pointing yourself in that rough direction and seeing what happens (although this unnerves many people involved!).  This looser approach can create a more intricate experience as the details will only be loosely related and therefore more varied and feel more organic.  Care is needed here though as there can be a fine line between chaos and ordered chaos!

 

ENVIRONMENT

The perfect immersion is to totally transform a space that appeals to all of the senses and to transport an audience somewhere that is totally different with no sense of the outside world.  Each experience should not seem staged and be relevant in the real world.  Also, its narrative should be loose enough that the audience can create their own stories and ideas within it.  As well as these ideas, the environment used needs to be a place that people want to spend time in.

 

EMOTION

Emotion is very important, as with music.   The only way to connect with people is through their emotions and connecting to people is obviously central to any event.  To have the most impact an experience needs to be emotionally engaging, using fear as well as and joy; connecting with emotion brings down a person’s guard and therefore their susceptibility to being immersed in an experience.  Also, to be fully immersive, an experience needs a comprehensive backstory.  This allows the minute detail to contribute to the experience; it is more likely that every thought an audience member has will be answered by the experience making the desired theme totally watertight.

 

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Knowing the audience is also very important; different things have different meanings for different people and you need to make sure that every person in an experience is fully engaged.  Every person that isn’t fully engaged will detract from the audience’s overall immersion.  To achieve this, everybody included needs to have a story-related reason to be present, from all parts of the audience to those delivering the experience.

 

SIMPLICITY IS KEY

The idea that brings all of these threads together is simplicity.  Ideas need to be simple enough that they are accepted and do not require too much thought to understand them. The audience shouldn’t be trying to figure out what is going on but accepting everything presented before them.  Of course, there could be situations where complexity is a virtue, such as bringing people into an extended series of happenings but these complications should be tailored to the audience as mentioned above.

 

APPLY THESE IDEAS TO ANY MESSAGE

As you can see, immersing people in a watertight experience requires a lot of thought as well as understanding of your audience but the rewards definitely seem to be worth it.  Creating such an environment will make sure that your audience are truly taking in everything you want to say and this means that these ideas have multiple uses.  Whether you are a musician, film-maker,  artist or corporate advertiser totally immersing your audience can only reap benefits.

Baralek Rendang in the Media

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Some work I created last year for an Indonesian event, Baralek Rendang, has had attention from the Indonesian media:

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=id&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metrotvnews.com%2Flifestyle%2Fread%2F2013%2F02%2F18%2F470%2F132025%2FMusik-Rendang-dari-Inggris

Here is the site in its native language: http://www.metrotvnews.com/lifestyle/read/2013/02/18/470/132025/Musik-Rendang-dari-Inggris

Tuesday 12th March, 2013 – Soundscape and Gaining a Fresh Perspective.

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Rivers and People:

Over the past couple of weeks I have hosted soundscape workshops for two local primary school classes.   This was a really interesting experience for me and also got the children thinking about sound in new ways.

The workshops were tied to the Rivers and People production I took part in last September which was staged to bring attention to the regenerated area of Ladywell Fields, Lewisham.  For those that cant remember, Rivers and People was an immersive experience put on by the London Bubble Theatre company in collaboration with Lewisham Council.  Various artists and actors were involved, using the River Ravensbourne in Lewisham as a set.  I was commissioned to create three soundscapes to help animate three sections of the experience.  The main soundscape was paired with sculptures created by Other World Arts (OWA) to create a magical forest ambience.  OWA uses discarded items and litter in their work and this inspired me to create my audio using ‘recycled’ sounds found around the river and it’s local park, Ladywell Fields.  These sounds were all manipulated to sound like various inhabitants of the forest, creating an unusual backdrop.  The workshops were part of a legacy exhibition touring Lewisham libraries showcasing these sculptures and my soundscape.

Using the idea of creating an artificial soundscape from unlikely elements I thought I’d give the children a chance to work together to create the ambience of a stormy sea.  Continuing the recycled theme, I made a few instruments with old tins, bottles, rice, pasta etc as well elastic bands and old soup pots.  Alongside these, I also provided some very rustly grease-proof paper and old plastic carrier bags as well as some more traditional percussion such as maracas, wood blocks, sleigh bells etc.  The idea was to get the children thinking about what kind of sounds might make up a soundscape and also how they might go about making these sounds for themselves.

Each class was divided up into four groups and each group was given a different element of the soundscape to create: wind, rain, waves and thunder.  All of the children were then asked to choose instruments that they thought would be good at conveying their particular sound.  It was then my job to conduct them, treating each section as a different instrument, using hand gestures to tell them went to start, stop and at what volume to play.  The children reacted wonderfully, really getting into making their sounds; they really thought about how such simple instruments might be used to create sounds that were sometimes totally different.

The Inspiration:

It was great to see young imaginations at work and this really got me thinking about how difficult in can be for adults to use their imaginations.  Maybe this is due to the brain reaching maturity, and therefore losing it’s early flexibility?  After all, the more a pathway in our brain is used, the stronger and more automated that pathway becomes.  This is why ‘practice makes perfect’ and as we grow older maybe we just ‘practice’ different things that don’t call for imagination.  Imagination is vitally important in adult life though; it’s what we use when we need to solve a problem, exercise our minds and ultimately progress ourselves and the human race.

The Idea:

If you feel yourself losing grip of your childhood imagination why don’t you exercise it in a similar way to the children I worked with over the past couple of weeks?  Create an approximation of something using material that is only loosely related, or even totally unrelated.  You’ll find yourself creating wonderful art and also forcing your brain to get clever when trying to figure out problems.  If you are an artist of any type and are having a bit of ‘artist’s block’, pick two things at random and try to explain one with the other.  I would love to know what you come up with so please do share!

Tuesday 26th February 2013 – The Aeolian Harp and Soundscape

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After the last incarnation of my band, Lunar Rising, split I looked at various ways to become more self-sufficient.  I wanted to create big sounds using instruments but with fewer people, or at least fewer people with specific skills.  I looked into easy-to-play drone instruments such as the Shrutti Box, computerised sampling and looping and messing around with ‘found sound’ atmospheres.  During this research, I also started to look at drone instruments that I could make cheaply and without much fuss and this is when I came across the Aeolian Harp, AKA Wind Harp.  The nature of this instrument means that on it’s own, it wasn’t entirely suitable for use in a band (or was it…? more on this later) but I wanted to make one out of sheer curiosity and thought it could come in very useful for creating soundscape installations (more on this later too…).

So, what is an Aeolian Harp?  Well, legend has it that the ancient Greeks came up with the idea somehow.  Strings are tightened across a simple (or not so simple) body which is then placed outside or at an open window.  The breezes and winds then brush over the strings and this creates a very beautiful, ethereal sound.  Yes, the wind effectively plays the instrument for you!

You may be wondering how this is possible, as the wind isn’t agile enough to pluck or bow a string.  Well, apparently the jury is still out on the exact science but the basics are known.  Skip this paragraph if science bores you…  Each single sound, instrumental or otherwise is made up of different frequencies (or pitches).  These frequencies are usually mathematically related and these various frequencies all contribute to what you hear as timbre or tone (the way the instrument sounds).  A string that has been pulled taut has a pitch related to it’s length and the various frequencies making up this pitch can be teased out by lightly brushing the string at various points.  This is what the wind does to an Aeolian Harp and the (effectively) random nature of wind is why you can hear so many different, random notes all at the same time

So, how to make one!  I found out how to make an Aeolian Harp by watching this great You Tube video  by Stan Hershonik, a guy that has made many different types.

All you need is a bit of guttering, some wood, nails, instrument tuning pins and some fishing wire!

Soundscape creation

The video above shows you what you have to do but basically you fit wood blocks into either end of the guttering and screw your tuning pins into one end.  Thread your fishing wire strings through the tuning pins and pull them over the other side of the guttering where they are nailed in place.  Use two bits of thin wood as the bridges to hold the strings up.  Tighten the strings using the tuning pins and you’re done! Exact tuning isn’t really necessary as it will still sound nice!  If you fancy making one please do feel free to contact me if you have any questions or are having any problems.

Finished Aeolian Harp

 

Here is a video of my finished harp singing, including a duet with a train and some wind noise!  How does the sound make you feel?

So, you can use an Aeolian Harp to bring a bit of cheer and background noise to a space and this is where an involvement with them could rightly end.  However, how else might they be used?  As I mentioned earlier, could they be used in a band?  Well, mic’ing them up would provide a bit of a chalengle but maybe artificial breezes can be created so that human power can influence how the harp sounds.  Could it be possible to rig a harp up to electronic fans controlled by a user interface? Collaborator Christopher Konopka is currently considering this in some interesting depth… maybe more on this later…  The electronics and software programming could be very simple but considerations of breeze strength and fan noise would have to be taken into account.

If this set-up ends up not being possible in a band situation, these ideas could easily be transferred to a soundscape installation and various artists have already done this.  Using a few harps, big or small, outside could create a space that people can walk around and enjoy the sounds created.  If the fan ideas work out then maybe they can be used indoors as part of a more general soundscape.  The natural harp sound could be teamed up with noises coming from speakers and, again, interactive elements could be used to control what happens when.  The harps could be built into aesthetically pleasing sculptures to provide a visual spectacle as well as interactivity.  But what still remains though is the sound; a beautiful, otherworldly sound that creates a serene and interesting backdrop to any space.  I am really looking forward to having the opportunity to develop these ideas in my soundscape work.  Watch this space but until then, have a go at making one yourself, anyone can do it!