The participatory sound installation On Air, by artists Peter Van Haaften, Michael Montanaro, and Garnet Willis, is presented as the materialization of an “alchemical” process (i.e., a process of algorithmic conversion of acoustic data) through which sound—in this case, the human voice—is captured, transformed, and broken down until it becomes a rhythmic reorchestration, extended into space by beams of light. Here, the audience’s vocal input is what powers the machine. To begin with, you simply speak into one of the two French horn openings. Voices “accumulate” inside an expanding latex balloon. The balloon swells with sounds: words and their resonances are intertwined and recombined within it. A phonetic rearrangement takes place within this space, which functions like a black box: only the inputs and outputs are accessible to us. From this box-like balloon, a fleeting and chaotic echo reaches us until it gives way under the pressure. Once released and projected onto a flexible membrane, the sounds—via an audio signal modulator—seem to momentarily transform before materializing as beams of light as they pass through a mechanical iris. What follows is a dazzling choreography played out through a series of lenses and mirrors, culminating in a deconstructed choral harmony, driven by the speed of the movements that slice through the space. With On Air, the sound experience takes on a physical form in real time. The installation functions as a visual representation of sound wave propagation. The device, which appears to consist of interconnected mechanical systems, manages to create the illusion of a real causal chain: visual dominance—the primacy of sight over hearing—is enough to suspend disbelief long enough for us to hear and see the voice transform into light.

 

Peter Van Haaften, Michael Montanaro, Garnet Willis, On Air