Haptic Soundscape
www.kirstygreig.com
June 2011
'Haptic' means being tactile or literally being a 'treat to touch'. My piece uses that sense of touch to create an environment for the viewer to interact in. Each pole has a sound and light attached to it. Using the sense of touch the viewer can walk through the piece and create their own soundscape, each time the pole is touched it will light up so the viewer knows that they have activated it. Allowing the viewer to go through and explore all the different sounds before reactivating those in which they like to create the soundscape of their choice. Although the main motivation behind the piece was to evoke that sense of touch and create a sense of interaction with the viewer the sounds were just as an integral part. Choosing to use sounds that would build into a soundscape and transport the viewer back to that place, recreating the atmosphere and giving the piece more depth.
Another side to this project was looking at the idea of visual music, how sound can be represented by colour. Looking at the colour organs created back in the 1800s alongside artists such as Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger. Following peoples paths through the installation creating colour animations to represent their paths creating a visualisation of the soundscape that they created.
