>BLOOM<

>BLOOM< is an exploration of light, geometry, and sound, where the physical properties of objects become something greater, something that surrounds us all.

It's an immersive installation made with my studio buddies Silfa Hüttner, Kotte Aistre, Simon David Rydén and Konstantine Fioretos, for the Sonic Citizens event at Blå Huset in Malmö - the same event and venue where I showed A Symphony of Bureaucracy last year. Visitors enter a darkened room containing a light table covered in curious objects, surrounded by four speakers. As you move the objects around the table, the music changes around you.

The technical back-end is relatively simple. A webcam mounted on the ceiling, pointed downward at the table, was connected to a Mac Mini running Touchdesigner, which did the image analysis and sent the results out as OSC. A copy of VCV Rack on the same machine received those signals and turned them into quad surround sound.

I made an early proof of concept that generated sound from movement on the table, which Kotte then took and added several beautiful new layers to. Konstantine built a second, darker, more unsettling patch with lots of feedbacky elements, and we switched between the two "scenes" at different points over the two days.

The comments from visitors were my favourite part. A young couple went in three times, and came out after the first time asking, "What just happened? What was that?" Lots of people wanted to know how it worked under the hood, and we mostly told them. It crashed precisely as the doors closed at 16:00 on the final day, which felt like good timing.

Credits:
Duncan Geere - sound design and project lead
Simon David Rydén - image analysis
Silfa Hüttner - object and set design
Konstantine Fioretos - sound design
Kotte Aistre - sound design.

Thanks to Luisa Carbonelli at Blå Huset for hosting, and to NGBG for Sonic Citizens.