FIELDS - Mobile devices as a medium for sound diffusion in sound art performances
- Submitting institution
-
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 232330-176441-1285
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Worldwide
- Brief description of type
- This output comprises a series of sound art performances, a piece of open source software and a conference paper
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- January
- Year
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
2
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Fields was a research project exploring new forms of sound art performance and spatialised sound using personal mobile technology (principally smartphones, tablets and laptops) as a medium for sound diffusion. The project was developed by Tim Shaw in collaboration with web developer and audio engineer Sébastian Piquemal.
Fields provided an alternative method for sound diffusion and a new form of audience participation by using web-based software running on the mobile devices of audience members. In performance, Fields uses these mobile devices as a collective array of speakers which are controlled live by Shaw.
Fields is also the name of the open-source software system created to deliver these performances. The software enables a range of sonic diffusions to occur within a new sound composition, unique to each performance.
The project emerged from the artist’s motivation to explore how the prevalence of smartphones could be embraced as a practical system for sound diffusion, and the possibilities this might allow for new sonic environments and performer-audience dynamics.
As a system, Fields is designed to be open to a variety of creative possibilities; this flexibility allowed the artist to continually expand and explore different applications of Fields with different commissions, audiences, and spaces.
A key focus of the research process was to allow the technical development and sound art composition to be directly informed by each other – allowing Shaw to explore and exploit the technological potential of the system through the development of a specially-constructed composition.
Fields has been disseminated in 29 performances around the world between 2014 and 2017, its open-source software has been used by other performers, and its methodology cited in research in the field.
An additional output, a paper discussing the research findings was presented at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in 2015.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -