Invisible Lines.

Collaboration with Julian Stein.
Sound installation. 2015.
5’ x 5’ x 5’. 6 x SM58 microphones, 6 x speaker cones, stands, cables, electronics.

Invisible Lines explores the composition of temporal structures using microphone feedback as sole material: a making-audible of the physical relationships between microphones, speakers, and the surrounding acoustic space.

In this work, six iconic SM58 microphones are coupled with six extracted speaker cones. Functioning as elementary components in both sound reinforcement systems and the history of sound art, the physical relationship between each microphone/speaker pair becomes audible through dynamic (computer- controlled) amplification and filtering.

The six audible feedback loops are controlled by custom software which oscillates between states of stability and instability, resulting in a self- regulating and self-balancing system.

Beyond the reining in of feedback-“squeal”, the system accurately determines the pitch and envelope of audible feedback: the once unwanted byproduct gains a notion of instrumentality, or instrumental capacity. In this sense, Invisible Lines plays off dangerous expectations and attempts to showcase feedback as a quiet, pitched, delicately unstable, acoustic and relational phenomena.

Winner of the Edith-Russ-Haus Awards for Emerging Media Artists 2014, Oldenburg, Germany.

photos by Emily Gan.