Kosmos
Kosmos is a new piece commissioned by the Contemporary Artists Center and funded in part by the New York Foundation For the Arts.
It was designed by myself and Ed Bear and is a continuation of my exploration of the ORB.
This piece is brand new and more documentation is on its way.
The orbs are hung outside and respond to environmental noise in the form of colored light and pseudo random digital audio tone output. In both cases the output (light and sound) react to the amplitude and frequency of audio received. Put simply, high frequency sounds like a child screaming (see the video below) will be one color and sound while low frequency sounds will be another.
The audio is analyzed using two methods, one is simply amplitude or peak tracking. This is used to trigger the audio output when the amplitude of the incoming audio signal exceeds a preset level. All other audio analysis uses FFT (fast fourier transform) algorithms to read the spectral content of the environmental sound. This allows for a broad reading of many sounds in an environment not just one dominant signal. Therefore specific ranges of sound such as human speech or wind can be pinpointed and ignored or listened to accordingly. In this case the orbs are especially sensitive to human voice and less sensitive to wind or cars driving by.
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