BASANTA, ADAM - A Room Listening to Itself

Adam Basanta is a Montréal-based sound artist and experimental music composer. His sound installations investigate intersections between sound reproduction, consumer technologies, and the activity of listening. To create A Room Listening to Itself, the artist produced sound exclusively through amplification techniques that make audible the physical relationships between microphones and reclaimed speaker cones within a gallerys surrounding acoustic environment. In this work, eight iconic SM58 microphones and eight reclaimed speaker cones are dispersed throughout the gallery space, arranged in a manner that produces complex computer-controlled feedback and recursive amplification networks. Using these acoustic phenomena, the gallery space is turned into a giant resonator that amplifies acoustic space as a product of spatial relationships. Custom-built software algorithms constantly recalibrate the room to ever-changing acoustic situations, aiming for a sonic equilibrium that remains out of reach. The result is an ever-changing spatial composition encompassing ambient passages, resonant chords, and rhythmic activities -- created solely using feedback -- through which gallery visitors can navigate. Finally, a mention should be made that the album was recorded live at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, in August 2015. - Cassauna.