Noisescapes: Exploring Vision of Sound

The new Colchester Slack Space venue (Victoria Place, Eld Lane, CO1 1LR) is to host a temporary audio-visual installation by local digital creative, Jamie Gledhill. The ‘Noisescapes’ installation, which will be shown in a first floor room so far not open to the public, employs multiple projectors and loudspeakers to create an immersive environment into which members of the public are invited from Monday 13th to Wednesday 15th August (opening times 11am to 6pm). Noisescapes explores the relationship between synthesised sound and geometric form created using mathematical ‘noise’.

Noise algorithms in digital art, which can be seen as a development of fractal art, have only been with us for a few years, but during that time they have become extremely common place in many forms of commercial art and design. Landscapes, textures (such as fur and hair), clouds and water in computer-generated imagery (CGI) featured in films and games are all created using the application of mathematical noise. The aspect of mathematical noise that makes it so useful to these applications is its ability to mimic naturally occurring form, despite being entirely artificial.

In the Noisescapes installation, forms created using the noise process are show as structures without surface or decoration. Reminiscent of the famous album cover for Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’, landscapes rendered as line art animate in size and shape in sync with synthesised sound which is itself modulated in familiar yet interesting ways. The result is a profoundly enveloping effect as both audio and visual abstract forms twist on the speakers and screens placed around the viewer.

A preview of work in progress for the installation can be seen below:

study001-hd from Jamie Gledhill Audio Visual on Vimeo.

And if you’re on Facebook, you can see the Noisescapes event page here.

Noisescapes, 11:00 – 18:00, 13th-15th August 2012, Slack Space, Victoria Place, Eld Lane, Colchester, CO1 1LR (access via stairs).