Listen to the World

I worked for artist Marina Smorodinova on her installation “Listen to the world”, which took place in the exhibition space of Rotondes, Luxembourg.

Spectators are attracted by ambiant sounds of cities inside a semi-closed space. When they enter the space and stop to look at the photographs exposed inside, their presence makes the sound dissipate and disappear.

They are left alone with the people in the pictures, who are closing their eyes to listen to the world around them.

I designed the presence sensors and the software for this interactive installation. The sensors were made from ultrasonic sensors connected to an ESP32 dev board, fitted in a home-made plastic case mounted on a ball joint fixture.

View of the mounted case, with the protruding ultrasound sensor.

The sensors were fixed above each photograph, and connected view Wi-Fi to an iMac hidden in one the white parallelepipedic stands delimiting the installation space. Loudspeakers were also hidden in the hollow top of the stands.

Setting up the sensors and the iMac controller.

The iMac was running a Max/MSP patch responsible for playing the ambient sounds of the installation, containing a Max external written in C to connect to the sensors and process presence information to control the audio level.

The Max/MSP standalone app controlling the sounds of the intallation.