Project Arbol:Deer-B-Gone is a an outdoor sound installation of indefinite duration for twenty-three speakers. It takes on a guerrilla approach to sound installation art. Low-tech concepts and supplies, such as car amplifiers, aircraft cable, inexpensive cassette players, coupled with an overall irreverence for mainstream consumerism, created something like a Disney World theme park gone awry. The installation, which was site-specific, took place in a backyard in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Yards and yards of cable were woven through the trees. Speakers were later mounted on the cable. Once in place, the speakers moved slowly along the cable. Each speaker played its own sound track. While there were some technical difficulties that plagued the project throughout its development and performance, overall Project Arbol proved to be a resilient installation.

This article discusses the responsive sound installation Reeds. The Reeds project was commissioned by the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts in 2000, and first exhibited in November and December of that year on the Ornamental Lake at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. It consists of twenty-one large floating sculptures, modelled to represent clusters of river reeds in immaculate man-made plantings. Each reed pod contains a collection of electronics for either the gathering of weather information or the reception and dispersion of sound. The sound installation gathered data from two real-time weather stations, and produced eight channels of musical output by interpreting the machine unit pulses of the weather data as pulse inputs to Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) algorithms. The Reeds project focused on a consideration of multiple streams of chaotic and constantly varying sound. I was interested in exploring whether the sonic environment would remain homogenous even though, unlike a musical ensemble, the control inputs varied randomly and independently of each other. The sound installation was site specific, reflecting directly upon the environment it inhabited, both in terms of its visual quality, and aesthetic of the sound.

This paper describes a large, interactive sound installation that was presented in Oslo during October 2002. The installation, in broad terms, brought the presence of the whole country into the one location through sound, and made the sound available for the public as material to play with or explore in a more structured fashion. The sonic results were streamed to the Internet, together with images from the exterior of the installation. The installation was located at the central train station in an area where thousands of people pass through every day. The curatorial idea was developed by two institutions, as an answer to their missions of providing interesting sonic material and events for the whole country. The idea was given concrete form by three composers, and brought up on a national level through co-arrangement with a large festival of contemporary music. Funding for the installation was provided by both private and public organisations. The installation serves as an example on how a large and complex work of art can be developed through institutional curatorial effort, artistic intentions and activity, and commercial interests. The installation maintained a high degree of artistic integrity while being accessible and attractive for large audiences.

This paper describes the musical and technical design and the realisation of a large-scale sound installation produced and realised by Centro Tempo Reale for the inauguration of Renzo Piano's new Auditorium in Rome. The installation, conceived by Luciano Berio, was mainly dedicated to electroacoustic music: the complex technological set-up offered a new instrument for which electroacoustic pieces were transcribed. The techniques and the aesthetic implications of this transcription process within the context of an installation are discussed.

The Live Room was a temporary site-specific installation presented in building N51, room 117 on the MIT campus on 7 May 1998 and concluded on 10 June 1998. Using small acoustic-intensifying equipment which mounted directly to the structure of the foundation at the site, the system created an enhanced scale of ‘tectonic charging’ through vibration. The system engaged the architecture by running impulsive energy throughout, creating sound and vibration in direct relation to the building and the dimensions of the space. The project describes an intensified site where machines fuse into architecture and combine active forces with the building forms. The action was an attempt towards the liberation of tectonics from the limitations of the static, creating a place where resonant structures vibrate in sympathy with induced frequencies. By using various transducing devices and signal-generating equipment, the project effectively ‘tuned in’ the location by delivering resonant frequencies. The installation engaged directly with a unique floor system which was already present at the location. Mechanical oscillators were mounted into this floor system so that frequencies were imparted into the building, the floor and the persons who were situated in the room. With this work, I was interested in TRANSDUCING ARCHITECTURE, driving the space with external influences of a vibro-kinetic nature.

The ability to create a virtual world in computer code and implement audio that will follow the physical laws of that real world provides enormous flexibility to the composers working in the computer game industry. The multiple layers of sound that are nonlinear, interactive and dynamically mixed and effected in real time, place this media well outside the restrictions of traditional film, television and music and allow for experiences difficult to create in a more traditional real-world setting. The process of designing a broad concept audio environment for a computer game world can become a blueprint for the creation of a surround sound experience that has many similarities to sound installation practice. Creation and implementation of the sound content, the way in which it becomes interactive and the rules that drive the dynamic mixing are the processes by which the artist defines his or her vision of the final sound work. This paper aims to approach the use of a ‘next generation’ game console as a sound installation space, and discusses the ways in which a virtual audio environment created for a computer game is similar to a more traditional installation space. There are very real limitations for the implementation of soundscapes on computer game consoles, but a balance to these limitations is the capabilities of the surround sound hardware, support of powerful 3D audio engines and accessibility to a wide and diversified audience.

This article discusses how the notion of performance provides impetus for the design of interactive digital environments. These environments can ultimately be regarded as user-spaces; a condition which replaces the ‘fixed’ art-object with a configuration of interactions. Our understanding of space, as suggested by Lefevbre (2001), defines the ‘inhabitant’ as a full participant, a user, a performer of space. What is at play when the installation artist designs environments that invite performative exploration? The issue of improvised performance in the inhabiting of installation spaces is exposed. Two interactive installations by the author and works by others in the field provide a context for discussion and analysis.

Since mid-1999 I have been working on an expanded concept of musical space not only incorporating space according to its spatial characteristics in the narrow sense (acoustic, architectonic, sculptural, perspective and ambient). Beyond this my installation works conceive of space in its site-specificity, usually existing in several layers: a social layer, a historical-political layer and a situational layer. This concept of space is thus not limited to interior spaces and architectonic-formal relationships, a position which naturally also defines my working methods: only subjective, on-site research yields the theme and concept of an installation. I call such installations sound situations, following the ‘conscious creation of situations’ conceived by Guy Debord (International Situationists) in the 1950s. This means first that I open myself up to situations – usually in public spaces – in order to sense their site-specific tensions and to draw them out in all their possible relationships. Secondly, I alter these situations in order to make them more dense through intensification. The concept can be defined as articulating the space, the site; for this reason I prefer to work with site-specific acoustic and visual material found at the site, but also introduce foreign material when it serves to reinforce communication with the site and its occupants and visitors.

The movement of air is a powerful sound generator. Its presence has been perceived and encoded for over 40,000 years in Australia. It is present in natural and humanly organised environments. This paper traces various wind paths, from natural casuarinas to telegraph wires. Artists such as Peggy West-Moreland, Joan Brassil, Alan Lamb, Jon Rose, Chris Cree Brown, Jodi Rose, the present author and many others have devised their own Aeolian works that interpret, tame or represent the wind for acoustic purposes. Their attitudes to wind-powered sound installations are compared and contrasted against a variety of installation genres, found, permanent, semi-permanent, and ephemeral.

This paper considers the early work of Alvin Lucier and its often problematic positioning between concert and installation work as a means of questioning how installation might be defined. Following an introductory survey of Lucier's work, a history of installation in the visual arts is traced through the debate, initiated by Michael Fried, on the ‘theatricality’ of minimalism. Fried's condemnation of the role of the viewer in what he termed ‘literalist’ art became, contrary to his intentions, a central element in thinking about installation work. Fried's position was recently engaged again by Hal Foster in positing a particular phenomenology of minimalist work, which is seen to be directly relevant to the example of Lucier. Having thus established the relevance of this phenomenology to the consideration of sound installations, whether they are themselves minimal works or not, discussion returns to the problematic example of Lucier, and the conclusion that the boundary between concert and installation works may always be permeable, that a precise morphology of installation will remain elusive.

This article describes the theories and practices of the German installation artists and composers Sabine Schäfer and Joachim Krebs. Much of their work concerns site-specific sound installations involving the articulation of time and space. Their principal work methods and materials are described. In addition, they have formulated a typology of five installation types which they describe using their own installations as examples. Each installation type responds to a particular set of aesthetic and practical challenges both for the artists and the visitors. These are discussed and illustrated in the article. The typology extends beyond the specific work of these artists and can be applied to installations in general, thus providing a framework for critical analysis. Furthermore, the translators have discussed the issues regarding the specialised vocabulary of the artists and the rendering of such language into English.