Interactive Sound Installation
Post-Truth Echoes is a project built on top of the ParaS Installation Prototype. It intends to question the idea of truth and authenticity. Will we step closer to the truth if we could hear all reports of the same event from different news agencies? Or will it just reflect the bothsidesism status quo of the media world, bringing claims with weak evidence to the light? This project takes the bottom-up approach to try and combine perspectives from different sources to attempt to create a “consolidated truth” with the assistance of machine learning algorithms.
Ultrasonic sensors around the installation are used to controls different parameters of the feedback system, such as playback speed, feedback delay time, panning speed and audio effect (vocoder, downsampling, re-synthesis) parameters. A PIR sensor is used to excite the entire installation once a person enters the 5-meter range of the installation. The resulting installation is very hard to control, with the titles being read in a very extreme manner, processed differently, which implies that the truth is very difficult to find and understand. Also, the ambiguity of each category of titles makes the audience take a longer time to comprehend which trigger represents the real titles. Audiences also have to explore what does the sensors do without any instructions, as an attempt to find the truth themselves. The amount of sensors provides a lot of combinations and hence provide complexity in altering the sonic experience.
09.2021