portable acoustic modification laboratory

MURMURATION (2023) is a sound installation that presents 100 wirelessly controlled sound modules are attached to trees in a large wooded area.

A sound installation by Lee Weisert and Jonathon Kirk. "Granular Wall" incorporates concepts and strategies from fluid dynamics, complexity theory, robotics, digital synthesis, visual art, and sculpture to create an arresting and direct engagement with the beauty of physical and sonic motion. A 4' x 4' custom tank is filled with water and several thousand neutrally-buoyant, fluorescent, “microspheres,” each only a half a millimeter in diameter. Spiraling eddies and colliding cross-currents fill the visual field of the viewer, resulting in a hypnotic, immersive, and dynamically-evolving visual experience. The fluid motion within the tank is driven by several computer-controlled jets mounted to the inside of the tank. The locations and directions of the jets are precisely chosen to allow for a wide range of motion types, from oscillating waves, to swirling vortices, to chaotic flurries. Accompanying the visual elements of the installation is a spatialized musical soundscape, generated in real-time through the use of motion tracking technology. The microspheres are represented digital synthesis pulses, which pan dynamically and rise and fall in pitch in a manner analogous to the motions of the spheres in the tank.

SOUNDIAL (2015)

SOUNDIAL aims to engage the public community with an arresting new manifestation of a public timepiece. Using ultrasonic, hyper-directional speakers, three rotating "beams" of newly-composed electronic music are transmitted in an outdoor public space.

Using Arduino-controlled motors, the speakers are made to rotate 360 degrees at varying speeds; every minute, hour, and 12 hours, respectively. Three separate electroacoustic soundscape compositions are projected, each with a linear arc that repeats in sync with the rotation of its designated speaker. The music creates a space just outside the realm of ordinary sonic possibility, which individuals in the community may or may not be attuned to depending on their state of mind.

Depending on the time of day and their relative position to the installation site, casual passersby will experience a fleeting and distinctly personal sonic immersion as the clock "passes through them." By rendering our public experience of time as an invisible, temporary, and unexpected musical experience—rather than one that is visible, static, and perennially accessible—it is hoped that the installation will foster a new and more elusive relationship to both sound and time.

SOUNDIAL is supported by a grant from New Music USA

Granular Wall (2014)

In Granular Wall, a 4' x 4' flat panel tank is filled with water and several thousand neutrally-buoyant fluorescent microspheres. Various currents and turbulence patterns are induced into the tank via an array of jets and pumps. Digital video tracking is used to generate a multi-channel granular synthesis soundscape in that is directly controlled by the movement of the microspheres.

Granular Wall (2014) shown at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (National Sawdust and Abrons Arts Center) in June 2016. Granular Wall is a sound installation created by Jonathon Kirk and Lee Weisert. The piece incorporates concepts and strategies from fluid dynamics, simultaneous image and sound, and sculpture to create an arresting and direct engagement with the beauty of kinetic energy and sonic motion.

Cryoacoustic Orb (2011)

Cryoacoustic Orb is a sound installation involving multiple illuminated polycarbonate orbs filled with slowly melting ice. Hydrophones frozen inside the ice amplify the sounds of the melting process, which are electronically processed and spatialized throughout the darkened gallery space. The result is a unique ambient soundscape that evolves over the course of several hours.

A sound installation by Jonathon Kirk & Lee Weisert. Photography and video by Brooks de Wetter-Smith.

The Argus Project (2008)

The Argus Project is an outdoor environmental sound installation involving the real-time processing and spatialized projection of sound sources from beneath the surface of a pond. The primary aim of the The Argus Project is to project the subaquatic sound sources while tracking changes in the environmental conditions above the surface in order to map this data onto real-time audio processing. Nature becomes both instrument and performer.

Sonolumen (2017)

Composition for electronic sound and oscilloscope. Collaboration by Jonathon Kirk and Lee Weisert (2017). Sounds and images generated by the same electrical signal. No additional sounds or images are included.

Part 1/2 by Lee Weisert.

Part 2/2 by Jonathon Kirk