Research Catalogue

This exposition documents three site specific outdoor sound installations that aim to establish a new awareness of our environment. Sound penetrates our outdoor spaces. Much of it we ignore amidst our fast passage from place to place, its qualities too quiet or fleeting to pay heed to above the bustle of our own thoughts, or we may experience the sounds as an annoyance. Manoeuvring our listening to be excited by its features is not so easy. Using a high-definition 3D microphone (EigenMike EM32 from MhAcoustics), I capture the sound-fields of public spaces and break them down analytically. I then explore how to reveal interesting features of time and space that the ear’s and body’s short-term experiential awareness are less able to grasp, and create site specific sound-installations for public spaces. The installations are made in ambisonics and played over a partly hidden 8-channel loudspeaker array, and a custom designed mini beam-forming loudspeaker. Combined, these technologies layer a new enhanced 3D sound-world into the existing space, and highlight acoustic features through the combination of sound-type and reflectivity. The installations apply my own methods for hybridising autoethnography with computational analysis developed in the Reconfiguring the Landscape Research Project.

Reconfiguring the Landscape at IRCAM was the third physical meeting of the three Reconfiguring the Landscape composers Natasha Barrett, Nadine Schütz and Andrew Knight-Hill. The group met at IRCAM in Paris from November 18 to 28 to embark on an intensive period of industrial site audio investigation, workshops, artistic creation, public panel discussions and listening sessions. The work period and public exhibitions were supported by and carried out in collaboration with IRCAM.

Subliminal Throwback was a site-specific outdoor 3-D audio sound installation located in the amphitheatre between Gydas vei 8 and Slemdalsveiein 11 at Majorstuen, Oslo. The work was created by Natasha Barrett as part of the Reconfiguring the Landscape Project hosted by the Norwegian Academy for Music in Oslo. Subliminal Throwback marked the end of a year-long process researching and experimenting on this urban outdoor sound landscape, and includes the application of innovative technical and artistic approaches to investigating its potentially interesting qualities - acoustic features, sounds that pass us by, or qualities too fleeting to pay heed to amidst our other thoughts and activities.

Outdoor, site-specific sound installation. Akershus festning, courtyard outside the Resistance Museum. Opening event: 15.00, 16th September Open daily, all weather 10.00-18.00. 17th September – 15th October. Composed and produced by Natasha Barrett.

Reconfiguring the Landscape was a Norwegian artistic research project hosted at the Norwegian Academy for Music and funded by the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (DIKU). The project investigated how 3-D electroacoustic composition and sound-art can evoke and provoke a new awareness of our outdoor environment. The work addressed both urban and natural settings. The project was led by Natasha Barrett and included an international lineup of composers, technologists and scientists who contributed in different ways. The project startup was in November 2019, just a few months before COVID impacted all activities. From 2020-2021 the project members worked independently. In 2022 group activities resumed. Research work formally ended in the beginning of 2023, and public dissemination and documentation concluded in November 2023.

"Hidden Sounds of West Telemark / Løynde Lydar Frå Vest-Telemark" is a sound-art project consisting of seven short audio-visual compositions which can be thought of as sonic postcards. The project is about listening to the everyday cultural sound landscape in new and interesting ways. The work was exhibited at West Telemark Museum during the 2023 season.

“Sansing i Strandsona” was a 3-D sound installation sensing the environment of Hvervenbukta - a small bay on the east side of the inner Oslo Fjord. The work was installed inside a beach pavilion dating from 1765 and was played back over 24 small loudspeakers arranged in a 3D dome. “Sansing i Strandsona” played from the 10th-16th August 2020. The work was approximately 20 minutes long and ran in a continuous loop.

"Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces" was commissioned by the musikprotokoll festival in Graz Austria. It was installed both inside and outside the MUMUTH (The House of Music and Music Theatre), Lichtenfelsgasse 14, 8010 Graz, Austria. It played in all weathers from the 7th-9th September 2021.

As a final conclusion to the research project three of the five outdoor sound installations were remixed for an indoor exhibition space as a multi-part work called “Sound Worlds.” The sound exposition was installed in the Foredragsale at the Old Munch Museum in Oslo - a 21x18 meters space with a high ceiling. The exhibition was open to the public from the 24th to the 26th of October 2023.

The Reconfiguring the Landscape documentation CD focused on the public space outdoor sound installations that Natasha Barrett had created during each year of the project and marking new phases in the work addressing urban noise with 3D sound.

Recording and Sound Landscape Developments

Urban Soundscape Enhancement (first tests for Subliminal Throwback installation).

What happens to our experience of an urban outdoor sound and visual landscape when 3D images and 3D sound, recorded from the same location, are mixed together?

Summary of group discussions on methods and places

Reconfiguring the Landscape in Venice 31st August -10th September. After conducting numerous studies in environments characterized by the sounds of cars, buses, trams, and trains, Natasha'a work in Venice provided a refreshing change of scenery. Here, road traffic was replaced by water traffic, and pedestrians navigated unmotorized trolleys along the pavements. The work in Venice was collaboration with Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello Venezia.

In 2022, the SOUND/IMAGE Research Group at the University of Greenwich hosted one of the Reconfiguring the Landscape international workshops. Unlike previous workshops, we decided to split the work over two periods. The first period was from the 17th to the 24th of July, and the second was from the 25th to the 27th of October. During the first period, members of the artistic team were joined by members of the SOUND/IMAGE Research Group to investigate several historic sites in Greenwich. In the second period, the artistic team performed an outdoor concert in Greenwich Market. The work was carried out in collaboration with researchers Brona Martin, Emma Margetson, and Angela McArthur.

The second workshop in Oslo called consisted of cross testing our different microphone technologies, sound recording field-trips in Oslo to investigate the ideas proposed in the November workshop, testing new loudspeaker technologies, and presenting a research seminar and concert titled "Extending Time".