The Creation of the Universe, ambisonic installation

What it is

An ambisonic installation is a room with speakers arranged around and above you, playing a recording that was captured with enough microphones to reconstruct where every sound was in space. Instead of a stereo image in front of you, the performance is placed around you, and you stand inside it. The 10.1 refers to the speaker arrangement.

The source was a Metal Machine Trio recording from the Blender Theater at Gramercy. It was staged at the University Art Museum at California State University Long Beach, and later restaged at the Cranbrook Art Museum. The spatial work used technology from Arup’s SoundLab.

What I said at the time

The MM3 Blender Theater shows have been reborn as a 10.1 ambisonic installation hosted by California State University at Long Beach (that’s csulb for those in the know) and I do wonder what it sounds like! Lou and Ulrich both say it sounds amazing so it must be true. It utilizes some mad technology by the guys at Arup Engineering SoundLab. Oh yeah. They had mics all over that place, and now they present the music to you as if you are there on stage, or something. More details to come? Maybe!

That was January 2012, before it opened. I heard it in Long Beach. I never heard the restaging at Cranbrook.

The creditSarth Calhoun is one of the three recorded performers, on Continuum and live processing, in the Metal Machine Trio recording of April 24, 2009 that the installation plays; visitors stand in his, Lou Reed’s or Ulrich Krieger’s position on stage.