ARTIST: Mike McCracken
TITLE: Audible Avatar
MATERIALS: Camera, Microphone, Button, Speakers, Computers (MAX/MSP, SuperCollider).
DIMENSIONS: audio field; size tbc
DATE: 2007
DESCRIPTION: This piece explores sound not as music but as an experience, and software not as a tool but an environment. Using audience contributed sound as the source, Audible Avatar generates a soundscape that is a reflection of the audience in a purely acoustic realm. With the system tracking and generating sound from their movements in the physical space, participants are invited to contribute audibly as well as discover and interact with themselves and others in the soundscape.
STATEMENT: With a past heavily involved in music and software, Mike is exploring new elements of his medium, as well as branching into some new media. As technology's malleability continues to increase dramatically, new avenues of artistic pursuit emerge and develop. Mike strives to harness these newly opened areas with fascinating possibility for potency to create things of intrigue, beauty and reflection. Mike McCracken graduated with a BS in Computer Science from Evergreen, focusing on musical applications of computers. He is a percussionist with the Lake Union Civic Orchestra and creates installations, performs and does production management as a member of Manifold Motion.
CONTACT:
Mike McCracken
Seattle, WA
mike AT technomonkey.net