Auditory futures

An immersive multi-channel sound design piece, part of Ghost Line X installation. Commissioned by Rolling Ryot and presented on the 19th of November, 2022 in Austin, Texas, US.

Cars are transforming from human-driven combustion engines to app-filled electric engines controlled from the cloud, aiming at being autonomous, leaving humans with limited space to make decisions. Electric engines are not as loud as combustion engines, but will also evolve and will continue to be noise-generating machines for safety reasons. Safety is being taken over by car makers and authorities who will also be responsible for shaping our auditory landscape.

While shaping our auditory landscape is an opportunity to control the auditory landscape’s timbre more than decibels and loudness we have yet to experience this new world around us. Car makers are not planning how this auditory landscape will sound.

In this interpretation of the future, we will imagine a futuristic soundscape that slowly evolves from the current one to a 100% electric one. We’ll be able to tell the difference? We’ll be able to design a better soundscape for our cities? Generative and wall of sound design techniques will be our tools to help us imagine.

Ghost Line X, Austin, Sat Nov 19th 2022, 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm CST | HumanitixGhost Line X Rolling Ryot presents Ghost line X, a massive immersive sound and light experience that will be installed on November 19th, 2022 in Rosewood Park on the east side of Austin, TX. The scale of this artwork makes it incredibly unique and a first of its kind. We invite you to experience this FREE and truly one-of-a-kind sound art experience! The exhibition will run continually from 6:30-9:30p for one evening only. Spatial audio, sometimes referred to as surround sound, expands sound and music outside the bounds of a typical two-speaker stereo system. The Rolling Ryot arts collective has continually pushed this concept by creating unprecedented spatial sound systems. For Ghost Line X, the team is exploring the idea of a massively wide 15-channel sound system that explores the creative potential of sound in motion. Featuring Compositions by: Sebastian DeWay (Montreal, Canada) Simon Hutchinson (New Haven, CT) Joaquin Jimenez-Sauma (Gothenburg, Sweden) Zeynep Özcan (Ann Arbor, MI) Brian Wenner (Brooklyn, NY) Lyman Hardy (Austin, TX) This event is FREE and open to the public. It is appropriate for all ages. We encourage everyone to bring lawn chairs or blankets. Bike riding and ride-sharing are encouraged, but there will be available parking in the Rosewood Park parking lot and the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. Rolling Ryot is a nonprofit collective that specializes in immersive sound art. Donations to help Rolling Ryot create future sound art events are accepted and appreciated. More Event Details: Fifteen large speakers will be arranged linearly across 420ft underneath the boggy creek overpass in Rosewood park. Composers from across the globe have been commissioned to create sound compositions designed to activate the scale and spatial qualities of this sound system. Each of the created compositions uniquely engaged with the theme of transportation technology and the vector quality of the sounds they produce. Since the industrial revolution, the unique sonic characteristics of transportation technology have become an ever-present aspect of the urban soundscape. These composers have created works inspired by not only the past and present of transportation but imagining the sonic future of our transportation landscape. These compositions will utilize the dramatic sonic movement capabilities of the sound system to create an unforgettable immersive audio experience.Ghost Line X is an installation that challenges our current concepts of transportation by simultaneously addressing the history and future of the technology by allowing an audience to study its complex sonic characters and, most importantly, its motion through space. This work is intended to be a new way of addressing and discussing the importance of the historical significance of transportation in Austin, TX., and the inspiring potential of modern science’s impact on how we get around. Learn more about spatial audio and the artistic concept behind Ghost Line X with the video below featuring Kyle Evans of the Rolling Ryot team. Meet the Composers: Sebastian DeWay (Montreal, Canada) is a French Canadian who regards himself as belonging to this generation of composer-producer-performer who use the laptop as a musical instrument. This compositional tool allows him to develop his musical skills as much on stage as in the studio. His PhD research investigated the use of spatialization tools and techniques to enhance EDM through an immersive sound experience. Lyman Hardy (Austin, TX) is an Emmy-nominated sound designer and musician living in Austin, TX. His work ranges from spatial sound installations, feature films and documentaries to modular synth compositions, drums, and percussion. He is a founding member of Rolling Ryot sound collective, as well as Austin-based post house Stuck On On, and has played with numerous Austin bands including Hardy Harris Henley, Thor and Friends, Ed Hall, and Pong. Simon Hutchinson (New Haven, CT) is a creator and teacher of music, audio, and things tangentially related. His work synthesizes disparate ideas from a variety of performance genres, engaging with the relationships between humans, technology, and society. Simon holds a PhD in Composition from the University of Oregon, and he is currently the Chair of Performing Arts at the University of New Haven. Joaquin Jimenez-Sauma (Gothenburg, Sweden) is a producer, lecturer and artist who combines sound, image and computer science when composing, creating live performances, or building immersive installations. He has been awarded a master's degree in Sound and Music Computing from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and received the recognition of being the first Ableton Certified Trainer in Latin America and the first Spanish-speaking Max/MSP Certified Trainer. He currently teaches online and applies his skills at Volvo Cars in Sweden, where he creates and analyzes the future sound of cars. Zeynep Özcan (Ann Arbor, MI) is a sonic artist, electronic music composer and educator who works at the intersection of art and technology. She explores biologically inspired musical creativity, interactive and immersive environments, and generative systems. She is passionate about community building and creating multicultural and collaborative learning experiences for students through technology-driven creativity. Brian Wenner (Brooklyn, NY) is a Brooklyn-based music composer, sound designer and performer. His artistic practice combines sample collage techniques and live electronic improvisation to create realtime sound compositions. His solo performances center around improvised sample playback manipulation using a modular system and field recordings. Wenner has composed sound for dance, theater, multi-channel installation and digital release. Event Sponsors: Nelda Studios is an Austin-based multimedia company with a mission to spark and nurture imagination and creativity through storytelling, broad access to the arts, and community events that provide opportunities to grow and innovate through creative media. dadaLab offers flexible spaces to an interdisciplinary mix of artists, designers, technologists, futurists, and creative entrepreneurs. People at dadaLab are working on everything from new businesses, to ambitious art installations, to provocative experiments in architecture, social ventures, and urban design. Founders Kyle Evans and Barna Kantor created dadaLab in 2019 and have used the space to devise new immersive artworks and provide collaborative studio space for local artists. This project is supported in part by Big Medium and the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division