White Noise / White Light

White Noise / White Light in Athens, Greece by J. Meejin Yoon, 2004

One of 9 internationally selected projects as part of ATHENS 2004: Catch the Light Olympic program, White Noise / White Light is an interactive sound and light installation which creates a luminous sound-scape within an urban plaza. Sited at the entry to the archaeological sites at the base of the Acropolis, visitors are encouraged to walk through and interact with the sonic field of chest high end-emitting fiber optic strands. The semi-flexible fiber optic strands, arranged in a fading grid, respond to touch and the movement of people through the field. The bending of the fiber optic strands is used to activate a localized light source and hidden speaker. When activated by the passerby, the strands become brighter when bent, creating an afterglow effect in the form of a flickering wake of lights, trailing and tracing visitors as they cross the field.

The bending strands also activate a series of hidden speakers which emit an orchestrated sound sampling of the city. This sound-mix of the city, broadcast in the field at all frequencies, overlap and cancel each other out. Experienced collectively, the samples add up to a field of white noise. White noise, like white light, is an aggregation, composed of all possible sounds, just as the white light encompasses all possible colors. The field of white noise creates a unique sound-scape in the city and masks out the noises from the immediate context with the city's own sounds. The gentle murmur of White Noise / White Light forms a place of sonic refuge within the bustling city.

By sampling the city and representing it in the Light Field / Sound Field, the plazas become an aural microscosm of the city. The sonic and optical landscape creates an interactive field of play in the city. One emerges from this luminescent aural landscape with a heightened awareness of the sounds of the city, allowing participants to truly listen to Athens.

The preceding text and images are courtesy J. Meejin Yoon and the White Noise / White Light project team (thanks to Eric Howeler for bringing this project to my attention):

J. Meejin Yoon (Project Principal), Mathew Reynolds (Electronics Engineer), Marlene Kuhn (Project Designer), Kyle Steinfeld (Project Designer), Eric Howeler (Project Architect), Naomi Munro (Project Assistant), Lisa Smith (Project Assistant).

White Noise / White Light has been made possible by the generous support of ATHENS 2004, Panasonic, the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MIT Council for the Arts and the MIT Humanities, Arts and Social Science Fund.