earwax magazine

 Silophone.net

Silophone.net is an intriguing look into both an interactive piece of net art, and a tangible piece of sound art. The concept behind Silophone.net is called the Silophone project; an abandoned grain silo in Montreal has been transformed into an interactive sound space where audio is collected from around the world via various communication mediums, and is played into the silo to create a highly reverberant drenched instrument. The acoustics of the enormous concrete space; almost 200 metres long, 16 metres wide and 45 metres tall, adds a remarkable colour to the audio amongst the reverb and large delay.

With one click of a button you can listen live inside the silo and immediately hear the resonance around the massive space; without even transmitting and sounds into the silo, you can hear a variety of field sounds from surrounding areas reverberating through its open spaces. There is also a bank of sounds on the site in which you can select to play through what they describe as ‘the instrument’. It takes just a mere thirty seconds for your selection to be played, and when the speakers burst into action, a wash of sound hits your headphones, as even the driest of samples swells around the silo, adding almost enough reverb to make it indistinguishable. The enormity of such a space is incomprehensible until we focus our senses upon it, in this situation it’s an aural sense, which differs from the usual visual abstraction, in which humans rely on more often. The fact that we are only offered the audio, forces us to listen into to space and picture it from a perception we obtain aurally, as opposed to visually.

Making this site interactive is a function that allows you to upload any sounds under 1mb into the silo itself. You simply choose whether or not you wish for your sample to be uploaded onto the bank of sounds that can be played, or if you just wish to hear your sound once through the silo. No reverb plug-in could amount to what the space does to your sound, and the quality of the streaming is highly impressive, allowing for a great audio experience. The Silo also hosts events; where artists from around the world play inside the silo, and are transmitted, all around the world. The events are also recorded and added to the ‘Events’ link on the site found, and is well worth a listen; comprehensively highlighting the effect that a space can have on a piece of music.  

This website’s simplistic concept results in an amazing aural experience, the idea of hearing your sounds being played on the other side of the world is remarkable in itself, but the transformation that is undertaken inside ‘the instrument’ is aurally astounding.  

 Visit the Silophone website and try out this great example of web art.  

Reviewed By Ben Hamblin

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 5:46 am and is filed under reviews : live. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.