Artist Matt Hope has created HornMassive, a 2-ton, 2000-watt steel and aluminum horn sound system on wheels. As far as I can tell it's mostly been used at a few raves but hopefully a mutual friend can introduce him to the guys from Konono No 1 at some point.
This massive horn reminded me instantly of the wonderful pictures of Japanese War Tubas and various acoustic location devices used during WWI and WWII to detect the noise of distant enemy planes approaching. In England, the preferred devices for this sort of enterprise were concrete sound mirrors which dotted the UK's southern coast and many of which are still standing today.
A few years back, Danish artist Lise Autogena embarked on a new project to create a pair of contemporary sound mirrors that will allow people across the English channel to converse with each other, an especially ambitious (and seemingly impossible) goal considering that Matt Hope's 2000 watt device is touted as being able to be heard 1 kilometer away.
Says Autogena in a 2001 Guardian article
"I love the fact that it's such an awkward, failed technology, which hasn't been covered up... New acoustic technology in America can isolate sounds. So when you stand at a certain point in the mirror, you'll be able to hear the voice of the person standing by the mirror in France - but only at an exact spot in the mirror. Move just a centimetre and the sound will disappear."
Link to Autogena's Sound Mirrors Project. Original Hornmassive link via VVORK
Love those giant speakers. See my high school yearbook pic, me sitting in front of the theater's Voice of the Theater movie speakers here: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lipwak/detail?.dir=d776&.dnm=f091.jpg&.src=ph
Cheers,
Lipwak
Posted by: Lipwak | August 29, 2006 at 11:42 AM
The Dutch made mobile versions of such acoustic radar devices. Hearing something is not the problem, but I guess it takes a lot of training to hear directionally. http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/en/airacous.html
Posted by: Dave | August 31, 2006 at 08:24 AM
The sound mirrors feature heavily in various projects by art / music / film group Disinformation - the "Antiphony" double CD (packaging features sound mirror photos by Julian Hills from 1996) and "Antiphony Video Supplement" (by film-maker Barry Hale, later retitled "Blackout") which were both published in 1997, with the video being virtually identical to later works by the artists Tacita Dean and Lisa Autogena. The chronology of all these projects is documented in the US art magazine "Cabinet", in an article written by Brian Dillon of the University of Kent, Canterbury.
An "Antiphony Architectural Supplement" was published by Disinformation as a feature in Sound Projector magazine in 1999. A recent press release says that Barry Hale's sound mirror video has been shown at NTT ICC (Tokyo), The Royal College of Art (London), Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst (Leipzig), Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt) and The Dom (Moscow), the Phonotaktik (Vienna) and Sonar (Barcelona) music festivals, a sound art event in a nuclear bunker in Scotland, and exhibited as an installation at The Mac (Birmingham), Quay Arts (Isle of Wight), Wrexham Arts Centre, South Hill Park (Bracknell), Event Gallery (London), Q Gallery (Derby), The Latvian National Museum of Art and The ICA (London).
Posted by: Mark | December 06, 2006 at 08:54 PM
A clip of the Sound Mirrors video by Disinformation is available to view at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsR3qyJDk0c
Posted by: Alan | February 19, 2007 at 06:52 AM