De Zwerm
De Zwerm (The Swarm) by aifoon is an installation consisting of twenty portable, wireless speakers that can put sound in motion.
Sound and listening are not a thing that you only experience frontally or in stereo. On the contrary, sound is a daily reality that surrounds us on all sides. To reflect on this in an artistic way, we are developing a speaker system in which 20 portable speakers can be controlled from one live console.
To reflect on this in an artistic way in performances and participatory projects, we were looking for a tool that offered us many possibilities: good sound quality, wireless, mobile, light enough to carry but still sturdy, ...
We wanted something that didn't exist yet. So we just made it ourselves!
After several testing stages, we developed De Zwerm for the performance Murmur: a speaker system with 20 portable speakers that can be controlled from one live console.
Twenty people scattered around the audience carry those speakers in a backpack, allowing the sound to really move right past the spectators through the theater space ...
An immersive sound experience
We want to create sound environments together with our audience in which they can be completely immersed. That is why we built a version of De Zwerm that is even more powerful and ingenious.
De Zwerm is modular and portable in both indoor and outdoor spaces where the volume automatically adjusts to the environment.
We also want to work with positioning sensors and it should become an easily manageable tool to physically compose with even without technical knowledge: for example, you could make a sound move through the space just by waving your arm in the direction the sound should go.
With De Zwerm, we want to develop not only a new audio system, but also a method that allows everyone to create sound environments in a physical and spatial way.
In this way, people can grow in listening, sonically shape "the world" and reflect on how we live together aurally.
For that next step, we could count on VLAIO - Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship and the National Lottery. They saw (and heard) the artistic potential of De Zwerm and provided financial support for its further development.
The next step: physical composition
We also want to work with positioning sensors and make it an easy-to-use tool that you can physically compose with even without technical knowledge: for example, you could make a sound move through space just by moving your arm in space.
Credits
concept: Stijn Dickel / aifoon vzw
software: Tim De Paepe & Kasper Jordaens
hardware / design: Jeroen Vandesande
production: Jeroen Vandesande & Jo Tavernier
outside ear: Johan Vandermaelen
with the support of : VLAIO - Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship & the National Lottery