inside / outside

Mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops), Supercollider 3, running on a WebRTC streaming framework.

A generative sound installation for mobile devices: your device is a loudspeaker in space.

Inside/outside is a sonic artwork about lives being lived on Berlin’s Oranienstrasse in late 2023 and early 2024. The piece explores the overlapping time and space that is both at the heart of urban life, and at the centre of our interior human experience.

Engaging with these recordings sets up a shared intimacy: with those who have been recorded, with those nearby, and with yourself. The sound, with no image, transforms that intimacy into an atmosphere.

This intimacy is actually profound - because to listen is to make a kind of silence. And in order to listen you must experiment with this silence. An outsider or voyeur need not at some level bother with experience, they remain as ‘other’ … but you can’t talk if you want to hear.

This experience is at the same time interior and exterior. Inside and outside.

Notes

Inside/outside is formed from an archive of recordings made inside homes, in bars and cafes, in U-Bahn stations, and along the street itself.

The work is created in real-time as a computer randomly selects edits from this archive, stitches them together, and broadcasts them as multiple audio streams. 

You can experience the work individually, or if you act with those nearby you can play and experiment - combining sound, time, and space with those around you.