Post Truth and Beauty

Interactive light and 3D sound sculpture

Post Truth and Beauty aims to create a sensory experience analogous to the ungraspable nature of ‘truth’ by presenting partial glimpses into an abstract world of light and sound.

Post Truth and Beauty is an interactive audiovisual sculpture that invites visitors to contemplate the limitations of any single point of view. The experience offers a window into an alternative dimension of light and sound. However, only partial glimpses can be caught as you moves your head. No single position provides an advantageous perspective onto this world. It is discovered only by finding and experiencing new points of view.

Post Truth and Beauty aims to create a experience analogous to the ungraspable nature of truth as a bodily experience free from the identity, emotions and reactiveness of our political minds, allowing this concept be felt through our embodied intuition.

Post Truth and Beauty exhibited at We Are Robots festival, Old Truman Brewery, Nov 2017.

Twelve glowing rods intersect between walls, floor and ceiling, as if they were exposed elements from a much larger structure. In front, there is a ring of speakers into which a visitor is invited.

Once inside, the visitor is immersed in a soundscape of slowly evolving textural sounds. The installation tracks the location of the visitor’s head. It combines this with the 3D speaker ring to create the illusion that each sound is floating in a fixed position. This creates a seamlessly accessible interaction, drawing on our natural ability to spatially locate sound.

Each sound is paired with a colour palette, which takes over the LEDs in the rods as the sound is approached, flickering in time with the sound’s oscillations. Light and sound combine to create the sense of a reactive, living entity.

Sound is transformed from a temporal medium into a sculpture – uncovered with the active agency of a mobile observer. Together the sounds construct a rich harmony but only partial combinations can be heard at once.

User Interface of the bespoke software used to compose the lines in space.

Post-Truth and Beauty uses camera-based head-tracking, Ambisonics 3D audio and bespoke software. It uses an interaction design analogous to Virtual Reality but does not require any equipment to be worn. Virtual sound emitters are arranged across the speaker ring in a tangle of lines analogous to the physical rods of light. Each sound comes alive as the participant’s head approaches.

The above image shows the control interface. The lines represent different sound emitters and the blue circle is the viewer’s head location (here viewed from above). This is to aid composing the lines in space and is not visible to the viewer. The viewer can navigate the space using only their ears, as the 3D sound array will simulate the direction of the sounds based on the relative position of the emitter to the user’s head.

The idea for the piece emerged during the polarised discourse following the Brexit vote and Trump’s election. We all seem increasingly certain that our own perspective grants us the real truth. Those disagreeing with us get labelled as out of touch, uneducated or victims of disinformation, justifying us in dismissing rather than attempting to understand their point of view.