Stream Room is a collaborative multi-channel musique concrete sound installation conceptualized and produced for deepwhitesound, an online exhibition platform for experimental audio. The installation was exhibited at FalseFront in Northeast Portland from Oct 11 – Nov 2, 2014 and cycled through over 600 compositions by 33 international sound artists.

“Hundreds of micro-compositions produced by dozens of international sound artists and musicians are randomly sequenced and broadcast via wi-fi to handmade streaming units. Each collected composition is designed to be played simultaneously as an immersive sound installation.

The result is a cacophonous, randomized bombast of disparate experimental compositions, playing over and against each other, an aural metaphor of the chaotic and over-stimulating nature of the internet itself. The discord of battling sound sources and quickly transitioned content creates a type of meditative experience. Rather than aiming to reach transcendence through minimalism, senses are bombarded and inundated in a type of maximalism. The dissonant nature of the installation draws allusions to the overwhelming qualities of the internet, social media and the information age.

Stream Room serves as an appraisal of this condition, an errant signal celebrated, a space for enthralled annihilation.”

Stream Room was funded by a generous grant from the Precipice Fund, administered by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art with lead support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Calligram Foundation/Allie Furlotti.