Patch/Work
Zoe Faylor, Rosa Manzo, and Austin Ehrhardt (A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning), Logan Gare (School of Music, Theatre & Dance)
Patch/Work is an open-source resource for (non)performers seeking to repurpose quotidian environments into low-budget spaces for sonic production. Sound-form relationships are catalogued, analyzed, represented and edited using readily available materials and recording equipment. The website compiles research in a participatory platform that encourages crowdsourced data collection, file sharing and user discussion.
In a series of audio experiments, domestic interiors are acoustically altered through the introduction of common household materials. Room EQ Wizard — a free room acoustics software — is then used to generate basic room response measurements, including SPL, impedance and impulse response. The resulting data is logged and analysed in order to produce musical compositions that showcase each room’s unique acoustic properties before and after material intervention.
Experimental frequency absorption values are calculated and tabulated for the material catalog, an editable database that grows through user contribution. Additionally, shared language is critical when collaborating across disciplines. Accordingly, a glossary provides textual definitions and diagrammatic representations of pertinent audio engineering terms.
In this highly digital moment, Patch/Work seeks to recast the materiality of sonic space to allow for mobility between opposing forces — physical/digital, real/unreal, audience/performer, online/offline — in order to obscure these constructed distinctions entirely.