PAX levare

Inspired by Erik Satie’s furniture music, PAX levare takes background music considered gentle, bland, and unobtrusive to another level. This installation transforms the stairway or the elevator from a transitory space where people have no intention to listen to music to an evolving continuum that extends beyond its physical boundaries. As the elevator accompanies us on our journey, or as we climb up or down the stairway, sounds travel with us from on floor to another, and mix to produce new harmonies.

Premiered at Sound Around, MIT Media Lab, May 18, 2006 in the elevators.
Presented at Library Music (exhibition of interactive music installations curated by Prof. Tod Machover), MIT R.D. Lewis Music Library, January 16-19, 2007 in the stairway.

Description

There is one set of speakers at the bottom of the stairs, and one at the top. Each set of speakers simultaneously plays three tracks (melody, background and rhythm), which are independent but synchronized (in terms of harmonic progression and tempo). As you initially step on the stairs, one of the tracks changes, slightly modifying the music. If you climb or descend the stairway, one track will swap between the speakers at the top and the ones at the bottom, giving the impression that some of the music follows you up or down. As the changes happen slowly and subtly (variations in the background or rhythm tracks are much less noticeable than those in the melody track), try to listen to how the music evolves as you travel up and down the stairs.

Concept

Erik Satie was one of the first composers to take music out of the context of concert halls and to use it as background entertainment. In particular his furniture music, sometimes considered as the precursor to Musak or elevator music, consisted in repetitive musical sequences that were played as a backdrop to conversations in an apartment. John Cage later took this idea forward in his theory of minimalist music, which also led to ambient music.
Taking this idea into the realm of dynamic spaces in PAX levare, the repetitive character of the music is altered by the movements of people. As new people enter the stairway, new sounds enter the music, and as people move up and down the floors with expectations and different mental states, the music gets mixed to produce new variations that may relate to them.

Technical Environment

Max/MSP, Open Sound Control (OSC), UDP, Phidgets

Credits

PAX levare (short sample) (MP3): 7:08 (6.6 MB)
PAX levare (long sample) (MP3): 1:06:40 (61 MB)

Sound Around program (PDF): 4 pages (712KB)

Composed and produced by Mihir Sarkar, 2006