Perry Hoberman: Quadraphone
Title:
- Quadraphone
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
Quadraphone consists of two groups of four people who wander freely around the various venues of the festival and other public spaces. Each member of each quartet wears a battery-powered, high-fidelity speaker on their torso, counterbalanced by a backpack containing the battery pack. Each member also wears or carries a microphone.
At any given moment, either the microphones or the speakers of each quartet are active, but never at the same time. The two quartets are wiretessty connected, so that the microphones of one quartet become the sources for the speakers of the other quartet, or vice versa. Thus, a quadraphonic soundscape is telematically transferred from one space to another. The members of the quartets are also in communication with each other through headsets so that they can coordinate their movements and actions, switching roles )from listeners to speakers) at any given moment.
Quadraphone takes its inspiration from the technology of quadraphonic sound, a recording technique that had its heyday in the 1970s, and can be seen as an early form of immersive virtual reality.
