Cloud Affects - Soundscape

Background Cloud Affects draws attention to the scale and accelerating growth of the Internet to critique its ecological implications through the convergence of architecture and sound. The project draws on the seminal work of architect and composer Iannis Xenakis and his exploration of algorithmic processes used to arrive at complex aural and spatial relationships. The design research informing Cloud Affects builds on Xenakis’s research through the development of behavioural processes of formation that draw from the logic of swarm intelligence and the operation of multi-agent algorithms. Cloud Affects contributes to the fields of architecture, acoustic ecology and geohumanities. Contribution Samartzis' soundscape was presented in collaboration with an architectural installation by Roland Snooks. The collaborative project created a structure from the nebulous to materialise and express these intangible algorithms, and made reference to the real-world infrastructure required to prop up the virtual cloud. The embedded sound installation explores the environmental impact of cloud computing by capturing sounds of the cloud and its physical implications, being composed in part from recordings of glacial melting recorded in the Swiss Alps, and the scientific instruments used to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere creating a sonic affect as a consequence of global climate change. Significance Cloud Affects was commissioned by the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, and the National Gallery of Victoria with the support of Boeing, and The Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation. The sound work was supported by Creative Victoria, the High-Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch and Gornegrat, the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Swiss National Science Foundation.