An Island of Sound

From the classical period through the early modern, tales abounded of distant islands inhabited by demons, devils, evil spirits, and all manner of winged creatures. The Sirens lured sailors to shipwreck with singing voices. The sprite Ariel conjures up a storm. The stories we tell ourselves to make sense of wind.

An Island of Sound is a browser-based work by J. R. Carpenter exploring phantom islands as weather phenomenon through an assemblage of found images, algorithmically generated texts, live performance, and sound. The sound-world created by Jules Rawlinson for the live performance of this work responds to, supports, and transforms J R Carpenter’s visual and textual imagery. Field recordings, wind synthesis, generative sample streams and data-driven sound processing are collaged and combined with spoken word to create ambiguous and shifting sonic narratives and spectral resonances.