/21st_Century_Chapel

Generative Systems | Synthesis | Field Recordings | Pure Data

21st Century Chapel is an installation that synthesizes a transient religious space through the use of custom generative software, in order to question the changing role of religion in this century. The piece is intended to remain impartial, only to illustrate how religious symbolism is evolving as technology is assimilated into it. For example, in the bell towers of many small churches around Ireland, the traditional importance of the church bell is being lost as they are replaced with speakers that play the sound of bells. The sonic symbol - the resonance - remains, but the physical object is removed.

21st Century Chapel takes this concept of technology-replacing-tradition further: stained glass windows become generative and transient. Colours fade into each other slowly and almost imperceptibly, while recordings of church organs are manipulated in realtime and played from a four-channel speaker system. For the stained glass windows, the source photographs of the actual windows of the cathedral were scanned using custom colour-processing software, and redistributed the colours of the window into the grid. The organ recordings were manipulated and distributed randomly throughout the four-channel speaker system using max/msp.

The source materials for the stained glass windows and the church organ recordings were made at St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.

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