Each Step

an interactive sound installation

• March 26-31, 2021
• Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, Texas

• October 3-4, 2019
• lecture and demonstration of Each step, an interactive sound installation
• and performance of Garden of our own, for piano and 8- or 12-channel interactive electronics
• Studio 300 Digital Art and Music Festival
• Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky

• June 19-21, 2019
• International Computer Music Conference (ICMC)/ New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF)
• NYU Education Building, New York City

• November 14, 2018
• Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, Texas

Each step is an interactive sound installation that allows for user agency and discovery. Participants are given a map to the space and are encouraged to observe how their interactions with the space affect the algorithms creating the sound. Participants step into a square and observe the gradual effect they have on the sound. Each step was created as a response to Matthew Ritchie's The Demon in the Diagram, a site-specific visual art installation that investigates the history of the diagram as a means of mapping both human knowledge and lived experience. For this presentation of Each step, a map with symbols is provided for participants. The symbols are clues to the affect each square has on the sound. There are two synthesizers, one activated by stepping anywhere in the blue squares, the other by stepping in the orange squares. Each square affects one of the parameters of these two synthesizers. The center square affects the fundamental of both synths. Each step won the 2019 International Computer Music Association award for best student submission.