d'strict Art Project is a collaborative art initiative launched in 2024. Conceived through organic collaboration with multidisciplinary experts on a global scale, it builds on the foundation of a’strict, the former media art unit within d’strict. As an open platform, the project brings together practitioners from various fields and generations, both internal and external, to propose new creative models.
ECHO, part of the first series of d'strict Art Project, is the outcome of this one-of-a-kind collaborative effort. It features notable contributions from Dr. Erin Kara, Professor in the MIT Department of Physics and observational astrophysicist; Ian Condry, founder of the MIT Spatial Sound Lab; Kyle Keane, Professor at University of Bristol, UK, who developed sonification from black hole data; oOps.50656, a new media composer and artist collective that produced eight-channel sonification and sound design for the project; KKOL Studio, which created the light and sound installation.
Erin Kara, Ian Condry, Kyle Keane, oOps.50656 KKOL Studio Installation, 8-channel kinetic sound and light 2024
ECHO features ‘Kinetic Sound,’ a dynamic integration of a soundscape derived from black hole observation data and light installation. Light, cast by a centrally placed moving sodium lamp and sound, played through an eight-channel system, recreate the movement of energy around a black hole, an otherworldly experience that evokes the mysteries of astrophysics and disorients one's bearings. The work spatially embodies the immense gravitational distortion of a black hole, as well as physical theories including the Doppler effect and general relativity, which are translated into a sensory experience from the perspective of photons, the smallest particles of light. ECHO briefly transports the viewers into a realm far removed from everyday reality, immersing them in the extreme warping of space-time around these scientific phenomena.