Adam Basanta

Adam Basanta is a Montreal-based sound artist and experimental music composer. His sound installations investigate intersections between sound reproduction, consumer technologies and the activity of listening.

In A Room Listening to Itself, the artist produced sound exclusively through amplification techniques which make audible the physical relationships between microphones and reclaimed speaker cones within a gallery's surrounding acoustic environment.
 In this work, eight iconic SM58 microphones and eight reclaimed speaker cones are dispersed throughout the gallery space, arranged in a manner which produces complex computer-controlled feedback and recursive amplification networks. Using these acoustic phenomena, the gallery space is turned into a giant resonator that amplifies acoustic space as a product of spatial relationships. Custom-built software algorithms constantly re-calibrate the room to ever-changing acoustic situations, aiming for a sonic equilibrium that remains out of reach.
The result is an ever-changing spatial composition encompassing ambient passages, resonant chords, and rhythmic activities - created solely using feedback - through which gallery visitors can navigate.