Over 48 hours of user-created audio is uploaded to the internet every minute, a figure that is increasing exponentially. Maelstrom is a sound installation that draws on this material in real time, constructing shifting walls of sound from thousands of audio fragments.

By organising these fragments based on their tonal attributes, they collectively form a vast instrument, whose properties are affected by global internet activity. A score composed specifically for this instrument voices an endless series of chord variations, dynamically generated by an array of live processes.

Maelstrom builds a tornado of tonal cluster chords around its spiral speaker system, engulfing the listener in the swirling mass of information that is now an integral part of our day-to-day lives.

Design

I was approached to design a custom amplifier for a new iteration of Maelstrom, for an installation in the Science Gallery in Melbourne. There were 24 amplifier outputs, which had to be connected to 96 speakers in a pre-defined 4:1 mapping.

To simplify wiring, each of the 12 ‘legs’ of the installation was pre-wired with 8 speakers hanging off thin, transparently-sheathed, 28AWG speaker cable, on a 9-pin Phoenix connector with a common ground.

The amplifier board itself took 4 Tascam-spec DB25 input connectors from an audio interface, and used TDA7375V 4-channel amplifier chips with a hard-wired output matrix.

The installation ran successfully for months in the gallery without any technical issues.

Roles
  • Electronics design.
  • James Bulley and Daniel Jones: Concept, sound design, software
Year

2022