CUBO (Cube) – is an interactive sound sculpture comprised of reclaimed materials and exploring notions of social architecture via a site-specific, locative sound track. Its literally a giant cube with a set a speakers and motion sensors on each of its 5 sides. CUBO’s outside layer is made from live, edible micro-greens. The interior houses a multi-channel, surround sound, speaker system. The sculpture is motion activated: using Max/MSP/Jitter software. The samples are programmed to play indepentent of each other using Max/MSP to play the samles – on/off/random/louder/softer -on each its 4 audio channels. User movement around physical hotspots triggers CUBO to play from over 1600 audio samples taken from around the Boulder area. The locative samples were provided by TheSilence.org, out of CU Boulder, which is a very cool mobile sonic mapping of the Boulder area. I’d like to thank Elisa and Marco and everyone else over at the Silence for their generous contribution of these audio samples. I also encourage everyone to check out TheSilence.org and even contribute their own samples using their mobile phone to make an audio field recording and uploading it to their website soundscape.

CUBO has been exhibited in Tijuana- Mexico, San Diego, Los Angeles and now Boulder on its evolving journey. After a short stint at BMoCA, CUBO is now on display at Object+Thought Gallery, 3559 Larimer Street, Downtown Denver until the end of May.  CUBO is a joint project of the Sustainable Media Lab, comprised of Sarah Chung, Robert Fitzgerald and Marko Manriquez.

More info on TheSilence.org
The Silence of the Lands enables participants to map and annotate the soundscape of urban and natural environments. Participants can record and collect ambient sounds, create and share acoustic cartographies, and use them as conversation pieces of a social dialogue about the places and communities in which they live. The result is an affective geography that changes over time according to participants’ perceptions and interpretations of their environmental settings.