The Sound Labyrinth Project: Catalyst for Creative Activity

Two large sound installations, developed by transdisciplinary sound art and research group Urban Sound Institute, created a meeting place for one year of artistic and pedagogic activity in a Swedish regional museum. The project involved a historic sound archive, a string quartet, a local radio station, pedagogic workshops, several schools, children’s groups and musical education programs. The installations created a complexity of interior spaces, and acted as huge musical instruments to be ‘played’ by professional musicians, dancers and visitors. Through advanced computer programming and careful composition, modeling and distribution of sounds as words, narratives, music, space, bodily experiences and memory, the Sound Labyrinth allowed for great variations, durability over time, and different forms of interaction. The article describes the project, and discusses the exhibition as a platform for collective, multiple interaction; as an expanded musical-architectonic composition; and as a contribution to artistic research methodologies relevant for sound spaces within so-called sound-making disciplines