The BE OPEN Sound Portal was an entirely new kind of installation that focused on the design that you can’t see – that of acoustics and sound. An alien black, rubberised structure was home to finely-tuned audio technologies aimed at delivering pure acoustic experiences to its visitors.
Every day, it hosted one of five leading musicians and sound artists, each of whom had been specially commissioned to create a unique soundscape. Their works carried from a range of vibrant sonic and musical responses, from the dramatic sounds of the natural world, such as glaciers breaking up, to exquisitely detailed electronic music. Cocooned from the external noise and bustle of the city, the BE OPEN Sound Portal allowed visitors to experience a very different environment, one created by sound alone.
The project became an ambitious mobile laboratory for exploring the boundaries of what can be achieved with sound technology – an active demonstration of design’s transformational abilities. The Portal provided the sound designers with a real life experimental space to develop their work.
The five sound artists and composers included award winning Norwegian artist Jana Winderen, radical Drum and Bass pioneer Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher) and a Russian artist sourced in collaboration with BE OPEN, Ivan Pavlov.
BE OPEN searched the world to find a series of diverse sounds that might represent the soundscape of the future. No one quite knows what we will be listening to in the future, perhaps with advances in technology our planet will be a much quieter place, with the only sounds being bleeping computers, electric cars, giant wind turbines and spacecraft. Or perhaps the soundscape will be even more chaotic than the world of today.
