In 2022 I set up a sound installation inside the Prelinger Library. It sits in the stacks and includes six small computers and speakers and software I wrote to control the selection and playback of approximately a thousand different sounds. I’ve come to call it my “Instrullation”; part installation part instrument.
The twenty or so families of sounds are grouped into four major categories:
1. Topical – brief concrète sounds (field recordings) that reflect specific topics covered in the Library
2. Symbolic – brief concrète sounds that (for me) epitomize or symbolize a library experience (e.g., whispering, pages turning, etc.)
3. Musical – longer continuous “musical” sounds that undulate and float
4. Voices – voices of readers who offered me recordings they made while reading passages from books they found in the stacks.
When people visit the Library on any given Sunday afternoon (and even when they don’t), I play the Instrullation to enhance, accent, and sculpt the space. One visitor said that the soundscapes gave them the feeling of a soft warm embrace. A nearby sound increased one visitor’s interest in a topic that happened to be close by. They thought they caused it. (They didn’t.) I was told by one person that a fleeting distant sound came as a surprise and actually drew them towards it, to see what was there. They then checked out and enjoyed that section of the stacks. It literally moved them.
As part of the residency, I also wanted to play the installation along with other musicians in the space. I found an excellent pairing one Sunday afternoon in 2024, when Kattt and Kenneth Atchley came in for a first visit and a listen. That visit led to Kattt and Kenneth’s (aka greensatan’s) monthly visits to improvise together in the space. After several months we dubbed our trio “Resonant Margin”.