Container Study

Container Study is a site-specific sound composition for a single freight container, eight speakers and a subwoofer.  The piece explores both the acoustic properties of the metal container, and sounds that are associated with a shipping container.  Space is explored physically through the 3D array of speakers using ambisonics as a spatialization method, and also metaphorically through a collective imagination and memory of what a associations shipping container holds.  This memory of space informs what types of sounds are used, from trains, to fog horns and boat engines, to voices along a train station and through on-board amplification systems.  These archetypal sounds serve as a jumping off point, as the piece takes the listener on a real-time, generative sonic journey from the percussive metallic world of freight trains to the smooth, waving oceans of tankers.  These worlds form a type of scale which is then obscured and blurred using sound processing techniques.  There is no beginning or end as the sounds form a circular logic.  There is, however, a climax as the fog horns turn into never ending glissandos that build around the resonant frequencies of the container.