MURMUR
Conversation, turned into light and form.
- Creative technology
- Installation
- Software
Context
MURMUR is a site-specific installation commissioned for a public forum on the future of the city. The brief: make the room’s conversation visible to everyone in it.
Challenge
The installation had to respond in real time, respect privacy completely and remain legible to a passing audience, not only to the people speaking.
Thinking
We decided early that MURMUR would never record or display words. It would listen only to rhythm, volume and turn-taking — the shape of a conversation rather than its content.
Direction
A slowly evolving geometric field projected across a wall: each voice adds an arc, agreement draws arcs together, and silence lets the field settle back to stillness.
Making
We built the audio analysis pipeline, a generative rendering engine and a calibration tool for the venue, all running locally with no network connection or stored audio.
System
The same engine produces a printed record of each session — an abstract map of the discussion — which participants could take with them.
Outcome
The installation became a visual anchor for the forum and its session maps were used in the event’s published summary.
Reflection
Constraints made the work. Refusing to capture words forced a more poetic, and more trustworthy, representation of how people think together.