Sound Design for a System of 1000 Distributed Independent Audio-Visual Devices

This paper describes the sound design for Bloom, a light and sound installation made up of 1000 distributed independent audio-visual pixel devices, each with RGB LEDs, Wifi, Accelerometer, GPS sensor, and sound hardware. These types of systems have been explored previously, but only a few systems have exceeded 30-50 devices and very few have included sound capability, and therefore the sound design possibilities for large systems of distributed audio devices are not yet well understood. In this article we describe the hardware and software implementation of sound synthesis for this system, and the implications for design of media for this context.