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Nicholas Collins discusses his app, "Pea Soup to Go." (Audio)

Dec 06, 2014
Interviewed by Tom Roe.

The "Saturday Afternoon Show" welcomes Nicolas Collins, celebrated artist and Professor, Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who will speak with host Tom Roe about his newly released "Pea Soup To Go," an open access version of Collin's venerable feedback composition, "Pea Soup." "Pea Soup To Go" is a free streaming audio web application that generates an ever-changing domestic sound art installation on any computer.

Premiered in 1974, "Pea Soup" creates a self-stabilizing feedback network of microphones and speakers that tunes itself to the architectural acoustics of the space and responds to events—instrumental performances, ambient sounds, human movement, even air currents—with swooping flights of sound. "Pea Soup To Go" mines decades of performances, including contributions by numerous guest musicians, from around the globe to produce a similarly dreamy soundscape that slowly shifts from key to key as the app shuffles and cross-fades from one recorded space to another.