Installation 1994/5

Cuisine Concrète was a collaborative project with electroacoustic composer Nye Parry. It was for a double installation: two separate spaces each presenting a partial aspect of the kitchen. One simulates the functional structure of the kitchen within the virtual space of software. The other retains only the surface, producing idealised sounds within the physical space of a kitchen. The project, was never finally realised in its final form as an installation, but the developmental work towards it shaped my ideas about interactive installation and several smaller pieces spun off it.

The Virtual Kitchen had the form of software on a multimedia computer station. Within the software, viewers are faced with a collection of kitchen icons ­ a kitchentop. They can open and manipulate icons to perform kitchen activities. These actions have a direct effect on the sounds emanating from the appliances in the Ideal Kitchen.

The Ideal Kitchen had the form of a an immaculate showroom kitchen with loud sounds whose overall impression is of a piece of musique concrète. On close inspection, each kitchen appliance (fridge, kettle, etc) is producing independent sounds derived from the sound of that appliance in operation (the recorded sound altered according to the parameters set up synchronically in the Virtual Kitchen).