Untitled (With)
Interactive sound installation
Fluorescent tube lights, sound, Max/MSP, responsive light system
Dimensions variable
A sculptural sound installation in which fluorescent light, sound, and site conditions are composed together.
Untitled (With) is an interactive sound installation made from suspended fluorescent-tube forms, light, sound, and a live responsive system. The work does not use interaction as a clear trigger or spectacle. Instead, movement, shadow, and changes in light alter the sound gradually, allowing the room and those moving through it to become part of the work’s conditions.
The installation developed from earlier performance works with fluorescent tubes, where sound was drawn from the lights themselves. In this later sculptural form, the tubes are suspended in the gallery and composed in relation to the architecture of each site. Their spacing, height, angle, and density are not fixed in advance, but adjusted during installation so that the work responds to the room.
Although Untitled (With) predates Hamilton’s PhD, it is an important precursor to the research that followed. It establishes a physically situated way of making in which sound, light, object, and site are worked together rather than treated as separate elements. This concern later became central to Hamilton’s practice-based PhD research, Composing with Site: Re-authoring Sound-Image Across Physical and Digital Environments.
Project Description
Untitled (With) uses custom fluorescent-tube forms, sound, and a responsive system to create a slowly changing installation. The audio is drawn from the sound of the lights and tuned through live processing. As light levels shift, and as people move through or around the work, the sound changes gradually.
The interaction is deliberately subtle. The viewer does not press, activate, or control the work in an obvious way. Instead, their presence becomes one condition among others: light, shadow, distance, movement, and the architecture of the room all affect how the installation behaves.
This slowness is central to the work. Rather than producing immediate cause and effect, the installation creates a situation in which small changes accumulate. The work is composed so that sound, light, and spatial arrangement remain quietly active, even when no single event appears to happen.
Site / Installation
Each presentation of Untitled (With) is installed in response to the site. The fluorescent forms act as sculptural objects, light sources, sound sources, and visual anchors. Their arrangement shapes how the viewer/listener moves through the room, while the sound changes in relation to light and activity within the space.
In some installations, responsive areas were positioned in relation to other works in the exhibition. This meant that moving toward one work could also affect another. The gallery was therefore treated less as a set of separate objects and more as a connected field of sound, light, material, and movement.
Within Hamilton’s wider practice, Untitled (With) marks an important stage in the development of a site-responsive sound-image method. It shows an earlier form of the question that later drives the PhD research: how can sound, image, object, and site be composed so that their relations remain perceivable in encounter?