Join us on a tour of sites connected to Filament Surge, a mobile app created by Bill Parod for geo-located, spatialized sound pieces. Participants will have an opportunity to experience the app at each site and hear more about the context of its creation.
Tour Schedule: 11am Experimental Sound Studio | 5925 N. Ravenswood Ave.
1pm Cafe Tola (across the street from the old Williams Electronics Games location!) | 3324 N. California Ave.
2pm VGA Gallery | 2418 W. Bloomingdale Ave., #102
The sounds in this Filament use music and sound effects from mid-1980s pinball games: Space Shuttle, Comet, High Speed, and Pinbot - all by Chicago game manufacturer Williams Electronics Games. The original sounds were made with crude digital technology by today's standards, but tag the "genre" wonderfully. They're used now in a phone with greater computing power and sophistication, which is part of the fun. Parod will talk about this work, the use of the Unity game platform for spatializing sound, and reminisce about what he can remember from pinball game development in Chicago in the 1980s. All this by way of a back-room tour through Filament Surge.
Individuals are responsible for their own transportation between sites.
This tour is part of The Ears Have Walls: A Survey of Sound Games curated by Chaz Evans and Stephan Moore as a joint exhibition at both VGA Gallery and ESS.
