Meridian7: Intercept Tone/Vacant Level Surround

Meridian7 presents Intercept Tone/Vacant Level, a multi-channel audio installation inspired by archival recordings of the electromagnetic terrain that captivated early telephone network explorers. As an AIR at Harvestworks, Meridian7 completed three instruments that bring obsolete telephone equipment back to a life of patching audio signals. The piece explores the sonic terrain of analog switching networks punctuated with rhythmic signal pulses, crosstalk, static, messages between the wires.

Meridian 7 aka artist Lori Napoleon created and performed an early version of the piece using her hand built analog modules in the 2013 New York Electronic Art Festival. As an Artist in Residence at Harvestworks ‘13, she completed three new instruments that bring obsolete telephone equipment back to a life of patching signals, including a comb filter which she constructed inside a table-top hotel switchboard, creating evolving timbres through a process of time-delayed feedback that forms “notches” of positive and negative interference. 

Intercept Tone/Vacant Level is part of an ongoing project that transforms vintage switchboards into modular synthesizers and sequencers. The piece explores the vast sonic terrain of vintage analog switching systems, their banks of relays and miles of cables punctuated with rhythmic signaling pulses, continuous drones and hums, vaguely human-sounding crosstalk, errant static and messages between the wires.