2005OP_ERA: Sonic Dimension

OP_ERA: SONIC DIMENSION is a music box. Three large projection screens, mounted on a steel frame, arrange themselves as an open cube. On each screen, hundreds of vertical lines of light. When the lines are touched, they vibrate and sound — like the strings of a harp.

The visitor enters the cube and the cube responds. Movement and voice are the two interfaces. A 360° microphone records the sounds the visitor makes; software analyzes the frequencies and translates them into visible vibration on the strings. Speak a low tone, and the bass strings shimmer; clap your hands, and the field flashes. Lidar sensors mounted above the screens read the position of the body in real time — every gesture of hand or shoulder triggers a string into sound. Two ways to play the instrument: with the voice, with the body.

The geometry the work asks the visitor to enter is sonic. Pythagoras built scales from string ratios; here the strings are projections, the ratios are software, and the room itself is the instrument. The visitor is not a listener but a player. The cube does not stage sound — it makes sound, with the body as bow.

The work has been built twice. The 2005 version used 72 photosensors on metal rails with 72 reflecting mirrors. The 2020 version, commissioned by Itaú Cultural and reprogrammed by Victor Gomes, replaced the optical sensor array with three Lidar laser scanners and premiered at MAAT Lisbon in 2022. Same work, different apparatus — what persists is the cube and the gesture.