Shoutkast (with Jaap Mutter) (2011-2012)

  • Installations, Interactive Installations, Sound Installations
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Shoutkast is an interactive sound installation. The complete installation consists of twenty cupboards of 1m80 high and 35cm wide. All together the installation can span a width of seven meters. Each cupboard is made out of carton, has seven drawers, and all drawers have a unique and randomly generated IP-address on its front.

These drawers open and close in a random order that is always changing. When a drawer is open, the visitor can scream into it. The scream will be saved in the drawer, and every time this particular drawer opens, the sample of that scream will be heard again.

When another visitor screams loud enough into the same drawer again, the sample will be overwritten. There is always more than one drawer open simultaneously, so the more drawers contain sound, the bigger the cacophony.

Shoutkast is a reaction on the contemporary culture of blogs and comments on the internet. The drawers and cupboards are all made out of carton, a temporary and disposable material, just like the samples and opinions that are stored in these drawers and their digital counterparts.

The title of the work is a combination of the english word ‘shout’ and the dutch word ‘kast’, which means cupboard, or closet. Except for this literal translation, this title also refers to the phenomenon of ‘shoutcasting’ software which makes it possible to broadcast audio over the internet.