---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'SOS = B2B: Sound on Sound = Block to Block'
tags: [Articles]

---

###### tags: `Articles`
# SOS = B2B: Sound on Sound = Block to Block 

This sound installation is a collaboration between Geneva School of Art & Design, EPFL Media & Design Laboratory and The University of Tokyo (Computer Network Lab)

The installation departs from the idea to sonify GAS data produced from the Ethereum Blockchain, GAS refers to the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on the Ethereum network. Since each Ethereum transaction requires computational resources to execute, each transaction requires a fee. GAS refers to the fee required to conduct a transaction on Ethereum successfully[^1]. As an incentive for the Ethereum Blockchain to function in an unimpaired manner, the GAS fee can fluctuate corresponding to social and technical factors to ensure sufficient honest power for security. As the world was is going through an energy crisis in the wake of the Ukranian war, there was a fluctuation of this value that was changing in very unpredictable ways in the recent months.

In his book *Auditory Display: Sonification, Audification, and Auditory Interfaces* Gregory Kramer describes sonification as “the mapping of numerically represented relations in some domain under study to relations in an acoustic domain for the purpose of interpreting, understanding or communicating relations in the domain under study” [^2]. The way that we approach sonification was to to use it as an artisitic component to create tension in a generative sound environment. It was not used to create more clarity of the live data but to experience the data from the subjective perception of the public trough sound. The speakers volume is programmed to go in a circular direction creating an effect of mouvement towards the right direction when the GAS value went up and inversely to the towards the left when the gas value went down. The sound was created from a complex mathematical operation that was comparing the values of GAS to the previous generating a note in a scale predetermined.

In the context of ISEA 2023 we would like to exhibit the second iteration of the piece that we are currently working on taking as point of departure the question: Can blockchain forget?
As of today the Ethereum Blockchain can only go back to 250 past blocks which means it relays on central server services to still review past this limited number of blocks.
We would like to expose that although promised to be a decentralised system with the premise of data stored forever, there are limitations that are being solved trough aritifial and centralised manners.
The idea is to treat Blockchain as tape loop to generate a Sound on Sound effect like Frippertronics(). Our goal is to create analogy of Blockchain as being a tape loop by recording sounds in to its blocks and then play them trough a 6 channel sound setup.




[^1]: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/#top

[^2]: G. Kramer, Auditory Display: Sonification, Audification, and Auditory Interfaces. Perseus, 1993.

**Materials for installation:**
6 speakers
2 Roland Synthesizers ( JU-06a & SH-01 )
16 Channel sound processor
Sound Mixer

**Materials for performance:**
Several different guitar pedals
Headless Guitar

**Software**
MaxMSP
NodeJS custom server

**Credits:**
Sound Design: Juan Gomez
Programming: Juan Gomez
Server programming: Yepeng Ding