Great you are interested to join the Conversation at the Greenhouse! You are welcome to propose your work. Send us a short bio, your proposal and if possible some examples of your work. We also suggest to read through the technical information below. If any questions arise, please do ask them in your initial email. If you have a great idea for a new work, but aren't up to the technical challenge to provide an 8-channel file, please let us know, we are here to help!

If everything is clear, please send your proposal to greenhouseconversations@meakusma.org

Your work should be an 8-channel WAV-file, which will be stored on an SD-card and played back through a WavePlayer8. The total file size should preferably not exceed the capacity of one SD card, which is 32GB. The work will be played back through 8 Dayton-Audio HDN-8 transducers. They have a frequency range of approximately 40hz-15.000hz and are mounted on the glass of the greenhouse. The sound passing to the transducers is amplified by an MN17OBT amplifier. The transducers are mounted in a rectangle with a channel layout as shown in the image below.

If you are comfortable working in stereo and want to translate a stereo work for the Greenhouse, you can just copy the left channel to channels 1-4 and the right channel to channels 5-8. Your work will be played back with 4 speakers in a row for each side of your spatial image. Please keep in mind that you will be playing each channel 4 times, so it is advised to reduce the volume of each channel by -6db to match the other works. If you are used to working in quadrophonic setup, you might just copy each channel once to the neighbouring channel. Please pay attention to the orientation of your quadrants. Q1 in the Greenhouse is considered left-bottom, and then you continue counter-clockwise around the Greenhouse. In that layout, your first channel Q1 should be copied to channel 1-2, the second channel Q2 should be copied to channel 3-4, the third channel Q3 should be copied to channel 5-6 and the fourth channel Q4 should be copied to channel 7-8. Please keep in mind that you will be playing each channel 4 times, so it is advised to reduce the volume of each channel by -3db to match the other works. If you are comfortable working in ambisonics, you should decode your file yourself for the Greenhouse. You can setup a room with the speakers as indicated on the image. Play back your file through this setup and record the output to each virtual speaker separately and combine that into one normal 8-channel .wav file.

You can of course also directly create your work in 8 channels. If your DAW allows you to work in multi-channel, the export should be no issue. However, if you make use of a DAW that doesn't support multi-channel export (such as Ableton Live), you should pay attention to exporting each separate track with the same total length, so your structure and organization is preserved when you combine the channels in another DAW for the final file. The open-source audio editor Audacity allows for exporting multi-channel tracks, so that might be a solution if you are in need for a free tool. Reaper also allows multi-channel editing and exporting. In Max or Pd, you can write and export a multi-channel buffer easily.

Working in multi-channel allows for a great audio-experience. However, making that movement perceptible as you intended it while composing is a task that requires careful consideration. If you are unexperienced, it might be a good idea to learn a bit about the technology and the perception of sound in space. Sound on Sound has a good article series to start with.