Installation | Miles Friday: “Breathwork”

Breathwork is a twelve-channel sound installation where loudspeakers become breathing bodies. Each loudspeaker is encased in an inflatable bag that swells and contracts in response to low-frequency drones, forming a slow, ever-shifting breath-like choreography.

Within this field of motion, clouds of layered just intonation partials drift in and out of perception, while low frequencies create a base of acoustic beating and Shepard tone-esque glissandos. By transforming the loudspeaker into a pneumatic pump, Breathwork reimagines the loudspeaker as a tool for visual synthesis, where vibrations in the air animate inflatables as kinetic sculptures—synthetic lungs whose movement create polyrhythms that can be both seen and heard.

All audio is generated live via SuperCollider and is running on two Bela Mini Multichannel Expanders.

About the artist

Miles Jefferson Friday is an artist who focuses on sound as his primary medium. Building new instruments, composing music, designing sound sculptures, and creating immersive installations, his practice invites us to reconsider how we hear and listen. Miles is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Music at University of Texas at San Antonio, holds a DMA and MFA from Cornell University, and an MA from the Eastman School of Music.