Dr. Christopher Plummer

This focus has been growing for a long time. Designing shows at the Hangar Theatre in the 90s I was always moving the speakers around and trying to fill the entire space with sound. Creating a sound field where the audience only heard sound and couldn’t identify where the speakers were. At the time there were many technological limitations that required a lot of creativity to overcome. These days there is an explosion of tools that allow significantly more dynamic work but continue some long running psychoacoustic controversies. For me this has been a perfect time to grow into this specialization as it feels like I have been growing right along with the industry.  

As an undergraduate program we focus on introducing students to the breadth of opportunities in sound. This includes sound design for Theatre/Movies/Video Games, live sound reinforcement, studio and concert recording and streaming, acoustic ecology, and art installations. This allows me to continue to practice a diversity of activities and collaborate with numerous amazing colleagues. At the same time finding the core artistic and technical foundations of psychoacoustics allows me to teach students in ways that support their professional lives well beyond what we imagine while they are students. Graduates are working with artists like Taylor Swift/Lady Gaga/Metallic, installing and running theme park attractions and museum displays with Disney/Ferrari/Universal Studios/Smithsonian, working on award winning video games, maintaining analog recording equipment for the National Archives, developing new hardware and even new types of entertainment venues like the new Sphere in Las Vegas. 

            When I was studying the historiography of science at Cornell, I read a book on research schools. Their approach to history was to not look at the individuals who made the big breakthroughs but to look at the schools that produced numerous scientists that would make big breakthroughs. That has always stood out to me as the sort of place I wanted to be. I want to be involved in the research at a high level but I want to be doing it as part of a community with an impact significantly greater than any one member. I feel very lucky to have found a home where I feel I have found that. 

The two biggest changes are the scope and capability of immersive audio control and the explosion in internet streaming. With the power of modern processors, immersive audio systems can virtualize large arrays of speakers into 3D artistic space and providing tools to take a 3-dimensional artistic product and listen on headphones, stereo, 5.1, 22.2, or even larger systems. This creates enormous creative potential for artists, particularly less technical artists, and at the same time the technology still needs refinement.  

The increase in video conferencing really highlighted the limitations of current internet audio creating an environment with delays and difficulty knowing who was speaking.  While improved codecs are making it more natural to have conversations with less cutting out of participants as groups get larger the lack of spatial cues to know who is talking can make following a discussion much more difficult than in person. Spatial audio and solutions like Apple’s Vision Pro where a three dimensional aural and visual space can leverage our fundamental brain wiring for more natural interaction is very exciting. 

Our culture is very visually oriented and as such we often overlook the power and importance of sound. To some extent this means that sound can have a bigger impact as listeners don’t realize how sound is manipulating their emotions. But it does mean that escaping noise can be difficult and that many spaces are harsh and reflective creating uncomfortable spaces.  The pinnacle of this problem are restaurants and bars where you must yell to be heard and school gymnasiums with “exciting” acoustics that get audience pumped up for sporting events but are often used for many functions at odds with that acoustic. 

The level of interdisciplinary support and collaboration at Tech has been incredibly empowering. I have collaborated in a variety of ways with faculty in Humanities, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Forestry and have enjoyed and learned through each experience. But the core support has been the support of faculty in theatre and music, their support in creating interdisciplinary majors has been phenomenal and unfortunately often lacking at other schools. And more broadly the support of Humanities, Physics, and the College of Engineering in creating interdisciplinary degrees has allowed Michigan Tech to create programs that have very few peers in the world. 

I’m pursuing three areas of interest: theatrical sound design, immersive audio installations, and loudspeaker design. I continue to work as a professional theatrical sound designer, keeping my core skills strong and as a place to apply immersive audio systems to a specific context. Theatre is also the area that is currently driving the most interesting immersive audio advances. But as an artistic creator I’m shifting more to installations and exploring immersive environments in other ways outside of theatre. One of the things that stuck with me from the Listening to Parks project I did several years ago was the feedback we got from schools. We provided small systems with stereo speakers and a large TV that were placed in rooms at local schools and played sound and images from local national parks. In the Houghton Elementary school the principal used this space for students who were having disciplinary trouble in the classroom. Instead of sitting in the office these students spent some time in our space and the report was that this provided significant benefits to students finding an emotional balance and returning to the classroom in productive ways. I would like to build on that and have more impact on the world like that. My last area is on the design of loudspeakers and I am currently in conversation with researchers at Harman International, owners of JBL, on advancing a research based design philosophy I’m very excited on the possibilities of those conversations.