PARAVENT is a french word meaning “folding screen” or “window shutter”.  Translating from the root parts of the word "para" and "vent", “para” with it's Greek origin means “beside” and “vent” in french means “wind”.  PARAVENT, in it’s usage here simultaneously and concurrently means “folding screen, beside the wind”.

    PARAVENT (2006) is a window screen of the wind.  PARAVENT is presented on a flat wooden installation structure consisting of 16 square video screen panels of which half of these panels are imbedded with audio drivers to create an 8 channel sound diffusion system forming an X pattern within the projection screen itself.  This sonified modular screen design is called the "Synae Screen" by Heimbecker, and was also designed in 2006 in conjunction with PARAVENT .



    The image and sound generated for PARAVENT is conceptually based upon the idea of the movement and accumulation of detritus in the wind, upon a surface.   Analogous to the creation of snow banks and sand dunes, PARAVENT is a representation of wave patterns of the wind, and of what Heimbecker calls  "wind space architecture".

    PARAVENT plays the data created and recorded by the Wind Array Cascade Machine (2003).  WACM is a 64 channel wind data sensor system created by Heimbecker, which captures the movement and wave patterns of the wind, as observed within a field of tall grass or grain on a windy day.  WACM data recordings have been made in situ, from rooftops in Montréal (2004/05) and Québec City (2003).  PARAVENT is one of 4 projects created by Heimbecker using the data generated by the WACM, following POD (2003), SIGNE (2005), and soon, the Turbulence Sound Matrix

    The data of the Wind Array Cascade Machine is organized in the form of a grid 8 units by 8 units, resulting in 64 separate “square” coordinates of 8 bit -10 samples per second serial data.  This data is used by the PARAVENT system to create real time video and audio generation.   For the video image, the data of each WACM sensor in the grid, is visually morphed at the edges of the sensor square beside it to create unity and flow within the image.  The audio generation and diffusion is sub grouped into 16 groups of 4 individual WACM data streams, which correspond to the 16 panels of the installation structure, the Synae Screen.  Half of these 16 subgroup panels are selected to produce sound through the vibration of the video panel itself, sonified by hidden, surface mounted, audio drivers on the rear of the panels.  The result is a unified image and sound structure, where the same data used to generate the visualization is also the data used for the sonification.  For PARAVENT, when presented in combination with the Synae Screen, the video image has a "voice" which is presented at the same time and point of intersection as the visual, and as such, produces a new media representation of "coloured hearing", an experiential manifestation of synaesthesia, while vividly displaying the movement and wave patterns of the wind.

    Working in collaboration with Steve Heimbecker on PARAVENT is programmer Mark Washeim of Berlin, Germany.  The electronic and software systems for WACM (2003) were designed in collaboration with Avatar, Québec, QC, Canada.