keine Ahnung von Schwerkraft - Oblivious to Gravity
A concept for the artistic research of building sound compositions - in progress since 2010
|Introduction|
This project series concentrates on the artistic research of “building sound compositions”.
Starting in Graz, six abandoned buildings in various European cities will be used as sound spaces and become an integral and tactile part of multiple channel sound compositions.
For this venture, a series of compositions meant for future reference will be created in and by the characteristics of these different buildings.
This will help gain knowledge of how soundart responds to conditions specific to a certain place and of how acoustic characteristics of a particular environment can become part of a new composition.
The series will be open to visitors, it will be documented and presented in various concert situations.
A concluding presentation is being prepared for a symposium in Graz.
“…As powerful as my first experience with spatial music was,
it was clear from the very beginning that presenting music
in a space meant for other purposes would be a challenge.
Spatial music requires new halls that are specially designed to meet its requirements…”
(K. Stockhausen, Musik im Raum 1958).
The above words, which were written after the debut performance of “Gesang der Jünglinge”, describes what is now commonly considered a classic challenge for electro-acoustical performances. In conventional concert halls, studio-produced compositions tend to face inadequate acoustic conditions with regard to the composition’s sound and structure. For this reason, techniques were created which allow spatial compositions to be played independent of spatial conditions and special halls were created for the presentation of electro-acoustic performances.
The approach I would like to take in the compositional series „Keine Ahnung von Schwerkraft“ is different to the ones I have taken before with regard to concept and composition.
For the past three years I have been working on spatial compositions in Ambisonics and Wave Field Synthesis, where the space of a sound composition plays more of a secondary role. Now I wish to focus more on space and turn it into an inseparable factor or even foundation of composition. Despite all the interesting theoretical knowledge of and presuppositions regarding Ambisonics and Wave Field Synthesis, Sweet Spot and Sweet Field, I believe that for the overall sound and perception of each piece, the space in which the composition was created and in which the performance is meant to take place play an essential role, albeit one that can neither be preserved nor moved to another location. Thus space is usually not a prerequisite for production and perception, but it is an inherent component of the composition.
|Vacancy in art|
There is one practical reason for using abandoned buildings in this context: you can’t bother anyone, you have the freedom to experiment. And because there is no one to bother you, you can focus all your energy on your surroundings.
The socio-political aspect of abandoned buildings plays an important role in this series of compositions. Of course, there have always been abandoned buildings, but their numbers have been increasing in the inner and outer areas of cities in recent years. It seems some pedestrian shopping areas would be proper ghost towns were it not for the ground floor shops located in the otherwise empty buildings.
Real estate agents used to advertise the availability of their objects, whereas now, for-rent signs advertising commission-free rental adorn buildings right next to the many construction sites one now sees so frequently for new office complexes.
The project is not about the superficial denunciation of tough speculative economic practice.
However, I have decided to make a temporary dedication to vacancy – to vacant buildings, which are deemed worthless in economic terms and isolated from their surroundings, just waiting to be ripped apart, yet rich in their own history, architectural value and atmosphere.
These aspects come to life through this artistic initiation. The one-sided and often pejorative way of looking at/hearing these empty places, sometimes considered ‘non-places’, in our neighborhoods can be altered through alternative interpretations. These non-places are a symbol of opportunity.
|Motivation|
I am working on alternatives to existing compositional practices. Electro-acoustical “studio art” should be confronted with every-day life.
My objective is not to just try out an idea on compositional theory in buildings, but rather to create grounds for successive research which will ultimately lead to the creation of a basic instrument in an area inspired by working with buildings and the effect it has on artistic composition while taking into account the differences in acoustics, architecture and history of the buildings.
The composition as well as the speaker concert should not take place in a hall or studio designed for electronic music, but rather in a place that is normally meant for other purposes and whose architectural character is an integral part of or even the foundation of the composition and its presentation.
|Objective|
My objective is to create another (new) practice in spatial sound compositions. Buildings should be able to be compositionally “read” upon entering them – the composition starts from the first acoustical impression. Through experience and skill, this impression should be expressed via an independent spatial sound composition.
|Instrument|
The equipment for this project consists of a set up of 32 active speakers (as well as D/A converters, audio interface, laptop, tripods, cable reel, cases with wheels) and an advanced multi-channel system that allows the maximum of flexibility while working inside a building.
After months of planning and testing, this instrument was adopted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, who will be lending it to me for three years in a cooperative framework agreement.
Because the project is highly dependent on location, it will continually require new solutions and approaches. The solutions will be found in cooperation with the institute; they will be documented and made available for others.
|Cooperation|
The success of the project will depend on its partners to work through obstacles posed by the location, i.e. “How do architects read the visual area of the building? Which acoustical criteria can be considered during the construction of the buildings? What role do construction materials play with regard to the creation of visual and acoustic living spaces? In how far does our knowledge of the perception of living space correspond to current construction techniques? Etc.”
|Methods 01-03|
01
Composition
The first phase of the project is dedicated to the vacancy of buildings.
More and more buildings are unoccupied for longer periods of time in business and shopping districts as well as in residential and industrial areas. The vacant and isolated hallways, offices, basements and stairways should be used as sites for spatial sound compositions, concerts and recording.
For this project it is crucial to create the compositions on-site so that they can be inspired by their surroundings; that means not a single part of the composition shall be created in a studio and then tailored to fit the building. The spatial sound composition should only be worked on upon entering the building.
Basements could be used as natural echo chambers, windows can be opened to capture sounds from outside and doors can be used as filters. Depending on the positioning of the speakers, materials used for isolation and reflection, such as carpets, glass, wood and steel, will play a role in the creation of the sound material. Each building’s unique and individual sounds can be integrated and the building’s history and original purpose can help form the sound composition and its structure.
a.inside the building
Each building should be explored as far as possible. Listening to the unique sounds of the location will provide new ideas for further thought. For the compositional process, the ear will be the most important instrument.
The main question here: “what are my impressions of the building and its surroundings?”
b.Survey
After collecting impressions of the area’s atmosphere, the further step is to answer a few questions about each room to be used.
For this, Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò and I have created a conceptual, software-aided toolbox.
Standard applications “test” the rooms, ex. its frequency, reveberation times, absorption, ect:
Conceptual toolbox
SC-Patches are used for the spatialization and for expedient testing of a sound room, for example multi-track rotating bursts, low short pulses and high frequency waves, pitches for various rooms in order to “tune” the building with chords. I also use templates for arrangement and sound organization with filters and EQs in channel strips and multichannel versions. Furthermore, for the initial spatial impressions, I have developed standard sound sequences and arrangements that include familiar sound material.
Basically, one approaches the building using a standardized question-answer repertoire (acoustical survey), which can be changed and expanded.
The main question here: “how do the surroundings react?”
This step is not only about preparing and finding a beginning for the composition, but more importantly, about the assumption that the answers to the questions will accumulate as empirical value that can be used to help simplify the questions and help the composer better understand and even learn to read the character of the material, the space and interaction with its surroundings.
c.Compositional Answer
Based on the impressions experienced, the piece is created at the location and out of it.
For this the following is possible:
*Integration of acoustic conditions
*Usage of sight-specific sounds
*Modification of sight-specific sounds
*Spatialization of sounds in the building
*Complete refusal to use the acoustic elements and sounds specific to the location.
The main questions here are:
“How can a place be acoustically (re)organized?”
“being this will change one’s perception of the place, does the place become a different one altogether?”
“Is there an acoustic architecture?”
The result of this process is implicit artistic knowledge, which, in turn, can become a guideline or even the foundation for future practice. This knowledge can thus only be gained through practice, i.e. composing inside buildings, and can then be used to create further works.
02
Concert
Various scenarios come to mind for presenting the works and the building’s atmosphere, whereby the building’s architecture and acoustic properties play pivotal roles in the presentation.
One idea would be to place chairs at different points where the building’s sounds “come together”, for example in staircases connecting different floors or in a hallway near entrances to different rooms.
After selecting listening points, the same piece could be played from different acoustic perspectives. The visitors would change seats after each playback. That means the concert would consist of the same sound material with different colorations and filtering schemes from the building.
Other ideas include installations where the visitors are standing, for example, a walk-in listening-parcours. Listening points could be near some fixed point, for example, in front of door cracked open just a bit, in a ventilation shaft or near a window, behind which the sound composition is played.
In buildings which cannot be entered by visitors it would be record the composition at a specific point, for example from a Soundfield microphone hanging in a stairwell or a Dummyhead fixed to a tripod in the arched ceiling of a basement. The recordings could then be streamed to the IEM’s Cube or saved on a hard drive and played back via earphone concert. An ambisonic playback in the University’s concert hall Mumuth would also be possible.
03
Documentation
a.Video/Photo
A visual documentation of the project is also planned – from the initial point through to the phases of experimentation and composition and finally to recording. The documentation is not for providing a visualization of the finished work as much as it is for documenting and visually supporting the decisions that were made in the process and the experiences gained in order to create a kind of guideline for future buildings and problem solving situations, i.e. to record the experiences for future reference. A photo-documentation and catalog will be created for each building.
b.Audio
In this context, the audio recording of the special sound-space setting is extremely important.
For this, the purist assumption that the composition is so closely linked to the location that it cannot exist without the location, would be plausible. Of course that would mean any recording of the composition would be superfluous.
However, one could also use the given setting to make a recording and in turn, use it in another, independent project. During recording, interesting possibilities unfold for capturing the sound of the building or the sounds of the location and using them in a musical context.
After the initial phases of entering the building, surveying it, compiling the composition and the concert, there is one final step pertaining to picking up the sound setting of the location on microphones and recording it. Perspective variations are possible, for instance outside and inside, close, far, etc. and it is possible to cut the sources from their direct surroundings and put them on separate tracks. A further option would be a room mix on a common time axis. Further options are the aforementioned ambisonic recording for a speaker concert in the Cube or Mumuth or for broadcast on a binaural radio program. These are interesting possibilities because, while the finished product will have been composed and arranged, the fact that it was created in a different “sound setting” will mean it has its own characteristic atmosphere.
|Discussion / Analysis|
At each selected location, it would be very beneficial to make contact with the local art scene, culture organizations and maybe even with universities for fine arts and music.
It would also make sense to offer workshops on building compositions and sight specific sound installation.
The recordings will be made available for public, comprehensive and interdisciplinary discussion about composition with regard to architectural aspects, ex. space, material, architectural arrangement, building usage. The outcome of this discussion could be used as inspiration for new ideas at other locations. It would be desirable to have professionals of certain fields participate in the discussion, such as architects, sociologists, city planners, composers and visual artists. For this, a concluding symposium in Graz would be best.
A set of CDs with six booklets and a summarizing catalog will conclude the cycle (six buildings).
