SONIC LINES N` ROOMS NO.7
Eight channel spatial sound composition for a
twelve-limbed, accessible Space-soundBody

<sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>

Center for Art and Media / ZKM Karlsruhe
Opening Thursday, October 11th 2001, 20.00h ZKM-Cube


Inauguration of the accessible Space-soundBody
for the VIP-Lounge of the Society for
Supporting Art and Media Technology

 

First performance of the eight channel spatial sound composition
SONIC LINES N` ROOMS NO. 7

Lecture
Prof. Helga de la Motte-Haber
ACOUSTICAL SPACE ARCHITECTURES

 

Opening of the twelve-limbed, accessible Space-soundBody

SONIC LINES N` ROOMS No.7 belongs to the project series SONIC LINES N` ROOMS which combines two different space sound installation-types. These are SpaceSoundObjects which may be walked around with linear constructions of loudspeakers and accessible SpaceSoundBodies with loudspeakers which are placed close to and along the wall where the visitor imagines him/herself in the interior of a sound body, completely surrounded by sound. These SpaceSound objects and bodies can be performed single or combined depending on the respective project.
Thus, among other presentations that have taken place in the year 2001, the spatial sound composition SONIC LINES N´ ROOMS No. 4 was presented as a concert performance on the occasion of the 10th Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival in Gainsville, U.S.A.; the walk-in SpatialSoundBody wearing the same name was presented in Aarhus, Denmark, at the festival MIX 01. The first performance of the eight-track spatial sound composition SONIC LINES N ROOMS No.5 took place during the London limitedNoise festival in May of the same year.

The only raw sound material in SONIC LINES N' ROOMS No.7 is amorphous, animal-natural-calls and sounds as well as heterogeneous everyday noises from the human milieu and environment. However, there are no vocal sounds directly from humans nor are there sound materials produced synthetically in some manner or other, both of these were completely excluded in this electro-acoustic spatial sound composition. The noises and sounds are recorded with the instrumentation of the digital sampler. Delving into the smallest molecular region, the sampler is able to put at the disposal of the sound artist single particles of the inner structure of this noise-sound material for artistic development. With these "abstract machines" - to quote a concept of the French philosophers Deleuze/Guattari - we, so to speak, carried out what we called an "EndoSonoScopy" of the single sound material, in order to take single sound tests (so-called samples or fragment-patterns) from the organic sound webs.

Whilst opening themselves up, previously imperceptible inner-polyphonies and harmonic sound-fields of inner resonance spaces now become audible. What occurs is, so to speak, a revealing and exteriorising of the inner intensities of the respective sounds.
Furthermore, so-called "artificial sound milieus" are formed in a quasi acoustic amalgamation process. That is, a temporarily existing, specific mixture of sound substances and particles creates by means of self-impelled, proliferating self-intensifying loops - always starting from the middle (mi/middle lieu/place) - a symbiotic diversity of dynamically driven SoundEnergyStructures.
The artificial creation of consistencies in terms of a symbiotically-fluorescing development of sound into actual animal/natural, phenomenon/noise succeeds in the same measure as the animal, the natural phenomenon, the noise develops into something "different": pure line, pure color, pure rhythm, pure movement, pure figure pure condition!