Sound landscapes - applications of applied cultural science?

Remarks on Sabine Schäfer's TopoPhonien

Sabine Schäfer's TopoPhonien are sound environments established within an existing physical space - a factory, a hall, a church. Through them, the architectural structure is expanded, and completed with an acoustic scenario, where people can enter, and move around inside: viewing, and listening. Thus, the spatial configuration of the sound sources as determined by the number and positioning of the loudspeaker boxes, must be adapted to the existing structure in such a way that the real architectural space, and the virtual sound space, together form a new, virtu-real unity which serves to display the artistically intended result. In order to meet this purpose, the original visual space may be - in certain cases even: must be - enriched or completed through coloured planes or sculptures or ligh objects, as happened in the TopoPhonicZones in the BAdischer Kunstverein 1992 - so that the effect, which is due to the existing space, can be visually achieved. äThe artistic product, the sound composition, and its virtu-real effectuation, thus, can not be imagined independent from the concrete architectural-visual space. Necessarily then, the sound composition - implicitly or explicitly - includes elements interpretive of the architectural space, thus realizing, as one result of the compository efforts, as a spatial metamorphosis, a new, artistic hyper space. The dynamic spatial sound experience of the recipient - who is "not just" a listener but also a viewer - is, then, based on the sound embodiment of the composition, determined by the following parameters: the point in space where he is located at the time, the speed, and the direction of his movement, and - obviously - his individual capacity of grasping the tonal event, and the specific sound-view combination, and his ability to to combine them into a complex artistic occurence. What is it then that determines the composition, and its realization, what is the degree of "artistic freedom" in producing TopoPhonien? The conceptual artistic idea doubtlessly lies with the composer, may she be stimulated by spatial structure which is physically present, or: even if a conceptual idea may adopt more precise features as a result of a specific space being "discovered" by her. However, the infrastructural opportunities for transforming the idea - the number and positions of the sound sources, the arrangement of the sound strings - must react to the physical space. And here, the degrees of freedom are reduced the more the higher the degree of specificity of the architectural space. For: nothing can be accidental where a topophonic hyperspace is going to emerge. Restrictions - of course - exist for technical reasons also: the number of exits from the sound mixer, the number of audio signals approachable, and - most of all - in the form of financial bottlenecks. Should this - in some future situation - no longer be the case, we might ask ourselves: which multiplicity of hyper spaces, which sound environmental variations, which sound worlds, might evolve if we could supply Sabine Schfer - and, certainly then, other TopoPhonien composers - with a variable architectural space whose structure would be sufficiently flexible to accommodate differing sound spaces? The production of sound landscapes is a transdisciplinary cultural process: the artistic idea, the musical structuring, the architectural spatial pattern, the adaptation of the visual objects, the computer hard- and software conception, interact with each other, and with a series of engineering activities, in order to put the complete artistic act into reality at a certain time, and at a certain location. What wonder is there that the transdisciplinary, applied cultural science takes notice of this occurence, that the scientist who is fascinated by the work itself also grasps the opportunity of analytically reflecting the process (as an application, so to speak). Sabine Schfer, thus, offers twofold pleasures: the artistic, and the thinking pleasure: hers, in response, is the thanking pleasure.