sound installation for a configuration of 27 loudspeakers and computer-controlled grand piano with light ambience

I. The architectonic space as venue for sound and light. The electro-acoustic space installation opens up various aspects of internal and external realms of experience. The fact that it is by its very nature independent of any definite kind of sound material creates an open tableau for sounds of very different kinds and origins. The resounding space becomes a realm of experience for very wide fields of association. The installation lives from the transitoriness of sound and light. Loudspeakers are distributed all over the room. They create the locations of the sound-body, become significant through the sound - a loudspeaker tableau, in which fragments of sound are washed upwards, mix with one another, create scenes, vanish again. The listener can walk about within the sound-body, which gives rise to various different perspectives of listening. In addition to the resounding space an artificial light environment is also set up, for the aim is to create an integral performance venue, in order to lay claim to a comprehensive perception, by means of the indefiniteness and the relativity of which the recipient can create for himself a personal, individual space-time continuum. II. TopoPhonien The work I have been doing for many years with electronic music inspired me at the end of the 1980's to develop artistic concepts for loudspeaker installations by means of which sound can be "concretely" moved three-dimensionally within a given space. Between 1990 and 1992, I developed together with Sukandar Kartadinata (hardware construction, software development) the project TopoPhonien. This concerns computer-controlled space-sound installations which involve the distribution of loudspeakers within a space, creating a matrix, a track by means of which the sound can be directed into or moved within the space. In addition to pitch, rhythm and tone-colour, the spatial movement becomes the fourth structural parameter here. In particular the exactly controlled timing of the sound motion in synchronization with the digital production of sound brings about space-sound motions which can be clearly experienced. This and the movement of the people in the room allows the listener to experience analogies with his tangible, organic, acoustic environment, where noises and sounds flow into each other. III. TopoPhonicPlateaus The spatial installation for the "star hall" in Donaueschingen is a sound-light body in which the listeners can walk about, the acoustical and optical conditions of which are continually changing. Electro-acoustical sound, instrumental sound, human voice and noises (i.e. every kind of audio material) are interwoven with one another and give rise to a complex speech character which breaks down boundaries and establishes itself between traditional genres such as electronic music, radio play or "musique concrète". The texts used are taken from Nächte und Spindeln (Nights and Spindles) by Jochen Beyse and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Inspired by Hofstadter's application of contrapuntal principles to the presentation of the text, the spoken material is chiefly subjected to musical criteria in the presentation of polyrhythmical planes, contrapuntal speech melodies and repetitive structures, i.e., speech syntax and semantics are dissolved in sound. The only acoustic instrument in the sound-body is the computer-controlled concert grand piano, which thus takes on an exposed position within the installation. In addition, the computer control makes it possible to programme passages which would be impossible for human beings to play on the piano, which then sometimes take on affinity to electronic music - for example, when glissando lines are heard ppppp, which are rather more reminiscent of the soft purring of an electronic tape than of the sound of a piano. The digital synchronization of the piano with the loudspeaker installation has the effect of combining the heterogeneous levels of sound to create one sound-body "playing" together. The loudspeaker ensemble together with the concert grand piano and the lighting give rise to sound-light territories which again open up new scenes, create metamorphoses. They change, coupled with one another, flowing and broken-up, create complex worlds of fleeting acoustical and optical impressions of the planes of thought opened up to the external world.