SOUND DRIFTING
The gaze on a molecule through a strong microscope
can evoke the same feeling as looking at a distant
galaxy through a telescope. Knowing that one is perceiving
different objects in different spaces - both dissimilar
in material, size and appearance - one discerns clearly
an identical underlying structure. Without giving up
its own identity, a molecule can become a mirror of
a universe or vice versa: the unbelievably large, a
mirror of the invisibly small. Technology which sharpens
the human ability to distinguish, washes away the culturally
bound limitations of imagination, thus releasing one's
mind for the essential: Things remain the same, what
changes is our attitude towards them.
In the same way, the Linz manifestation of Sound Drifting
was a kind of mirror of the project as a whole. While
it clearly remained just one of the 16 sub-projects
which formed the interdependent, temporary, generative
system - receiving, processing and transmitting sound
data - it was also a physical representation or image
of the overall structure. The Linz installation exploited
the entire range of perceptual possibilities of Sound
Drifting - opening visual/acoustical gates through
which visitors on site, on line and on air could slip
into the ongoing flow. Sound Drifting in Linz was definitely
not the centre; it was more a meeting place where the
many dispersed and varied elements converged briefly,
only to immediately fragment again into a kaleidoscope
of different events that projected Sound Drifting's
pulse into many other spaces, non-stop for 216 hours.
The various spaces and media functioned as filters,
processing different aural and visual events out of
Sound Drifting's data-static. The diversity of events
was not the effect of different causes but merely of
different settings of the filters.
The Colour Code
Light reflected from coloured surfaces and light filtered
through transparent film are the forms of visual events
closest to sound - ambient effects similar to an acoustic
drone. With this in mind, the motif of 16 coloured
squares used as a visual code for Sound Drifting was
chosen both to suggest a generative system processing
the spectrum of sunlight and as a colour code intended
to create identities for the 16 Sound Drifting locations.
The combination of all 16 squares, as on the brochure,
poster or the cover of this catalogue, form a new square
- a pattern of coloured surfaces without predetermined
content, which hints at the nature of the Sound Drifting
project as a whole.
The Installation
The conception of the sound installation, a close collaboration
between visual and sound artists, was strongly influenced
by the appearance of the space itself: the O.K Media
Deck, a large glass-fronted box perched on top of an
old building in the centre of Linz. Not a black box
(theatre or cinema) nor a white cube (gallery or museum)
- spaces which seal themselves off from the everyday
world - but a transparent box that forces the view
outward, towards the impressive panorama of the cityscape.
This made the Media Deck a perfect space for a node
in an interdependent system of remote sub-projects,
scattered across the globe, that required the creation
of a feeling of extended space and not the building
of real or metaphorical, white or black, walls.
Sound Drifting took place in the context of the bustle
and stress of the high-profile spectacle of the Ars
Electronica festival with all its technical gadgetry
and rows of gleaming monitors. In contrast, Sound Drifting
was conceived as a space of calm and clarity, inviting
people to slow down, to dive into the flow and drift
with the sounds - drifting with them through the spaces
of the network, back to their sources and forth to
their uncertain destinations.
The floor space of the installation was bare except
for the row of deck chairs looking out through the
long, south-facing front windows, and two sub-woofer
loudspeakers on the floor in the corners. There were
no monitors in the space, only three small flat LCD-screens
mounted on the ceiling that displayed the live webcam
images from the network. Eight loudspeakers could also
be seen suspended from the ceiling along the walls
of the main space. Concealed in the space under the
floor-grid along the window walls were eight additional
speakers that reflected sound into the space from the
glass. This array of 16 loudspeakers was fed constantly
by the mix of all the individual remote sound events
filtered and processed by the Sound Drifter programme
(see pp. ??). This immersive sound installation filled
the space of the Media Deck with a permanent ebb and
flow of sound surging through the space: a multitude
of sounds emerging, living, and slowly dying away for
216 hours - washing over the visitors in their deck
chairs as they listened and drifted and looked out
into the world.
The east- and west-facing windows at each end of the
Media Deck displayed the visual reference to the network
in the form of suspended Plexiglas panels containing
the Sound Drifting signature of coloured transparent
squares representing the different nodes. Small speakers,
quietly playing the live stream from the respective
location, were mounted in the centre of each of the
squares. The two audible rows of squares formed a faint
acoustical, as well as optical, borderline - not blocking
out the world but tinting it. Walking past the small
speakers, the faint sounds could be heard against the
background of the spatial density of the Sound Drifting
installation - sometimes a sound from an individual
stream could be identified as one of the objects circulating
in the Media Deck.
What could not be seen was the kilometer of wire and
cable concealed in the space under the grid by the
windos and down to the - also invisible - room full
of computers and sound equipment on the floor below.
There were also four additional Sound Drifting locations
in the context of the Ars Electronica 99 in Linz (the
AEC Skylab, the pedestrian tunnel between AEC and the
Linz City Hall, the Sound Bar at Brucknerhaus and the
ORF Landesstudio OÖ entrance). The sound material
was comprised of samples from the Media Deck installation,
compiled every day by different artists, burned on
CD, and played as loops in the spaces. The 'Sound Drifter'
was the actual composer of the pieces, the role of
the artists was simply that of compiler, mediator and/or
distributor. Inverting the role of human and machine,
they merged with the machines like cyborgs, processing
and distributing material, as elements in a generative
system.
The Sound Drifting Radio Installation
Sound Drifting was also on air as an eight hour live
radio installation, broadcast on ORF Österreich
1. The radio version was again a collaboration of humans
and machines that tried to change - or at least to
restructure - the hierarchies of human-machine interaction.
The radio work itself was composed by the Radio Drifter
which allowed the various artists to make simple adjustments
to the sound parameters. This proved to be a major
challenge for the human participants, who often surrendered
to the urge to wrest control from the machine and re-establish
the traditional hierarchies. This was a perfect demonstration
of an issue that is becoming more and more important
- and that was also one of the main topics of Sound
Drifting: control sharing .
"In a non-hierarchic structure, like this generative
sound installation, all participants have equal rights:
artists, users and machines. We have learned that it
is possible to create open structures within a project
without losing control of the idea or the concept.
Accepting machines as partners, not as mere executive
tools, but as part of the whole organism, is another
step. Not the glorification of man-like robots, or
machines imitating human abilities, but to work with
machines as partners, with their possibilities, their
imperfectness and bugs, to accept them as collaborators
in a team-working process.
Communication between us and machines in a generative
project means that sometimes we are the listeners and
sometimes they are." (Andrea Sodomka)
Martin Breindl |
|