The characteristic aspect of the enterable Space-soundBody is the artistic-poetic treatment of the architectural space. This is initiated by the artificial transformation of the raw material ‘space at location’ in order to open up the composed sound space by means of the three-dimensional movement of the sounds and to facilitate specific states in the acoustic becoming of architectural space.
The loudspeaker configuration of an enterable Space-soundBody almost always includes the entire architectural space. Generally, the speakers are positioned around and close to the walls on different levels so the visitor – surrounded by the loudspeaker body – can move freely within the space in order to experience very different auditory perspectives.
The result is specific sound spaces which are, among other things, shaped by the special characteristics of the particular architecture. What takes place is in effect an ‘acoustic topographing’, so that the dimensions of the imaginary auditory space and the real ‘sounding’ sound space interweave and create a state of a specific space-time-continuum.
Through the aspect of permanence these states preserve a certain authenticity of the ‘real’ in their being-/staying-the-same and their constantly varied repetition.
For the recipient, real space and moved sound space create specific synergies. The illusory space of imagination develops (through the moved sound and one’s own movement) within the real space. What happens here is, so to speak, the cancellation of the ‘real’ boundaries of space. Mental processes of changing location are initiated, which – though imaginary and removed – are evoked by means of the shaped ‘real’ location with its corresponding sound architecture.
A specific space emerges in order that perception itself becomes specific.
Figure 5
The enterable Space-soundBodies shown in figures 5 and 6, represent another component of the aforementioned 4-part Space-soundInstallation project ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms’.
The four-part ensemble as a whole – with a 32-channel Space-soundComposition for 4 x 8 loudspeakers – is the artist-couple’s first production for the project series of the same name: ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms’. The series links the two different types of Space-soundInstallations ‘circumambulatory Space-soundBody’ and ‘enterable Space-soundBody’, which are – depending on the project -applied individually or in combination.
Figure 6
The Space-soundBody 3 from ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms’ was premiered in 2000 as a separate enterable Space-soundBody at the ‘KlangArt Buch’, organised by the Akademie der Künste Berlin. The concert performance of the Space-soundComposition ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms No.3’ took place in the same year in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as part of the ‘v_2’ series of events ‘Time-Based Space’.
The Space-soundBody 4 from ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms’ was first presented separately as part of the MIX.01 festival in Aarhus, Denmark in 2001 and the Space-soundComposition ‘Sonic Lines n’Rooms No.4’ was premiered as part of the 10th Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival in Gainesville, USA.
There are of course manifold hybrid forms of the three described types of space-sound installations (Space-soundObject, circumambulatory and enterable Space-soundBody) of which two possibilities are introduced in the following text.