laboratory where I search for the question, if it is possible to regard sound not as a phenomen „in“ space but to equalate sound and space and so create a situation of „being in sound“.
Being in sound
I'm fascinated by the idea of sound with a huge entropy, sound as maximum mess in space. In the natural environment we hear sounds which have an origin location. These sound can move themselves or I as a listener move along them. But I imagine a space where the sounds are not located and where they do not move.
The sound material in „ora et labora“ is worked out after the basic ideas of my text „Raumverdränger“ (sth. like „space displacement body“) about dissolution of location and movement and the hypothetic equalisation of sound and space.
Excerpts of „Raumverdränger“:
„In reality a sound has an origin location (sound source) and it can move or be moved in space... The relation between sound and listener is a counterpart. They both have an exactly determined place even if sound is spreading diffuse in space.
My question is: is it possible to be „in sound“
The laboratory (experimental arrangement)
A room with 6 loudspeakers in a circle. A sound is granulated, which means it is splitted in tiny small pieces of some milliseconds. These granulars are distributed to the single loudspeakers in their realtime order. Each granular sounds just from one of the six loudspeakers. The position of the granulars were determined by chance.
These always very short and fragmentary appearance of a sound at always a different place causes the liquidationof the semantic form of these sound.There is no more origin location and no exact definable movements in space.So space is no more a functional system in which sound is, but there is an equality: sound is space.
Sound material + composition
In 2017 I had the possibility to spend three days in the monastery Abtei St. Hildegard in Eibingen/Rüdesheim (Germany) for sound recordings. Normally the daily life in a monastery is not public, only in the church visitors can join the divine service. I had the chance also to meet the acquaintance of the daily working life and the evening services.
The composual structure of „ora et labora“ is based on process and duration of the evening service and the anthems of soloist and choir. Always three anthems build one sequence of about 1 – 2 min length. The sound material of the daily worklife is in numeric order assigned to the entire 17 sequences. So each sequence gets its own specific sound-archive
The composing work in the single sequences is based on listening. First I listen intensively to all soundfiles in one sequence, I learn to hear them in a new way and regard them in a context to the other soundfiles in this sequence. Some possible developments arise, sounds come together or they do not, some are just adding and other are creating something new. Laminar sequences, events or stories will be generated.
The sound material gets not looked at its origin and syntax, but just by pure listening, by its acoustic quality and sounding characteristic. On this level of pure soundingness there is no more quality rating.
A CD documentation of the 6.channel sound installation as a stereoversion makes no sense as the granulated sound slivers - spread on the single 6 speakers – cannot be pictured on a 2-track surface. So I have worked out a second (2-track) version of „ora et labora“ without the spacial effect of the installation piece.
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