ABANDONEE

ABANDONEE (AT)

The planned artistic production involves the development of a spatialized-electroacoustic composition using the technical potential of the Ambisonic System of IEM Graz.

The sound material for this composition is taken from a real situation. It consists of the repeatedly carried out miking of a particular resonating system and of its situation within its surrounding space. For this purpose we used a soundfield-microphone, several accelerometers, piezo-electric transducers and Schoeps condenser-microphones.

The resonating system that has been recorded in that way is a destroyed grand piano (Blüthner company, Leipzig), left behind on an abandoned construction site in Belgium. Weather influences and vandalism have destroyed the grand piano to a great extent: the keys are quarried out, the chords are partly broken, the timber frame is distorted, parts of the wood are completely missing or else broken off, burst and scattered throughout the whole room. The former instrument can still be recognized as such. Yet, through the described influences, it has been transformed to something different that resembles the original resonating object only remotely.

We tested this sound-producing object at the place of discovery for its new characteristics and thereby concentrated mainly on the sound-space aspects and potential as well as on its acoustic effect in its current location.

The acoustic situation that we found disintegrates, by our means of miking and playing the instrument, into points in time and points of stimulation. These are to be newly arranged both technically and artistically as well as transformed dynamically at the Ambisonic Studio of IEM later on.

The inside and outside (i.e. the surrounding space) of the resonating object are to be fanned out in the planned sound-space-composition by means like spatial fragmentation, displacement, different levels cutting into each other, diffusion, selective contrasting, frictions and assuming changing spatial conditions (agglomeration – merging – equalising – stretching – contracting – blurring).

To document our work we are planning a binaural stereo recording (i.e. a recording with the help of dummy head microphones) in order to be able to retrace the acoustic effect of the artistic sound-space-installation of this project. This listening situation can of course only be seen as a substitute. However, this way of documentation has proved a good basis for discussion and a helpful means of presentation with regard to artistic creation with modern spatialization-systems. Our former project “Aubaine” was successfully documented in the same way. The new production is to be published in CD-format in the end.

NooK:

Dirk Specht and Gerriet K. Sharma are both alumni of the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne (postgraduate program for media art). They joined each other for playing and composing music in the electronic ensemble NooK in October 2004.

NooK constantly re-uses and rearranges sonic material in concert situations. In addition to that, the ensemble generates and explores its own audio-archive as well as modified interconnections and new track compositions in experimental laboratory situations.

Furthermore, NooK also produces audio for installations, radio, theatre and film.

The work of the ensemble mainly deals with subject areas like sound-music, music-space, sound-image as well as with the analysis of sound characteristics and sound perception. NooK are also experimenting with multi-channel systems, surround-technology, wave-field-synthesis and other spatialization-concepts that are increasingly included in the productions of the ensemble.

Their last production “Aubaine” has been developd at the Wave-Field-Synthesis-Studios of the Fraunhofer Institute of Digital Media (IDMT) Ilmenau and has been published as a double-CD.