Experiencing spatiality in electronic music at the SPATIAL festival
by Johannes Scherzer | January 17, 2023Earth. Berlin. South-east. Funkhaus. MONOM invited spaes lab to the festival for spatial sound, art, music, and technology. I dedicated this late-November weekend to analyzing the spatial sound phenomena within the installations and performances presented on a 4DSOUND system.
Curated by MONOM founder William Russell, the program provided a deep dive into the spatial practices of contemporary electronic music. A deep dive into one of the many different fields and practices in which the spatiality of sound became such a popular theme that we can truly speak of a spatial turn. At this SPATIAL festival, all sessions were full — if not completely booked out. Every day. Spatial audio is currently mesmerizing people, once again. That spatial audio turn, which started about 60 years ago, is now colliding with pop culture thanks to the apples of this planet. And the turn isn’t yet complete, as it seems.
The spatial utopia some nerds dreamed about 20 years ago is now transforming into reality. Some pieces and performances were shining through as genuine spatial compositions. They were spatially well structured. They moved sounds through space mindfully, if at all. They allowed for static settings within which rattling-vibrating micro-movements became an exciting experience. Nuanced sound wave interferences happened dynamically when turning the head by only centimeters. Some of the pieces had hypnotic-meditative qualities and were "present." The compositions involved sounds that are immediately present and genuine to both the space and the sound system. Here, no reference existed to anything other than the music itself in the very space at that very moment. In my notes: Andrea Belfi. Jan Jelinek. Ankersmith. Aïsha Devi. Marijn Cinjee. Casimir Geelhoed. Rather than leaving a taste of "playback," "simulation," or "close to reality," these distinctive approaches to spatiality created a new form of reality. They actually changed reality.
Listening and critical reflection on spatial aesthetics
Cultivating a critical reflection on spatial practices in sound is central to spaes lab’s activities. The key to this is unrelenting analyzing the spatial phenomena we experience. Developing awareness of the spatial phenomena we perceive can be approached in many ways, such as in listening sessions, experiments, and even in our daily life. Training our awareness is essential, but the conversations we have about the concrete experience are what open up new perspectives and new ways of thinking about sound, space, and embodied experience.
Stefanie Egedy: BODIES AND SUBWOOFERS (B.A.S.) 12.0
These conversations on spatial aesthetics in sound nourish our spatial practices across disciplines as artists, designers, curators, and scientists. They should be characterized by speaking to the point and require respectful speech. Therefore the most important rule for critical reflection is to focus on the spatial qualities and how they shape the overall experience, not on composition, style, or even personal taste.
This text is a contribution to this conversation. I spent the cloudy weekend at MONOM analyzing the spatial phenomena within a diverse body of artworks. The festival featured about 40 pieces, and almost every single one revealed interesting aspects of the use of spatiality. Doing a piece "in spatial" means exploring a new field for many artists. New tools, instruments, and possibilities require going beyond the stereo way of thinking, creating, and listening.
The program was filled with both inspiring and difficult pieces. Besides the exclamation marks on exciting approaches to spatiality, quite a few comments found their way into my notebook about challenging aspects. Focusing on problematic phenomena is actually rewarding, not because they play into our consciousness more easily, but because we can learn a tremendous amount for our spatial practice. From the individual perspective, it’s the beginning of a spatial turn for most of us. Important point: "problematic" doesn’t equal a valuation — and a negative one in particular. The opposite is the case: from the innovation perspective, we should love the problem. For the purpose of adding to the shared knowledge, here are the details.
Phenomena affecting spatial qualities
In most pieces, one or several of the phenomena described next tended to make it difficult for the listener to appreciate the potentially attractive spatial qualities.One phenomenon was the application of inadequately high volumes over more extended periods, which caused my ears to get tired over time. Also, incorrect playback volumes potentially disintegrate the balances between the instruments or sounds involved in the mix. This is a risk, in particular when someone other than the artist is setting up a piece for presentation.
Another frequent phenomenon is overemphasized frequency ranges resulting in an unpleasant boomy sound, most notably in the bass range or the low mids. Some pieces featured the excessive use of subwoofers which is exhausting for listeners over time. Boomy low mids, especially in combination with drone sounds, tend to overshadow the rest of the sound material, rendering it imperceptible. One piece created such strong resonances that physically caused distortion artifacts in the sound and/or construction system. It might be possible that these phenomena were intentional by the artists in a particular case. Overall, my impression was that these phenomena weren't caused by systemic reasons, as there also were extraordinarily well-mixed pieces with excellent use of all frequency ranges, including the one by MONOM founder William Russell. More likely, these phenomena result from adapting pre-existing works onto the 4DSOUND system. After all, mastering can’t be skipped, just as in the good old stereophonic world.
Some listening sessions were set up with fixed seating positions in the form of rows of chairs. Such seating arrangements call me to sit down and shut up until the end of a session. Experiencing spatial audio that way, the audible space can only be explored by head movements and not by different listening perspectives, which can make a significant difference.
The predetermined seating positions often go along with another quite dominant spatial phenomenon: I often perceive the sound from the speaker column closest to me - which in many listening positions is also directly behind me. In such a case, the whole sound tends to collapse into this one column. In contrast, in pieces where I could move my body to different positions, I could build my own map of how the composition is structured in space. It is important to point out that this phenomenon depends on the spatial concept of a particular composition. In some of the pieces presented, this problem has been very well mastered, especially those pieces that actively played with the existence of the columns instead of trying to ignore them. As I understand spatial technology as an instrument for composing space rather than simulating space, this phenomenon is a compositional challenge rather than a technical or technological one: How do I design spatiality in a spatially unique medium?
Spatial phenomena in composition and design
Besides the phenomena that tended to make it difficult for the listener to appreciate the potentially attractive spatial qualities, I also noted phenomena that I would summarize under the concept of spatial design/composition problems. For example, when the composition is not leaving enough space so that I can hear through the space. This usually happens with arrangements too crowded of sounds, often caused by "drones" and similar sounds. As soon as such permanent sound pressure subsides, space is freed for the more subtle structures, and the composition becomes spatially transparent. I wouldn’t say that this phenomenon is a problem by nature but a method that could also be used consciously to oscillate between transparency and opacity.Another widespread phenomenon is spatial movement. I’m talking of erratically flying voices, meandering field recordings, or rotating percussion sounds. Motions become problematic when they do not emerge out of the gestural nature of sounds and when they remain arbitrary effects. In its extreme form, everything flies around everywhere, permanently. Due to the "wild" pannings, the speaker closest to me is constantly going on and off in a technical and artificial manner. In one of the pieces, Patti Smith and her guitar came flying by again and again while - in the middle of a word or tone - she had already landed on a different loudspeaker.
The spatial distribution of sound sources has also been a common theme. This occurs when a mono or stereo signal is multiplied by many loudspeakers. In that case, the sound is not getting bigger but moves along with your listening perspective as you walk through the space, always sticking to the physically nearest loudspeaker (column). This became especially obvious when, for example, ocean coast waves were flooding the space. This sound is, by nature, characterized by an extensive and diverse spatial picture. However, as a stereo field recording, it does not create the feeling of "nature" as it was obviously intended in one of the presented pieces.
Reverb is another stylistic tool that allows for a variety of approaches. Many pieces were characterized by the intense use of reverb, lots of reverb, and in some cases: tons of reverb. This stood in contrast to a few moments when sounds were 100% dry, which often turned out to feel more intense. Reverb becomes problematic when it’s inconsistently used within a particular context. The strongest phenomenon is looking through a keyhole: a mono reverb baked into the signal of the mono sound source. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether this was intended, but it did happen to sound weird in one or the other piece. When working with reverb, investing some thought, time, and experimentation in its design can be rewarding.
The technical sound quality, such as "unnatural" frequency ranges in field recordings or the noise floor in silent field recordings, can significantly affect the immersiveness of a spatial composition. Such phenomena can bring the technical apparatus presenting the sound into our consciousness. That, in turn, can frame the spatial relationships differently, possibly rendering a sound into a reference to a different place and time of a previous recording. In contrast, the original intention might have been to create the impression of immediate presence.
I also found that many compositions had a problematic start or end. Of course, this is also a matter of composition, which this text isn’t about. But it also is a matter of how a composition picks me up as a listener onto a journey into a different reality and how the composition brings me back. In other words, this problem is about how the performance space transforms when the piece starts and ends. I suppose there is no clear right or wrong to go about it. I only had the impression that often this question wasn’t addressed by the artists. Compared to "stereo," there might be a fundamental difference in how we experience an event composed and presented in "spatial."
Phenomena related to re-mixes and adaptations
Let’s finally turn to a difficult topic: re-mixes and adaptations. Some pieces have obviously been original "stereo" productions, for example, the albums with the Soundwalk Collective involved. Usually, a composition is inherently designed for a specific medium, and mostly this is stereo. However, while a spatial re-mix can be technically perfect, the language of a composition does not necessarily translate well from stereo to spatial. We should be realistic and not expect technology to create magic on its own. With stereo in mind, the exact same composition might not sit comfortably in spatial. Sometimes, instead of re-mixing, we might be better off thinking in terms of re-composing.
4DSOUND master class, user interface
Another way to approach such a unique technology as the 4DSOUND system is to treat it as an instrument rather than a technology for simulating space. A frequent problem is that the user interface might make us believe it is possible to move walls or spread mono signals across many loudspeakers. These expectations do not necessarily line up with physics and — after all — perception. Instead, we must learn to distinguish between the actual listening experience and the visualization of the technology's underlying panning or distribution models. In a personal conversation, Poul Holleman, the co-founder and technical director of 4DSOUND, shared the same experience: You basically have to approach the sound system as an instrument.
Spatial practice
We all are learning. What’s key is mindful listening, critical reflection, conversation, experimentation, spatial thinking, and spatial practice. And speaking of practice, it needs lots of practice with the various types of spatial audio technologies, and in different listening environments. Which needs both time and access to practice environments.
spaes — lab for spatial aesthetics in sound Berlin
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