Toward a Lab for Concrete Utopia: Artistic Strategies in Shared Perceptual Spaces, Researching Sound as Space
by Gerriet K. Sharma | originally published in KiSS Kinetics in Sound & Space, Wolke Verlag 2022[Download full text as PDF]
Pre_
It is early October 2021, and I am starting to write the following paragraphs. They are summarised partly from my lecture at the Kolloquium Kinetics in Sound and Space during the summer term 2020 derived from ideas that I have been developing for the past 15 years and texts that I have been published in this time, unpublished drafts, and thoughts that have been triggered by current developments in 2020 and 21. While I am sitting down, at the centre of our loudspeaker half-sphere at the Lab for Spatial Aesthetics in Sound Berlin (spæs) [1] to concentrate on these lines I am listening to Xenakis’ Diamorphoses in a spatialised version. Initially, this was planned as an aiding device to help me concentrate and dive into the following thoughts and lines. However, after about an hour, I notice that I am playing Diamorphoses in a loop, not wanting at all to switch it off. Something seems to be matching between the musical spaces of Xenakis and the ideas I am trying to fold into this text. Therefore, I invite the reader to listen to the piece, if possible, at least once while reading the text. I am still doing it while writing these final lines to open up the
Terrain
“The expression ‘‘virtual reality’’ is a paradox, a contradiction in terms, and it describes a space of possibility or impossibility formed by illusionary addresses to the senses.” [2]
We as composers and sound artists have never confronted a media machine of the collective, networked, and externally defined - perception design as we experience it today. What do we share with our audience, the engineers and scientists working on perceptions in these media spaces, and how can we still detect potential for aesthetic experiences and make them useful for the sonic arts? In order to support the search for the shaping conditions of these potentials, we have to point out first that the concept of space has changed fundamentally over the last century [3]. As a matter of fact, concepts, definitions and interpretations of space and of spatiality are essentially how we construct the world and by extension, how we create means to intervene into that world, with our daily practices. Space multiplies its meanings and can become poetic artefacts that we collectively produce and reproduce through time, within our cultures, our sciences, and our arts. Through the dimension of time, these are the spaces that serve as vehicles for adaptation and transformation, from the scale of the individual to that of collective societies and of the environment at large. In addition, now, after two years of lockdowns and Corona reflections, the awareness of space seems to have affected all kinds of systems, including academic discourses and art, to subordinate their aims under a new paradigm within a wide range of empirical, deductive, discursive, historical, scientific and intuitive methods. Even basic spatial descriptions, terms like “close”, “closed”, “narrow”, “high”, “low”, “far”, or “open”, “background”, “foreground” have drastically changed their contours due to daily experiences with mediated campuses and online-conferences; online exhibitions and streamed concerts, and webcam views of “private” homes. So, it is still unclear what this means for cultural practice in terms of perception, composition, aesthetics, engineering and culture. It seems to me unavoidable that this paradigm shift causes us to change our artistic strategies from search to research and also to fall back on our ears and the reflection of what is experienced and experienceable in situ.
We can draft motives for such a comprehensive research endeavour as follows:
- Understanding spatial models as fundamental narratives of the status quo of our societies
- Utilising spatiality as a parameter in cultural production (e.g. composition, performance, sciences, gaming, journalism)
- Understanding the Arts as polyvalent representations of space(s)
- Developing personal research approaches with and of spaces
Blind Spot
Sound and space, however we define these terms, are phenomenologically and ontologically intertwined. This intrinsic link between sound and space holds true whether one conceives of sound as inextricably linked to the perceptual faculty of hearing or as a “vibration of a certain frequency in a material medium” [4]. From a hearing-centred standpoint, sound is inherently spatial because the process of listening attaches a spatial “narrative” to each sound [5] from a vibration-centred standpoint, sound does not exist without its propagation in space [6]. The central problem in our artistic practice is how difficult comprehension is of the three-dimensional space-sound phenomena composed as media-specific artefacts in the laboratory situation. A constantly arising uncertainty in the current practice of concerts, performances, and installations with loudspeaker arrays. This uncertainty is unsatisfactory for compositional practice. The reference to and the refinement of perceptions with the means of the electroacoustic space-sound composition are impossible without a thorough knowledge of this perceptibility. Thus, without this refined knowledge-base it will be challenging to artistically enhance conditions for new aesthetic potentials in these future environments.
Locating Vantage Points
From this uncertainty, we can formulate a question on the intersubjective space of perception and these three-dimensional phenomena, since the desideratum arising from it has taken shape as Shared Perceptual Space (SPS) [7]. In the past, the author was highly engaged in empirical methods within the artistic research project “Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker” (OSIL) [8]. The concept of the SPS, defined as the intersubjective space wherein perceptions of different listening groups intersect, was utilised in the project incorporating artistic experience and psychoacoustic research. OSIL conducted listening experiments that provide evidence for a common intersubjective perception of spatio-sonic phenomena created by the icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) [10] and excited room reflections. The experiments were designed based on a hierarchical model of spatio-sonic phenomena that exhibit increasing complexity, ranging from single static sonic objects to combinations of multiple partly moving objects. The SPS is further proposed to research different aspects in the field of spatialised sound in so-called Auditory Virtual Environments (AVEs). However, this is only one of a few exceptions [11] of how an investigation starting from the domain of music and sound art fostered a series of investigations in the scientific domain. The knowledge gained by these experiments was available and applicable in both “worlds” but would not have been brought to the surface without the research questions intrinsic to the artistic practice. This continuous feedback then yields a plethora of further procedural questions that represent the very textures of spatial practices with AVEs. How do we describe these phenomena? How can we reproduce them on different AVEs (and if not, why?), and how do we communicate the knowledge and archive the results?
To be able to describe this SPS, the search for references have to be extended to the adjacent fields of music and engineering, sciences like sociology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, and architecture, to name only a few. In a practice of artistic research this can happen through provocation of experiences in the areas bordering terminology. Therefore, we shall look out for traces resulting from ongoing processes in these fields. These traces can help us to conclude the driving motivations and agendas at play. Moreover, they can help us to understand the nature of the tools in use for developing these processes.
In the following chapter, I will point out four of these traces on our terrain. Furthermore, in order to be able to develop research questions, methods and conclusions in the sense of an epistemic research process, a research environment has to be created which places the subjective listening experience at the centre of interest in order to investigate the spatial experience of three-dimensional sound objects, and thus to make the critical debate possible at all. For this I will propose a model that I call “The Lab for Concrete Utopia” which claims that spatial concepts extending music, sound art, and sound design can be conceived and composed from refined artistic research regarding the triad of sculpturality, instrumentality and verbalisation. This shall result in audience experiences of media-specific phenomena, which intersect the composer’s intentions using sculpturality and musical rather than technical instrumentality as investigation paradigms for 3D sound objects in AVEs.
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Notes
[1]
https://spaes.org/
[2]
Grau, O. (2003). Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, Mass., London: Mit., p. 49.
[3]
Günzel S., “Raum, Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung", transcript, 2018.
Guenzel S.; M. Liebe; D. Mersch. “The Space-Image—Interactivity and Spatiality of Computer Games”. In: Conf of the Philosophy of Computer Games. 2008, pp. 170–189.
[4]
Friedner, M., Helmreich St. “Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies.” The Senses and Society 7(1): 72–78,2012.
[5]
Altman, R. “The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman, 15–31. New York: Routledge, 1992.p.19.
[6]
Henriques, Julian, “The Vibrations of Affect and Their Propagation on a Night Out on Kingston’s Dancehall Scene.” Body and Society 16(1): 57–89, 2010.
[7]
Sharma, G. K. “Composing with Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Computer Music”. PhD thesis. University for Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2016.
[8]
PEEK (FWF/AR 328), documentation: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/385081/958807
[9]
J. Piaget; B. Inhelder. A Child’s Conception of Space. New York: Norton (Original work published 1948), 1967.
W. Thies. Grundlagen der Typologie der Klänge. Verlag der Musikalienhandlung K.D. Wagner, Hamburg, 1982.
F. Wendt; G. K. Sharma; M. Frank; F. Zotter, et al. “Perception of Spatial Sound Phenomena Created by the Icosahedral Loudspeaker”. In: Computer Music Journal 41.1 (2017), pp. 76– 88.
[10]
F. Zotter; M. Zaunschirm; M. Frank; M. Kronlachner. “A Beamformer to Play with Wall Reflections: The Icosahedral Loudspeaker”. In: Computer Music Journal 41.3 (2017), pp. 50– 68.
[11]
E.g. Barrett N., Crispino M. "The Impact of 3-D Sound Spatialisation on Listeners’ Understanding of Human Agency in Acousmatic Music" in Acousmatic Music, Journal of New Music Research 2018, DOI: 10.1080/09298215.2018.1437187
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