BOX 30/70
von Bruce Odland / Sam Auinger
BOX 30/70 is a work-in-progress, an installation that transports the
idea of “resonance
tuning” to different European cities by presenting the identical
system at
a variety of different sites—Berlin, Witten, Rotterdam, Düsseldorf,
Dresden and Vienna
since its initial development in 2001.
The setup consists of three elements: (a) a microphone-equipped resonance
tube
(TUBE) in which the ambient soundscape is reproduced, (b) a mobile space
(BOX)
providing a listening situation that is visually and acoustically set
apart from its
surroundings, and (c) an exterior-mounted, cube-shaped, cement-encased
loudspeaker
(CUBE) that opens up a listening perspective in which the resonances and
the soundscape mix. The actual transformation of the sounds takes place
in the
resonance tube. All frequency segments that correspond to the fundamental
D tone
of the tube and its overtones are amplified. Two microphones are installed
inside
the tuning tube at precisely calculated and calibrated positions so that
particular
overtone combinations can be extracted. Unmistakable sounds like ambulance
sirens
and the signals of trolley cars and locomotives retain their distinctiveness.
Sounds
generated in the immediate vicinity of the resonance tube—the chirping
of birds
or human voices, for instance—remain recognizable, underlain by resonances.
In the BOX, the resonances of the tube can be heard with no further acoustic
manipulation.
With felt covering the floor and walls, dimly lit, and connected with
the exterior
world solely by a small window through which the environment can be made
out
only vaguely, the BOX resembles a “listening post” within the
acoustic environment into
which real-time video images of the situation outside the BOX mix from
time to time.
The real-time sounds alternate in a predetermined time ratio (30 to 70)
with material
from Alphabet of Sounds, a series of compositions that has been growing
since
1991. Several of these pieces are based upon concrete audio material such
as natural
sounds like wind and water that Auinger / Odland have been recording and
processing since they began their work on Alphabet of Sounds. Others are
purely
synthetic compositions, tonal abstractions that refer to the idea of a
sound. What
they all have in common is the thought that sounds are the result of their
own respective
dynamic-temporal processes. As an inwardly-directed conceptual tableau,
the
Alphabet of Sounds here provides a contrast to the alphabet of the real-time
sounds
in the environment.
Translated from the German by Mel Greenwald