From Nearby, From Afar
Here in St. Petri the incoming daylight is neither a glow of colored glass or a beam that needs the darkened and unlit room to develop its effect. Here the light is a strong impression of intensity and openness in the simultaneity of events. It is perceived as an interior space flooded with light with an unusual resonance. Volume, light and sound - the room is clearly illustrated in every audible sound.
My interventions in this space quote different backgrounds as acoustic installations. In doing so, I follow the idea of dealing with found and on-site materials. While their dramaturgy is originating from the conditions of their audibility, their authenticity remains untouched. This auditory reflex of the architecture, its specific room acoustics, is the starting point of a performance.
The acoustic cloud of the city as a real-time transmission into an object becomes an interior sound and a noise in an object related to the human body dimensions. The permanent introduction of the outside into an object inside. A noise with extreme expansion condenses to the dimensions of a transport box (a shipping container for art objects) which causes them to resonate. The most far-reaching sound is encapsulated through a funnel and reduced to a sounding body in the space. The sublimity of space, as a completely detached dimension and perception of size in contrast to the smallness of one's own body, is given an object-like counterpart through this transformation of the city sound.
The terracotta floor of St. Petri has a unique look in its colorfulness and graphic structure. It serves me as a tone-setting room detail for percussive examination. By tapping on individual tiles I make hollow areas below the floor audible. The points, which differ in size, are reproduced in different pitches. These sounds from below and not visible to me serve as a compositional means for an acoustic installation: a multi-channel sound processing, audible overhead from twelve sound sources and suspended from the centers of the cross arches. Here the floor sounds follow the expansion of the room, far, high and reaching out to the resonance points of the ceiling construction.
The visitors experience time sequences of coincidence and composition within a sound space. The simultaneity of the sounds will ideally stimulate the listening process or steer it in a new direction. A possible starting point is the all-dominant room acoustics. The structure bundles, directs and amplifies the sound with unexpected directional constellations. Sound images of varying density and dominance are created. From further away, and also very close by, a space of acoustic events develops as interpreted resonance of the architecture.
Real time transmission from two directional microphones to a wooden transport box with integrated transmission system; 12 spherical speakers; 12-channel composition; electronical equipment
St. Petri zu Lübeck, Lübeck 2009