Thursday, 23.Sept., 19h, WFS Concert Print

John Bischoff "Sidewalk Chatter (Redux)"
Marcus Schmickler "Bonner Durchmusterung"
Bjarni GunnarssonMiguel Negrão "Fallacies"
Alberto de Campo "Reversing Pendulum Music"

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venue: 
Technische Universität Berlin
Straße des 17. Juni 135
10623 Berlin
Room: WellenFeld H104, on the ground floor, in the left wing from the main entrance.
Google Maps -> 


 

Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is a new technique for sound spatialisation. It aims at a physical reconstruction of sound fields according to natural or artificial models by synthesizing the wave fronts of a defined virtual sound source with the superposition of wave fronts emitted by a closely spaced array of loudspeakers. Thus, the spatial configuration of those virtual sound sources does not depend on a certain listener position (sweet spot), as it is the case with traditional stereophonic techniques such as two channel stereo or surround. Moreover, while stereo setups allow the placement of sounds only on a line between the involved speakers and do not work well for lateral sources, WFS has no limitations concerning the placement of virtual sound sources outside and even inside of the reproduction array.

The WFS hall in the main building of the TU Berlin is equipped with an array of 832 loudspeakes. The system can synthesize up to 42 virtual sound sources located inside or outside the room. Audio is fed into the system in realtime, where the sound of one audio channel represents the sound of one virtual source. The position of the sources can be controlled in realtime using either the softwares GUI or OSC-messages sent from Supercollider or any other OSC-software.

The WFS presentation is organized in cooperation with the Electronic Music Studio of TU Berlin, Audio Communication Group.


 

John Bischoff (USA)   commission

Sidewalk Chatter (Redux) (2009/2010)

employs a STEIM “crackle box” as a sound-making input. As a performer plays the box by touching the circuit’s traces, a computer program analyses loudness peaks and frequency components and generates its own synthesized voices based on those patterns. This version, which was ported to SuperCollider from my original MaxMSP patch by Chad McKinney, adds spatial motions which track the diverse sonic contours within the sounds themselves. Many thanks to Chad for his help.

 

Marcus Schmickler (Germany)

Bonner Durchmusterung (2010)

Alberto de Campo (sonification),  Carsten Goertz (visualization)

The Bonn Patternization takes up the tradition of the relationship between  astronomy and music and attempts to attain an epistemological exchange between both. How does one come from a complex series of numbers to an understanding of the objects or even to a consistent phenomenology of the cosmos, and what role could sound play in this? Conversely there is an appeal in deriving interesting acoustic events and musical structures from complex theoretical  models of particle physics and astrophysics.

1 Reionization / Dark Ages
2 Solar eruptions
3 Eccentricity of the elliptical orbits of our solar system
4 Historical maps of the cosmic background radiation
5 The Bonn patternization
6 Gravitational  models
7 Pulsars / neutron stars
8 Expansion / redshift / dark matter / dark energy
9 Gamma ray bursts
10 Quantum spectrums / multi-dimensionality

Commisioned by International Year of Astronomy and Deutscher Musikrat.

 

Bjarni Gunnarsson (Iceland / Netherlands) & 
Miguel Negrão (Portugal / Netherlands)

Fallacies (2010)

is a collaboration piece between Bjarni Gunnarsson and Miguel Negrão. It concerns the real-time interaction and relationships between gradually evolving sine wave drones and dense, dynamic microsounds. The idea is a journey in an indeterminate direction: a global movement carried by an intense current of enfolding sound-masses that get disturbed and affected by streams of high-density subatomic events. Fallacies is a multichannel creation to be performed live on the WFS system.

 

Alberto de Campo (Austria/Germany)

Reversing Pendulum Music (2010)

Pendulum Music is the only process piece by Steve Reich: hanging microphones swing above loudspeakers; the resulting feedback changes with the time delays and distances. Reversing Pendulum Music turns the idea around: it uses static microphones, and simulates moving sound sources in the WFS system; overall system properties and simulation glitches will influence the sounding result, and the system allows for interventions, such as disturbing the movements by changing (simulated) gravity.