FM: SoundSpace (2015)
120-channel public performative sound installation
Frozen Music: David Dunn, Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Four-hour world premiere: February 18, 2015 | 5–9 PM
SoundScape Park, New World Center, Miami Beach
Produced by Subtropics 23 with support from Culture Builds Florida and the City of Miami Beach
Presented in collaboration with the New World Symphony
Spatialization score by Gustavo Matamoros
Programming and technical realization by Roberto Toledo and the New World Symphony audio staff
SoundSpace brought three one-hour, eight-channel compositions—one by each member of Frozen Music—into the outdoor Constellation sound system at SoundScape Park. Together, the compositions supplied 24 independent tracks moving through 120 individually addressed loudspeakers.
The complete park system contained 167 loudspeakers. The 120 selected for SoundSpace were chosen because they were matched components, allowing the work to occupy the park as a continuous and relatively consistent spatial field.
TWENTY-FOUR TRAJECTORIES
I composed a spatialization score assigning an independent trajectory to each of the 24 tracks. Roberto Toledo and the New World Symphony audio staff translated those paths into the system’s spatialization software and developed a way for the three performers to control their respective eight channels wirelessly from individual iPads.
The destinations and routes were established by the score. During the performance, however, each member could control the direction, speed, timing, intensity and fades of his own eight tracks. A trajectory could be accelerated, reversed or slowed to zero, allowing a sound to remain at one loudspeaker for as long as desired.
The paths were composed; their behavior remained responsive.
FOUR ONE-HOUR MOVEMENTS
The live premiere unfolded as four one-hour movements using the same three eight-channel compositions. Although the source material restarted with each movement, its pacing, intensity and spatial behavior could be altered during performance. The same material therefore produced four related but different realizations.
One of those hour-long movements—including its audio sources, programmed trajectories and live iPad modifications—was stored in the system. It was presented again on February 25, February 27 and March 4, repeating as many times as could fit within the time available for each presentation.
A BUN DANCE
Abundance—or, as I like to hear the word here, “a bun dance”—was a defining condition of SoundSpace: 24 tracks, 24 trajectories, 120 loudspeakers and three simultaneous compositions continually changing their relationships across the park.
But abundance was a condition, not an obligation. The piece did not need to exhaust every prepared route or technical possibility in order to become itself. What needed to happen often happened well before everything we had prepared had been accomplished. Sometimes a bun dance can be redundant.
LISTENING INSIDE THE WORK
Unlike some of my other site-specific works, SoundSpace was created without a preliminary mapping of the park’s resonances. It instead placed Frozen Music’s existing and rapidly expanding sound archives inside the scale, precision and dispersal of an unusually large outdoor system.
Traffic, vegetation, weather, animals, pedestrians and the sounds produced by Frozen Music occupied the same field. Their relationships were expected features of the collective’s practice, but the scale of the system and site produced new and fleeting experiences that could not be entirely anticipated.
In Frozen Music, what happens to the audience is likely to be happening to us as well. The performers are not standing outside the work controlling a finished result. We are listening from within it and discovering its consequences at the same time as everyone else.
REVIEW
SoundSpace (2015) by Frozen Music | Review and video by composer Fast-Forward | August 18, 2015
During a visit to Miami recently, I had the pleasure of experiencing the installation work ‘Soundspace’ by Frozen Music (David Dunn, Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoras). Soundspace was installed at Soundscape Park, a 2.5 acre public park situated directly outside New World Center, the home of Miami’s New World Symphony. Half-an-acre of the park (designed by the Dutch architectural firm West 8) is dedicated to an outdoor projection area which allows visitors to experience live, free “wall casts” on a 7,000 square foot projection wall (the largest permanently established projection surface in North America). In addition, the projection area also includes a sound system comprising of 167 individually tuned speakers. This sound system was the vehicle for Frozen Music’s incredible sound installation.
It almost seems futile for me to even attempt to explain the experience of visiting ‘Soundspace’, something akin to describing what food tastes like. No amount of words can replicate the live experience. As I walked towards the installation, a few sounds infiltrated the everyday sounds of the city. Arriving at the center of the installation I found myself surrounded by sounds. A somewhat thick, complex curtain of sounds which seemed both natural and electronic at the same time. The combination of a high quality sound system and the care and layering of the chosen sounds were euphoric. It felt and sounded like a sonic urban jungle with extreme clarity. At any given moment, it could sound like an aviary, dinosaurs chomping on digital greenery, or a factory stamping out car parts. What I do know, is that the experience evoked extreme happiness within me. It seemed to be capable of opening up memories and emotions, some of which I didn’t even realize were there.
I observed no particular ‘type’ of sound, no particular rhythm, no particular progression, or theme. Actually, not that much I could pin-point at all. I had the impression that ‘change and chance’ were a strong inherent intention of the work. A quest for volatility and unpredictability, yet very confident in it’s stability. Not unlike all the surrounding sounds of the city, yet carefully and expertly crafted. Car horns, dogs barking, children playing, the wind whistling all become part of Frozen Music’s composition. The late american composer John Cage used a similar approach in his music to great effect and it became one of his signature compositional tools.
Soundspace delivered a challenge to me, a dichotomy between natural and synthetic sounds. I found myself always referencing it while I was there. But, I surrender, it was impossible for me to determine the origin of a sound at any given moment. Situated with vegetation on one side and 4-lane traffic on the other, Soundspace encompasses both urban & rural at the same time. It kept me continually guessing and thinking and observing. An intelligent artwork in a pristine spot.
Fast Forward (composer NYC).
Aug 18, 2015
CREDITS
Frozen Music
David Dunn
Rene Barge
Gustavo Matamoros
Spatialization score: Gustavo Matamoros
Programming and technical realization: Roberto Toledo and the New World Symphony audio staff
Presented by Subtropics 23 in collaboration with the New World Symphony
Supported by Culture Builds Florida and the City of Miami Beach
Tags: Frozen Music, David Dunn, Rene Barge, Gustavo Matamoros, SoundSpace, spatial sound, public sound installation, 120-channel sound, SoundScape Park, New World Symphony.