HörSaal. A Wave Field Installation
HörSaal (in German – a lecture hall, auditorium, a hearing hall) is a site-specific sound-space installation. The medium is the audio playback system with 832 channels installed in the lecture room H104 in the TU (Technische Universität) Berlin. On this scale it is a unique instrument, enabling the invention and composition of complex, wide-ranging scenarios using the technology of the wave field synthesis (WFS).
In contrast to a concert-type usage of the space with strictly arranged rows of seats (for a lecture), HörSaal is conceived as a freely accessible sound-space composition. The wave field synthesis enables random spatial positioning of the sonic field of a sound source. HörSaal is a WFS-composition of dynamic and static sound-spaces.
In the dynamic parts (sound material: aerially agitated, echoed rustling and soughing) sounds are moved between ten abstract sites these sound-locations are programmed and mapped out not only within the visible space, but – in the acoustic and virtual dimension – outside it as well. This movement is overlaid by a movement with a different progression between the abstract locations. Both of these are yet again overlaid with a third and fourth level of varying movement structures in the space. The complex space texture suggests a drifting, aleatory wind-blown space, whereas it is an exact, controlled composition of form.
In the static hearing space (sound material: speech) the listener wanders through various places in the hall, which are indicated visually by the installation of staves, 2 m high and painted red. Out of a diffuse noise pervading the total space and assembled out of twelve different speech channels we step into precisely defined sound sites, extremely individual hearing spaces, where we experience the sound-world of words spoken by the physicists Planck, Schrödinger, Einstein, Meitner, Hahn, Pauli and Heisenberg.
BL
(Length of the sound space composition: 27 minutes)
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