Tone compression in the echo chamber of the ORFVirtuality, -ies: inherent power or possibility
virtual: present in power or possibility
(but not always really existing)Narrow, long, low corridors, heavy ventilating pipes and bad light lead into the
echo chamber in the cellar of ORF´s broadcasting centre in Vienna. Built in 1935, this room was exclusively used for analogue generation of acoustic room effects: the sound engineer sent the audio signal in the room downstairs, there he projected it via loud speakers and recorded the echo (the reaction of the room to the sound impulse) via microphones. More than three decades ago, this particular use of the room became superfluous because of the alternative offered by electroacoustics. Since the room was constructed for the lodging of technical equipment but never for people, it was buried into oblivion. The room in the big ORF´s centre is virtually not existent. It has never been entered because this was never necessary. Therefore it, in no way, registers traces of mankind´s activity ...
But if we open it, an
extreme faces us: the room appears to be absent, absolutely empty, the air stands still. Material, acoustics and room proportions cannot incorporate the necessary effect-fields, the necessary non-room of a "visitor". There seems not to be enough place in the room. Accordingly, the effect on our psyche is direct. Restricting visual impressions are reinforced by the acoustic situation. The non-room urges to a flight.
The
sound-body-installation non-room approximates the original function of the room once again (sound-room-generation). It tries to elaborate run-across phenomena, to sustain, to play with them: the non-room becomes an instrument. In the austere time formal structure - replication and transformation of room inherent sound quanta - lies the aesthetic reference to the character, dormant in itself, the closed history of the room. If people surrender to the physical-psychological border situation and let themselves be washed full-bodily by the sound bath, it seems that obscure aspects become unveiled and accessible on new spatial planes: gloominess lights up, opens; acoustic virtuality grips around itself, revolves, mirrors, bends, transgresses the physical borders.
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