SUMMER
Kunsthalle Wien / AEC / ZKM
1998
Vienna (AT)
The Internet as a musical instrument - real space as a state of exception. An interactive sound installation: The digital echolocation in the physical infrastructure of the worldwide Internet can be experienced in local space as a body-accentuated sound sculpture. 1998. temple of Theseus, Vienna Volksgarten. Framework program of the EU presidency of Austria. Cooperations/installations: Kunsthalle Wien, ORF Ö1, Ars Electronica Linz, UNESCO Rostrum, Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe (DE).
SoundRoomGenerator
summer (derived from summer, to hum, to sum) is an instrument designed to amplify and document complex sound phenomena. summer is an open dynamic structure in steady state: energy from the environment is absorbed, transformed, and re-emitted; final state and initial conditions are feedback. summer is based on the interplay - nonlinear interactions - of the following subsystems:
SOURCE: ACOUSTIC EMISSIONS
Microphones installed in front of the Theseus Temple record sounds and noises that serve as basic musical material for the summer. As a sound observatory, it registers acoustic events in and around the Volksgarten (Heldenplatz, Ringstraße, Rathausplatz, etc.).
TRANSFORMER: NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE
The sounds of the outside space are sent out via internet in different directions, caught up again, superimposed inside the Theseustemple and again sent on a journey with new sounds ... Through the continuous "summation" the originally concrete material is pulverized, recycled and reorganized in a different aesthetic context. In the resulting feedback system, information from the "real world" (the urban center Volksgarten) and characteristic factors of a "virtual world" (e.g. time delays due to network load) interact.
PROJECTION ROOM: RESONANCE BODY THESEUSTEMPEL
Here, the "translation" of the time structures of the transformer www into sensually experienceable spatial structures of the Theseustempel takes place: The aesthetics of the liquid sound architecture changes the perception of space and places the visitor in an extreme field of tension of sensual stimuli. As soon as he enters the temple, he is immersed in a sea of sounds and, by moving through the space, discovers different sound patterns (heights, depths, degrees of density) and their spatial chaotic structures. Here, space becomes the essential dimension for music. Each visitor composes his or her own individual sound piece: "from place to place he hears other(s)".
DOCUMENTATION: A PICTURE TO KEEP TRACK OF THINGS
The visitor movements following the course of the sound are recorded and projected in the entrance and exit areas. The recording shows the movements and the lingering of the visitors and thus describes the centers of the soundscape: stimulus-intensive places are more frequented and stand out as condensations of self-similar forms. Thus, the trace image provides an analysis of the spatial effect on the visitor and an archiving of all states of the entire installation time.
