An issue I take with spatial sound is its relative inaccessibility. Simply put, if you don’t have the speaker system, you can’t do it. Collectively, as a cohort, all our assignments have to be necessarily filtered, mixed and finalised through the octophonic ring and the speaker system in M108. To me, this is somewhat emblematic of the unevenly-weighted practice; in favour of the expensive and industrial and the gallery. That being said, algorithmic systems for headphones, like that which Dolby Atmos or Dear Reality provide, bridge that gap with more equity. But it’s still inescapable that they remain an emulation of real-world aural phenomena, experienced solitarily.
I have previously thought about how I’ve found Dear Reality’s VR plugin to sound artificial, but I perceive that view as more of a taste mismatch. It’s a paradigm often suited for game audio or diffusive, electronic music, both worlds I wouldn’t say I have carved out a hollow to sit within (yet). My instinctual first-thoughts when I create art for my own sake find enough immersion, a slippery term, in stereo. Even mono! I have been listening to the newly released Night Palace (STEMS edition) by Mount Eerie, and I have deeply enjoyed the bounce down of a single, mono stem. Close details, unmastered, noticing each faint punch-in through long stretches of nothing at all. Besides my enduring investment in the artist, and indulging the part of my brain that likes taking things apart to see how they work, I think it’s also a reaction to a recent overload of sound.
The spatial sound pieces we have encountered as a cohort have been busy. A critical problem with the availability of spatial audio, is that it is not only difficult to make works independent of an elaborate speaker system, but it is also difficult to source and experience artists’ works independent of an elaborate speaker system. Outside of cinema sound, the only artistic works I have encountered have been in lecture. The spatial work of John Chowning which was introduced to us was somewhat baffling to me. Scientifically, Chowning’s research into the simulation of spatial effects is eminently useful, (2004, pp. 2) ‘in order to simulate the distances cue one must synthesize and control the reverberant signal as well as the direct signal such that the intensity of the direct signal decreases more with distance than does the reverberant signal’. Despite Chowning’s clear technological understanding of the medium, compositionally speaking, I don’t profess to ‘get it’.
It may replicate the expressive qualities of a ‘space’, but to what end? I don’t find it a space I wish to linger in. The randomness and discordance makes me feel like trapped in the most underwhelming
we have heard the work of high frequency scatter of beep boops that wander.
Here’s my mean-spirited joke comparison I stumbled across, to round this out. I can’t help but hear Resident Evil’s infamous ‘Basement Theme’ in Chowning’s ‘Turenas’. One is held in regard as the creative expression of an audio and synthesis polymath, the other is a weird internet meme from a Playstation game. Which is which?
As an artmaking and compositional tool I have had very little contact with, it felt prudent to research multichannel composition from its arguable conception. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s impressionistic 1955-56 electronic composition Gesang der Jünglinge, is a major early work in musique concrete, designed to be performed in a multichannel format,
I’m struck by its relative agelessness. Gesang der Jünglinge could very easily slip into the tracklist of a Oneohtrix Point Never or Galen Tipton album; a forward-thinking, futurist apogee of what we could call glitch today. Incredible to consider, given that it was composed just a decade after the second world war, fourteen years before the moon landing.
Revealingly, Metzger (2004, pp. 705) describes Gesang der Jünglinge: ‘The piece clearly holds to the idea of purity. Out of all the depicted means of securing that state, it adheres to one: refinement. The biblical story is not lost on the work. Gesang, however, rewrites the tale – yet more blasphemy. Having brought in outside materials, be they pure or impure, the work must make them suitable for the pure realm of electronic sound. Gesang surrounds the child’s voice with electronic fire.’
The blaspheming characterisation Metzger observes in the work is interesting; Stockhausen allegedly intended for the four-channel piece to be installed in Cologne Cathedral as a sacred mass, despite a lack of evidence. This subversive, yet seemingly enthusiastic perspective for his work is unusual, and inspiring. I also like his interpretation of electronic sound as fire, it helps me see an elemental quality in Gesang der Jünglinge.
Despite Stockhausen’s serially defined, carefully plotted work, I do feel the piece lacks a compositional cohesion. Yet, I also feel utterly unjustified in saying that. Who am I to qualitatively judge cohesion in avant-garde art? I think my brain has been somewhat fried with prolonged exposure. What is up and what is down? Questions rise continually, and my eyebrows arch. Cornelius Cardew (1974, pp. 36), a once-assistant to Stockhausen, surveys the effects of the hollowing-out of signifiers on the audience in a way I find interesting: ‘Any content, as well as the dynamism that is characteristic of ‘saying something’, is automatically lost if one aspect of the language is systematically altered. But the resulting emptiness does not antagonise the bourgeois audience which is confident of its ability to cultivate a taste for virtually anything.’ Cardew’s cartoonishly Maoist fixations aside, I believe his observation of the avant-garde audience’s omni-acceptance to have a validity. I return to my joke comparison. I don’t mean to denigrate, this random flash of comparison actually raises some questions for me about audience. Why is one atonality held up as achievement and the other ridiculed? How much procedural obscuration until a ‘point’ dissolves for the listener?
While I feel it’s naïve to assume everyone is, or will be, on board with your cultural movement, I feel it’s equally naïve to hold artists accountable for tangential, wider systemic societal problems. Yes, Cardew is seeking to target the very audience he criticises, but he’s also yelling into the same very select ant farm. I think this is why I want to engage with a subject matter more grounded, more earthen and identifiable.
References:
Chowning, J. M. (2004) The Simulation of Moving Sound Sources. Stanford: The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) Stanford University
Metzger, J. M. (2004) ‘The Paths from and to Abstraction in Stockhausen’s Gesang der Junglinge’, Modernism/modernity, 11(4), pp. 705
Cardew, C. (1974) Stockhausen Serves Imperialism. London: Latimer New Dimensions Limited