One topic popping up in several discussions over the last week is the use of trajectories for describing positioning and motion of sound in space. When we experience sound surrounding us, how do we perceive it? Do we organize and understand spatial sound as traces in space-time, as points, as objects with an extended body, as energy or in other ways? Is the use of trajectories for composing in space derived from real-world experience of the sounding space, or from how spatial data can be represented mathematically?
Yesterday I saw the ongoing Calder exhibition at Centre Pompidou. This is an exhibition of trajectories. Calders wire sculptures are drawings in space, demarcations of the physical space occupied by the individuals and animals he set out to portrait.
Another artist comes to mind, the UK/Deutch sound artist Justin Bennett. Combining drawing and spatial audio, sound is drawn in space in several of his work, literally by how loudspeaker cables are laid out, or on more abstract levels, as in the Europa project where the internal EU borders are presented as drawings as well as being used as trajectories traversing a field of sound recordings from the different sides of those borders.
Pascal Baltazar’s performance of Pyrogenesis at the Borealis festival in March gave me similar associations, providing one answer to a question I have been asking myself for a while: Why are so many of the composers concerned with spatial sound also deeply involved in exploring gestures in music and new interfaces for musical expression? Using a wacom tablet, Pascal was literally drawing the space, creating invisible lines extending beyond the stage, cutting into and through the space occupied by the audience.
