Lately I’ve been building a 1:25 model of the gallery space at Hordaland kunstsenter where the final exhibition for the fellowship will be exhibited November 3-12. I’ve never built this kind of models before but I wanted to do it this time just to see what it would do to the process and how and if I might benefit from it. It has occurred to me that this is a kind of spacial score.
Back when I started doing counterpoint exercises as part of the composition study I was reading a book taking the route from one voice (primordial line) to two part counterpoint (species 1-5 and mixed species) and then three-part counterpoint. For the primordial line exercises it recommended that the voice should be sung rather than played on piano or similar. When moving on to two-part exercises it recommended one voice to be sung the other played and then switching: singing the 2nd part playing the first. Little by little I found that my imagination and inner hearing was trained so that i ended up being able to write two- and three part exercises at least the simpler ones without having to play them just singing one voice and “hear” the others.
Later on when studying orchestration I started approaching it in a similar way making it a point to train my own imagination for how different instruments would sound without necessarily hearing it in real life. Some other students depended on Finale and synths a lot for their exercises but I tried to avoid having to rely on hearing the sounding result (or a simulation of it) all the time. Most of the time composers don’t have access to the instruments and instrumentalists they are writing for so this ability to imagine what it eventually will sound like is crucial.
Moving into electronic sound and work on installations I have tried to extend the capability of my own imagination to the new fields. So for most of the installations done over the past years it has been a balance of making decisions at the spot while building the installation in order to respond to the site physically and acoustically and in parts I’ve made decisions beforehand based on imagination of how the end result would be. But I have hardly ever spent time on sketch books drawings models or similar. The closest I have gotten is a folder or two of abandoned Max patches.
This installation will require a lot of work in a very short time. One of the benefits of the model I have seen so far is when discussing with others and for planning practical details concerning how to do it all.
Today I finally got to take some photos. Bringing the camera close to the model revealed a different look that I find interesting. When getting as close as in the two shots below the feeling of it being a downscaled model starts blurring. The stands for the two speakers look a bit phony though…
For comparisment I am adding three shots taken in May this year. I was fortunate to be able to work in the space for several weeks back then doing acoustic tests development for spatialisation and ambisonics and think about the physical layout of the room. That was really useful and a rare occation to spend more than just a few days prior to the opening for tuning into the space. So much for the imaginative ability claimed above…
The windows have since been sealed off so the lovely daylight in the room is no longer possible to achieve. I am anyway going to make the room into a darker place painting the walls and doing other modifications.