Re: texture, marryanne amacher

[Sean Cooper <scooper@xxxxxxxx>]

>Essentially we use sound to explore our perception and awareness of our 
>surrounding space. We attempt to create immersive environments that engage 
>the participant by drawing upon the natural sonic qualities of the space and 
>highlighting them so that they are experienced in a new way. Our sonic 
>environment projects explore the apparent silence of interior environments, 
>drawing attention to the (non-)sound within these spaces. We record the 
>natural sonic resonance of the space then, after manipulating and reworking 
>it, play it back to create a new virtual sonic space inside the real one. 

this recalls for me the work of marryanne amacher. her recent cd "sound
characters" (tzadik) features a number of pieces that had their start in
such scenarios. amacher's work begins with spaces; her compositions are
taylored to the qualities of specific architectural contexts, and are
composed to be heard within those spaces via a complex weave of
strategically placed loudspeakers. amacher is interested specifically in
the acoustical contributions of spaces -- the way walls and floors, the
shapes of rooms, etc., affect the qualities of sounds. in fact, the
site-specificity of amacher's pieces is such that she normally doesn't
allow them to be pressed to cd at all. the pieces included on "sound
characters" were extensively reworked for a home-listening context.
musically, they resemble dark ambient with occasional explosive, sometimes
disorienting sound-events (similar in some respects to carl stone). the
resolution of the sound is very impressive. 

"sound characters" also features a number of pieces of "otoacoustic" music,
a different sort of sound-context exploration. instead of the external
spaces of architecture, these pieces are built from combinations of tones
which resonate within the listener's ear canal in such a way that they
produce resonant harmonics. (the effect must be experienced to really be
understood.) put another way, the "music" (essentially rapid sequences of
bright tones) ends up being a combination of what you hear coming out of
the speakers and what your ears produce in response. interestingly (and to
bring it all back on-topic), since hearing these pieces, i've noticed a
number of digital music recordings that produce similar effects.

sc