Audio walk
Audio Walk , Sound Walk or landscape composition is called an acousmatic principle to the perception of aural atmospheric content of a landscape. This landscape can be an urban as well as an agricultural or otherwise comprehensible and above all aurally perceptible space.
Categories
- Landscape composition; Instrumental musicians play in a landscape (e.g. Daniel Ott)
- Representation of an existing landscape with electronic means (e.g. Robin Minard)
- Artificial reproduction of an imaginary landscape (e.g. John Cage)
- Interpretation with musical means of elements of a romantic landscape (e.g. Franz Schubert; Ludwig van Beethoven; Olivier Messiaen; Tristan Murail)
- Montage of sounds from a real landscape (e.g. Pierre Schaeffer; Pierre Henry)
- Scientific recordings (e.g. ESA to document sounds on Saturn's moon Titan)
history
The principle of the “audio walk” originated in France in the 1950s as part of the “Musique Concrete” group around the composers Pierre Schaeffer and Luc Ferrari . The idea was to use the first recording process, analog multi-track technology and later digital computer-aided processes to create a podcast to map an atmosphere of a landscape 1: 1 and to preserve it for all time. In a certain sense, Beethoven's "Pastorale" could be viewed as a first attempt to recreate a landscape, but without technical aids, right up to Messiaen's music with the exact transcription of birdsong .
The audio walk itself can have both artistic and scientific motivations. He usually draws over a long period of time, e.g. B. with the help of so-called field recorders on the atmosphere of a landscape. You perceive acoustic sounds, which are not changed by editing and editing, but only reflect their atmospheric content. There have been attempts of this kind by composers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and above all by the American composer John Cage (“Imaginary Landscape”). Soon there were also similar concepts such as “ acoustic landscape art ”, which tried to bring musicians into public space and to confront them with it. In a sense, "4:33" by John Cage is an audio walk into the interior of the concert hall.
Audio walks can be used in the fields of acoustic art, acousmatics, but also for scientific purposes. A well-known example is the “Sounding D.” project by the Canadian composer Robin Minard .
Audio walks are the subject of sound art courses: teaching takes place there in the subjects of sound anthropology and sound ecology, experimental sound design , auditory media design and acoustic conception. The Berlin University of the Arts and the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts offer sound art courses . Sound art is an interdisciplinary discipline that is neither free art nor music, but a hybrid of both art areas. Audio or sound walks are primarily used in museums or with mobile hard disk players, as the recipient explores a sounding room at his own discretion.
A special case is Dieter Schnebel's work "Mono", which explicitly asks the recipient to read and let the sound exist solely in the head. In this sense it is an imaginary "audio walk". Another concept is provided by the Swiss composer Daniel Ott, who relocates the classical performance in the concert hall to the concrete space.
Differentiation from music
In a narrower sense, the soundwalk or the audio walk is more of a kind of art form that is closer to the visual arts than to music. Unlike music, it's more about sounds and frequencies. Traditional forms of concerts are negated and replaced by installation forms in museums and galleries, as well as other venues in the off-scene. In contrast to a concert, “sound” and “audio walk” are accessible installations and are not necessarily tied to the concert situation; that is, they usually run all day and are static, such as B. “Shift change” by Franz Martin Olbrisch. Usually large numbers of loudspeakers are used, as in the "BEAST" loudspeaker orchestra from Birmingham. Prof. Ulrich Eller heads the class for sound art in Braunschweig: Here the sound objects often become tangible, sensually tangible objects that sound.
Web links
- Journalistic audio walk on the JENA.DE website
- Ircam Paris Center for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art
- Degree in sound art at the Berlin University of the Arts
- Kirsten Reese
- IMEB Bourge
- An audio walk through the Zurich city area. A text by Sabine Merz ( Memento from February 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive )