Tuned City day 1 / 8 pm / Pfefferberg Haus 13
keynote
Dr. Barry Blesser
spaces speak, are you listening?
keynote
Anton Garcia-Abril (Ensamble Studio Madrid)
building for sound
installation
Nik Hummer
Sperrgut
performance
Randy Yau / Scott Arford
Infrasound
performance
BMB con.
“We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We navigate a room in the dark, and ‘hear’ the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. It is possible to learn to see with your ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling.” Barry Blesser, who belongs to the pioneers of the digital audio revolution, will introduce the concepts and vocabulary of aural architecture with his lecture on acoustic spatial perception.
The Spanish musician and architect Antón García-Abril – son of the Spanish composer of the same name – designs and constructs buildings for music. His minimal concert hall architectures in Medina el Campo or Santiago del Compostela are planned for concerts of new and experimental music and vary the topic of the “white cube” as an ideal space with the most flexibility for the changes and the development of performance practice.
Both lectures approach the topic of architecture and sound from different perspectives, they question our perceptive habits and our way of dealing with space.
The Dutch performance group BMB con. will as usually not give away what they are planning to do, perhaps they don’t even know themselves. One thing is certain, they are going to change the performance space thoroughly. BMB con. work with sound, image, space and whatever they can lay their hands on. So far they have performed in every kind of space, in museums, concert halls, forests, ships or water tanks – but never in a zoo.
With their performance Infrasound, the Americans Randy Yau and Scott Arford explore the possibility to experience space both acoustically and physically. The play with the resonance of material, with acoustic phenomena, sound cancellation and sound shadows and create thereby an impressive physical sound experience.