Understanding Space through Sound

How can sound be shaped by spaces and how can peoples experiences be affected through the
manipulation of acoustics as a function of architecture?

no sound exists outside of space, and no space is ever truly silent. Sound and space mutually
reinforce one another in our perception; the qualities of a space affect how we perceive a sound and
those of a sound affect how we perceive a space. Colin Ripley, In the Place of Sound

by listening we may be able to perceive the relationship between subject and object, inside and
outside, and the public and private altogether differently. Michael Bull and Les Black, The Auditory
Cultural Reader

SHAPE (size) and MATERIAL

I would like to investigate the shaping of experience through the acoustical characteristics of
architectural constructs, specifically through the use of observed properties of geometric spaces,
phenomena resulting from the relationships between adjacent spaces, as well as the use of
materials and placement of objects within a space to enhance or distort existing soundscapes.

More specifically, I am interested in how these criteria might be employed in order to create
aurally specific spaces. For instance, a reverberant passageway that slowly transitions to an
insulated environment simply through the use of materials and their composition. Another example
could be orchestrating the absence of sound in an extremely ambient space. As these phenomena
are a result of specific spatial configurations, their classification as such will begin to organize
strategies for the development of possible aural interventions. Topics for study would include: the
acoustics of interior and exterior spaces addressing the possible disjunction between the aural and
the visual, soundscapes of stacked spaces, embedded spaces etc., the properties of space
geometries, and the characteristics of materials and their construction.

Interference, Reverberation and Resonance

Additionally, I would like to explore the physical relationship people have with the spaces they
occupy with regards to acoustic perception. One might have drastically different experiences from
different positions within a room as suggested in the excerpt below from Sabines Collected Papers
on Acoustics.

it was observed that the pitch of the pipe apparently changed an octave when the
observer straightened up in his chair from a position in which he was leaning forward. The
explanation is this: The organ pipe did not give a single pure note, but gave a fundamental treble c
accompanied by several overtones, of which the strongest was in this case the octave above. Each
note in the whole complex sound had its own interference system, which as long as the sound
remained constant, remained fixed in position. (pg. 7)

It is evident that spaces possess certain inherent acoustic qualities, including those of
interference (related to a produced signal), reverberation and resonance, but the experience of a
signal can also depend on the position of the body in relation to the physical space it occupies. For
example, when one speaks facing a wall or corner, the sound will be louder (actually more
powerful), than if you speak directly at a person.

I am interested in the possibilities presented by these types of interactions between the body
and the built environment. How can these phenomena consciously be employed to create specific
acoustic and architectural experiences? Within the framework of the themes above, acoustic
interventions can serve as the interface through which people begin to observe and affect their
status in the greater public sphere.
http://auralarchitectures.blogspot.ro/2011/02/understanding-space-through-sound.html

JASON KAHN: PERCEPTION OF THE SPACE THROUGH SOUND

I ordered my first Jason Kahn today. I have a copy of On Metal Shore coming my way.
Imagine being a drummer in a rock band. You are playing many concerts, some of which go for many
hours. You are touring all over the United States and Europe. Then, as you become more and more
experienced, you start to notice the relationship between the sound you are producing and the
space you inhabit at that time. You begin to see that the musical piece played here, is different to
the same musical piece played there. You notice there is some sort of relationship between you,
your instrument, the sounds you procure in tandem, and the space you work in. Then you notice the
intricacies of the difference between each performance. Social dynamics transform sound. Over
time, sound is like a moving photograph adding its commentary to every moment of your life.
https://soundcloud.com/riccardo-dillon-wanke/manuel-mota-jason-kahn-esp

This is the experience Jason Kahn relates in his interview with Julien Ottavi at Grande exposition
dart sonore premire dition. From here Jason turns to electronic music, and then to the sounds
of his life the kettle or a car horn removing the sound from the instrument or from the physical
setting that restricts its context.
In the pursuit of recording sounds for compositional purposes I became increasingly aware of
environmental sound in relation to different spaces, not just physical spaces but also social ones.
And this led me to think of using sound as a means of examining how we perceive space, both as a
social and physical entity. In this context, I decided the format of the room installation could be a
good way of investigating these new questions I was raising for myself.
https://vimeo.com/16230356

In the same interview, when asked if he prefers to have his work shown in an art space, performance
space or public space, Jason replies:
I prefer to show work in public spaces, though I am not strictly averse to working with galleries,
concert halls, etc. What I like about a public space and here I am mainly talking about my work in
the context of installations is that there is no pre-conceived notion about the work. When one
enters a gallery or a museum or any space designated to exhibit works of art, we walk through the
door with a certain sense of expectation: perhaps we are hoping to be amused, intellectually
stimulated, impressed, irritated, whatever. When someone stumbles upon a work in a public space
they might first have to ask themselves What is this? Is this a work of art? Is this a joke? Is this a
mistake, is something wrong here, etc? There is much more space for them to navigate their
thoughts in than if they had perceived this work in an art space.
I also prefer public spaces because they tend to be more unstable situations than in an art space.
Especially in my site-specific work I want to engage with a specific environment, embracing all its
problems, advantages, daily permutations. This kind of challenge often reveals new conceptual
considerations which might not have been apparent in the more controlled environment of a
designated art space.

In his QO2 Field Festival Program Notes written in October 2011, he writes:
In this new series of works, entitled In Place, I wanted to address the process of what transpires
when I go to a place to make a recording. Of course, I come away with a recording of something. Ive
made my catch of material or perhaps a stand-alone composition or panoramic still life. But more
than this I take back with me the experience of spending time in a place, absorbing that place in all
its details: its sights, its sounds, how on emotional and intellectual levels I interacted with this place.
When I am back home listening to the recordings a rush of memories accompanies them, much like
Prousts famous biscuit in his cup of tea unleashing a torrent of recollections from his childhood. My
mind wanders beyond the recordings and their subtleties. I begin to think about the place, how I felt
being there, what that place was about in terms of its social context, its function; how people
reacted to me being there, to what my mind was thinking while I was making the recordings all this
mental and emotional material existing alongside the snazzy sound files Id manged to make with all
my shiny equipment.

For me this is very interesting no its more than that. Its enlightening. Listening to music like this
affects me just as a powerful work of art or a very brilliant novel will affect me except of course in
its own journey to my core. Ive only been able to listen to Jason Kahn on my computer from the
clumsy mediums you see above. I am therefore hesitant to give any sort of commentary on how the
music affects me. When I receive my album, Ill give it a listen and I will write a review.
https://lisathatcher.com/2012/01/31/jason-kahn-perception-of-the-space-through-sound/

Understanding Space through Sound

4DSOUNDs Creative Director John Connell presented his outlook on spatial sound in a lecture at
CTM Festival 2015 in Berlin. With the title Understanding Space Through Sound, the talk covered
the questions 4DSOUND has been asking, and our focus until 2017.

From the very beginning, ideas about space, spatiality, and concepts around perception and
awareness have been central to the development of 4DSOUND as a technology, as an artistic
medium, and as a set of principles for exploring the nature of sound in new ways.

Nikola, the techno-opera exploring the life and ideas of Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor and
futurist (and a figure of growing popular inspiration), was a driving force in the development of the
project. Concepted and composed by 4DSOUND founder Paul Oomen, Nikola demanded a new kind
of spatial environment and control system to enable a range of acoustic processing and live mixing
of scenes. In parallel, some of these techniques themselves experimented with Tesla's ideas about
the movement of energy through space: art imitating imagined life, so to speak. As an early
experiment in 4DSOUND, it brought forth a range of learnings on technology and practice with
immersive sound technologies.

Sound is not only a medium through which we perceive the nature of space, but also a direct way of
expressing our ideas, feelings and state within and through space. It could even be argued that
sound is space and vice versa. At the very least, we feel they inform each other at a fundamental
level- we know space through sound.

'if creative sound can come from the surrounding world, rather than only from a focused tightly
defined source defined by individual authors, then I think our conceptions of art might change in
fundamental ways. Instead of assumptions where humans are essentially alone, surrounded by
inanimate void, I think the detailed and subtle space created by the 4DSOUND system implied a very
different picture of the world. Voices and presences can be everywhere. Far from alone, I found
myself inside a renewed kind of present world, surrounded and in a very curious way released and
fulfilled.'
- Philip Beesley, Artist, Scientist, Architect

By exploring new ways of listening spatially, and discovering new subtleties in our capacity to
perceive sound, we are examining the role that sound plays in consciousness. We become aware of
the way we perceive, and we challenge to what extent we are able to perceive consciously, or
unconsciously.
Developing our capacity to listen spatially, means becoming increasingly sensitive and subtly
interconnected with the environment we exist in and are a part of. When we listen in this way, a
new level of awareness begins to emerge. A way of decoding conscious experience through being
mindful- in other words, by listening.

a mode of cognition that is above all, undistracted, accepting, and non-conceptual. Being mindful
is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly,
including the arisal of thoughts themselvesMindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is
appearing in ones mind or body.
- Sam Harris, Waking Up

So, sound informs our concept of space, but listening to space also informs us about ourselves, our
feeling and state within and through space.

At this point in the talk, we did a brief listening meditation I have used in meditation and sound
workshops, purely as a reference for what you might call a 'deeper listening' practice, a phrase
established by composer Pauline Oliveros, and the information present in our environment when we
become attuned to it. Really just scratching the surface, but it went something along these lines:

Sit in a comfortable position and completely relax, feet pressing against the floor. Soften your gaze
or close your eyes.
Become conscious of your posture as you sit: straighten your spine as you breathe in, release any
tension from the shoulders and belly as you breathe out. Take a few long,slow breaths, and then
gently return to normal breathing.
Allow yourself to arrive- become aware of yourself in space, in this particular location, at this
current moment. Sit for a few breaths and become attentive to all the sensations you can feel-
sounds, temperature, vibration, smell. The sound of the 'space', the character of my voice, the
particular tone of the amplification you may here; the reflections of the sound against the walls:
what does it tell you about the surfaces in the room, the objects in the room, the angles, the levels?
Can you distinguish between flat shiny surface, between empty space, between a person sitting to
your left or right?
Become conscious now of how you feel physically... mentally... and emotionally. How it feels to sit in
silence in such a big group, for example, what does it bring up? Any sensations in the body, any
thoughts and mental images, any emotions, feelings and impulses, and where you sense them in the
body. Sit and observe these as you breathe, trying not to react to them as they arise.
Stay focused on the breath: allow the process to emerge as if experiencing it from within, but from a
slight distance. Try slowly moving between the awareness of your physical body, your mind and
thoughts, your emotions, and finally back to the space around you. Open your eyes.

We feel that spatial sound is becoming part of a multi-disciplinary movement exploring

consciousness. Spatial sound integrates with a range of disciplines and understandings that
collectively examine our experience of living and being:
- scientific analysis of mind, brain and body (neuroscience, cognitive psychology)
- mindfulness and introspective disciplines (meditative practice)
- physiology and intelligence of the body (applied anatomy, yoga and bodywork practices,
nutrition and diet)
- socio-environmental studies (behavioural psychology, sociology)
- the Quantified Self movement (the use of data to analyse how we think, feel and behave)

Moving forward, 4DSOUND will be focused on developing a diverse range of interdisciplinary

projects that deal with the embodiment of the listener in space.
We define a new paradigm instead of a passive experience of sound, what is expressed with sound
appears as a spatial reality. The sensory reality that the listener perceives is exclusively individual:
there is a construct of space that appears only in the mind of that particular listener, at that
particular moment, being in that particular position.

Thus, by playing with the phenomena of spatial sound, we create new spaces, or rather: we create
new realities for the listener. Were enabled to experience something at the limits of our sensory
capacity, both real and unreal, at the threshold of the known and unknown, providing access to
potential new worlds and presences.

Creating new realities for the listener: working with sonic objects in space and psycho-acoustic
processing to construct spatial landscapes, somewhere between the sonic reality of the space and
the subjective imagination of the listener.

Let's look at an example of this. Here's a quick excerpt from the cult, and definitely B-grade, SF
movie Forbidden Planet, released back in 1956. The sound design of the era was highly formative of
our ideas on space, of travelling vast distances to new worlds, both physically and metaphorically,
and watching this as a kid I remember being really fascinated by the Freud-inspired notion of the
unconscious mind manifesting into physical reality. Interestingly, it claims to have the first entirely
electronic music score, composed by American couple Bebe and Louis Barron in their self-
constructed sound studio.

Investigating a mysterious and advanced alien civilisation on a distant world, the crew of the ship are
attacked by a strange invisible force.

What were listening to are the footsteps of the presence, the invisible monster of the id. In a sense,
the presence is there, but only its sound in space. The sound it makes, the physical influence on the
environment, alert us to its presence, though it remains beyond our ability to fully perceive it.

This is what we do at 4DSOUND- producing such sonic images, literally creating 'phantoms' in the
space. Like seeing the shadows on the wall of a person we think is present but isn't there- except for
in the mind of the perceiver.

(Incidentally, this notion of an unseen presence in the unconscious mind was a central thread in the
development of NOQTURNL, my collaboration with visual artist Florence To. An audio-visual
overnight meditation working with dream and hypnagogic state, we were interested by the notion of
conjured entitities in dream, and of visitations in this other state, and our ability to perceive and
even consciously interact with them).

It's exciting territory, that raises many questions. If the awareness of the listener becomes part of
the medium itself, then what does that mean for composers and creators working with this
medium? What new tools and rules are emerging? How does this affect the different listening
environments we already know?

And what states might a receptive and reciprocal listener be able to access through spatial
compositions? As an increased ability to listen, informed by ever increasing nuance and detail of
sonic environments (and thus the space we inhabit) opens up new ways and levels of interaction
with and within space?
Spatial compositions allow us to move further into the subtle physicality of sonic forms; and with
this, a more nuanced understanding of the influence of such forms on our psycho-physical state.
Spatial compositions allow us to move further into the subtle physicality of sonic forms; and with
this, a more nuanced understanding of the influence of such forms on our psycho-physical state.

This leads us to a hypothesis, that we intend to investigate and prove with our work: we propose
that spatial sound represents a key evolutionary step both in terms of
a) developing cognitive capacities and its effects on heightened awareness and consciousness; and
b) the ability to express increasingly complex and qualitative ideas, by means of space, artistically or
otherwise.

We believe that spatial sound is a powerful medium to further our understanding of space and to
develop the subtlety, complexity and intensity of our experience within it: consciously, physically,
culturally and artistically with an end to understand the possibilities for cultural, psychological and
even biological evolution.

Through a range of evolving artistic presentations such as Circadian, and research studies currently
in development with academic partners at the Spatial Sound Institute, we have begun outlining
aspects of this fascinating idea, and considering what the implications and applications might be.

If you're interested in this discussion and have ideas working with spatial sound and perception that
you would like to develop, look over our Artist Residency Programme details at the Spatial Sound
Institute in Budapest, coming soon.
http://www.4dsound.net/blog/understanding-space-through-sound