Premiere at Műcsarnok in Budapest (HU) on the 8th September 2007, followed by concerts at Muffatwerk in Munich (DE) on the 11th September 2007 and at ZKM in Karlsruhe (DE) on the 21st September 2007. Commissioned by the ZKM
Some themes are recurrent in my music: the use of voices, the multiple transformations that radically modify the original sounds whilst keeping a clear trace of their energetic profiles, the use of clouds of particles, the broad use of spatialisation and multiphony,…
But some instruments inspire new ways of doing things. The spatial discrimination made possible by the 44 speakers of sound dome in the Kubus at ZKM and it’s driving software, the Zirkonium made me want to explore spatialisation modes that are not possible with traditional surround systems where the positioning of a sound in the centre is done by sending the same level to all speakers, which only works for the few lucky listeners in the small sweet spot in the center of the hall. The possibility of moving sounds across or near the centre convincingly made me want to revive old ideas of spatialisation that I dropped because most sound systems wouldn’t concretise the idea tangibly.
I therefore wrote algorithms that extend the use of the Zirkonium and help make those ideas a reality. This piece uses sound spatialisation in a way that goes often beyond moving and locating sounds, going from disappearance and reappearance, coalescence and dissolution to the creation of demultiplied sound masses to the emergence of space-rhythmical forms impressed on continuous sound materials.
The spatialisation and the sound transformations are both controlled in real-time with sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, digital Theremins, contact microphones). Linking sound analysis and sensor data with the spatialisation they control also creates a strong bind between the nature of sounds and their spatial manifestation.
This desire to interpret electroacoustic music beyond spatialisation and to partly improvise with the help of sensors grew from my work for the last 10 years with the choreographer Michèle Noiret and her dancers.
The setup of the dome also means a predominance in sounds localised around and above the audience which favours the feeling of floating, weightless sound sources. This feeling of weightlessness has been resonating with me for a long time and the instrument allows me to explore it musically deeper than ever.