During their residency at the ICST, Gerhard Eckel and Ludvig Elblaus, who perform under the duo utrumque, have created a unique sound installation, which was then performed in concert format. They used a special double-axis loudspeaker system developed by ICST researcher Peter Färber together with Adrian Humbel (Masswerk). It consists of a large rotor rotating around its own axis, at the end of which is a loudspeaker that can rotate endlessly around its own axis. Combined with precisely positioned microphones, additional loudspeakers, the specific room acoustics and how they are altered by the presence of the audience, and algorithmic signal processing, a dynamic system is created that produces constantly new soundscapes.
Rotoscillombrage
A chaotic system is very sensitive to small changes both in its constitution and its environment. One can even argue that the environment becomes an inexorable part of the system itself, the border between the two becoming porous and elusive. Rotoscillombrage is such a system that uses microphones, digital signal processing software, and speakers, linked through acoustic feedback in a particular space, to create a volatile musical situation that is highly reactive to change.
For utrumque, electroacoustic systems that link materialities and spaces are both instruments and compositions at the same time. The components in these systems that offer the most precise modes of control are the digital, the unseen signal processing that takes place in the invisible world of the virtual. But in Rotoscillombrage, through the collaboration with ICST and their Moving Loudspeakers group, a new mode of interaction is made possible through the utrubrach, a 7 meter long rotating arm with a rotating loudspeaker at the end of it, both under precise motor control. This has offered completely new ways of composition that will be expressed both in the installation Rotoscillombrage, and the performance where utrumque will play together with their installation.
Watching the speaker move, thus changing the acoustic connections between speaker and microphones, and tuning in to the resulting changes rippling through the music creates a visceral link between the seen and the heard, the physical and the ephemeral, invoking aspects of dance and kinetic sculpture. Moreover, as the moving speaker projects sound into the room, the spatialization of the piece is also determined by how the radiation pattern of the speaker is translated and rotated around the space to create ever new reflection patterns, entangling the installation with its site even further.
utrumque
15 июн 2024
