Mapping of Real and Virtual Spaces

The approach resides in emphasising the listening experience by developing a dynamic link between the Amazon rainforest (Real spaces) and the

reception/perception of the audience during the performance (Virtual spaces) of the composition. This is considered through contrasting issues between audio culture and visual culture. According to McLuhan:  

Western man thinks with only one part of his brain and starves the rest of it. By neglecting ear culture, which is too diffuse for the categorical hierarchies of the left side of the brain, he has locked himself into a position where only linear conceptualization is acceptable. (McLuhan in Cox and Warner 2004: 67)

In De Rerum Natura the emphasis through deep listening during the recording process allows concentration on the perception of the environment through sound, the main idea being to invigorate a multimodal perception that goes beyond sight. Those issues are investigated in the present work by creating an experience in the

performance space where it is received by immersing the audience in full darkness, possibly wearing blindfolds (as proposed by the Spanish

composer Francisco López), in order to intensify the listening experience.

The context of listening includes ecological issues of a particular environment, then their perception by an audience. Guattari mentions three ecological registers:

An ethico-political articulation – that I call ecosophy – between the three ecological registers, the one of the environment, the one of the social relations and the one of the human subjectivity.²⁶ (Guattari 1989: 12)

Therefore, the ecological registers mentioned above appear in De Rerum Natura as follows:

(1) The (sonic) environment of the Amazon rainforest is deterritorialised and reterritorialised. It creates a temporary place that is a relation between the performance space and the composition. The reterritorialisation engages the listener in a sonic experience, where several spaces and places from the

Amazon rainforest are layered together and recombined within the performance space. They therefore become what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘a new

territoriality for another’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 174) and lead to a sonic moiré pattern. The sonic moiré is a metaphor of illusional aspects of multiple possible levels of listening, created by the addition of layers of sound in the performance spaces.

26 ‘Une articulation éthico-politique – que je nomme écosophie – entre les trois registres écologiques, celui de l’environnement, celui des rapports sociaux et celui de la subjectivité humaine.’

Fig. 3.2.2 Moiré pattern

(2) The social relations are those of the fauna from the Amazon rainforest and their sonic activity in relation to the listener. Attention to the sound of the environment is part of the social relations, and they are required in the Amazonian rainforest for reasons of survival, according to Oliveros:

Animals are Deep Listeners. When you enter an environment where there are birds, insects or animals, they are listening to you

completely. You are received. Your presence may be the difference between life and death for the creatures of the environment.

Listening is survival! (Oliveros 2005: xxv)

The composer in the Amazon rainforest pays attention to the environment for reasons of survival. The environment may be hazardous, due to the presence of very dangerous species (in particular, snakes). With this in mind, careful

observation during listening and attention develop a tension during the listening experience of the humans and while recording. The listening experience is when the first elements of the composition appear. The tension is imparted into the composition.

(3) Human subjectivity is the perception, by the audience, of the piece and the consecutive interpretation of De Rerum Natura by the audience. The resulting mental imageries, triggered by De Rerum Natura, are the artworks, too, according to Foucault:

Transformation of one’s self by one’s own knowledge is, I think, something rather close to the aesthetic experience. (Foucault 1990:

14)

The transformation of one’s self by one’s own knowledge in this case relates to the memories that will be triggered by the sound of the Amazon rainforest, even for members of the audience who have never been there, by transferring the impression of the tension in the sound of the rainforest, thus triggering the mental imagery of the audience.

3.2.1.2. Background

The following composers are major influences upon the current work. This is because of their respective ways of integrating the performance space in the composition, both during the diffusion of the sound and by transforming the space itself into an instrument.

• Edgar Varèse

The composer is paramount in the idea of projection of sound masses. However, due to technological constraints, he was able to realise properly his sound

projection dream only late in his career, with the piece Poème électronique.

Nevertheless, Varèse anticipated the concept of projection in the performance space as early as in 1936, during a lecture he gave in Santa Fe:

When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive it, the movement of sound masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived in my work, taking the place of the linear counterpoint.

When these sound-masses collide, the phenomena of penetration or repulsion will seem to occur. Certain transmutations taking place on certain planes will seem to be projected onto other planes, moving at different speeds and at different angles. There will no longer be the old conception of melody or interplay of melodies. The entire work will be a melodic totality. The entire work will flow as a river flows (…) the role of colour or timbre would be completely changed from being incidental, anecdotal, sensual or picturesque; it would become an agent of delineation, like the different Colors on a map separating different areas, and an integral part of form. These zones would be felt as isolated, and the hitherto unobtainable non-blending (or at least the sensation of non-blending) would become possible. (Varese and Chou 1966: 11,12)

Furthermore, ideas of sound projection can already be observed in his piece Ionisation and are articulated as follows:

By ‘projection’, I mean the sensation that is given to use by some blocs of sounds. I would say with more happiness ‘ray of sound’ (…) For the ear as for the eye, this phenomenon gives a sensation of extension, of travel within space.²⁷ (Castanet in Horodosky and Lalitte 2007: 53)

The transformation of the performance space by projection of sound through strategic placement of loudspeakers relates to De Rerum Natura as an integral part of the composition. In addition, the ‘transformations themselves are systems that define, at a superior level of abstraction, forms of spatiality’ ²⁸ (Granger in Horodosky and Lalitte 2007: 73). The transformation of the acoustic properties of the space in De Rerum Natura follows the strategies developed by Varèse:

Today, with the technical means that exist and are easily adaptable, the differentiation of the various masses and different planes as well as these beams of sound could be made discernible to the listener by means of certain acoustical arrangements (…) In the moving masses you would be conscious of their transmutations when they pass over different layers, when they penetrate certain opacities, or are dilated in certain rarefactions. (Varèse in Risset 2004: 33)

In De Rerum Natura, the transmutation of the sounds exists when projected in the performance space and as such the composition is intrinsically related to it.

The composition will then change for each performance according to the acoustic properties of the performance space.

• Maryanne Amacher

Her work is of particular interest by integrating the architecture of buildings, specifically with what she called ‘structure-borne’ sound, meaning the sound                                                                                                                

27 ‘Par “projection”, j’entends la sensation qui nous est donnée par certains blocs de sons. Je

enters directly in contact with the structure. Although De Rerum Natura does not always enter directly into contact with the structure of the buildings where the performance is held the idea that the architecture becomes an instrument is very much present, and according to LaBelle:

Space can be incorporated into the sculpting of particular sound work: rather than house a work, work can literally become a house.

Amacher’s ‘sound characters’ operate to immerse the listener/viewer in a specific narrative of sound and space, as a ‘sonic theatre’ in which the material function of architecture shifts to that of vibration.

(LaBelle 2006: 173)

The performance spaces where the piece is presented are investigated as

‘sonic theatre’ in De Rerum Natura; the composition resonates with the space by creating a call and response. This is accomplished by playing with the resonance of the space. The resonance that LaBelle calls

‘vibration’ is the work. It appears once the sound starts to enter into resonance with the physical architecture, and the work is no longer only the composition per se, but the vibration resulting from the interaction of the sound with the architecture of the building.

• Luigi Nono

La Fabbrica Illuminata by Nono is of interest for the current project through the idea of the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of the meaning in his work.

There are many ways to understand the title, and all are political in the case of Nono. The present context of De Rerum Natura relates to the idea of

transforming a location by offering various angles of listening and providing room for the interpretation of the material. De Benedictis mentions how Nono proposes insights into technology and composition issues, and how to

reconfigure venues, which are the main points investigated in De Rerum Natura:

[Nono] viewed technology as a new frontier that allowed him ever freer and more immediate artistic expression, experimenting with solutions involving sound and space (…) the choice of intervals could become increasingly ‘intuitive’, being defined in situ and projected

onto the juxtaposition or superimposition of complex sound textures (blocs, layers, lines and so on) (…) Being subject to environmental variables involving the projection of sound in space, the influence of microphones and so on (…) The ‘space’ which the composer

imagined – achieved during the eighties by means of the

transformation, elaboration and projection in real time of sound made possible by live electronics – was conceived as an environment in which spatial and temporal relationships could form part of a total dimension (…) The whole of Nono's output is based on the pursuit of new sonorities, requiring not only a different manner of experiencing sound (by performers and listeners) but also new configurations for concert venues. (De Benedictis 2013)

The performance space is ‘augmented’. It is no longer the space per se;

rather, it is illuminated through a strategic position of microphones and loudspeakers in such a way that the composition interacts with the performance space itself. It allows an additional layer of spatiality, where the resonance of the performance space is interpenetrated by the

illumination of the microphones and loudspeakers.