Electroacoustic composition for a reasonable number of loudspeakers and microphones
In 2011, the International Society for Contemporary Music in Bern announced an international competition for electronic music on the theme of ‘flight’. The winner of the competition is Swiss sound artist, composer and musician Cyrill Lim (born 1984). His composition ‘Weg’ (double meaning of "away" and "path") will be premiered at the Bern Music Festival in collaboration with the Dampfzentrale Bern. The work requires ‘a reasonable number of loudspeakers and microphones’ and evokes the perspective of refugees: as persecuted people, they are under great physical and psychological pressure, and their goals are safety, security and peace. Fleeing is a process of withdrawal, the course and outcome of which are unpredictable. Fleeing can be both a painful and a liberating experience.
Cyrill Lim's composition impressed the jury with its coherent basic concept and the simplicity of the means employed: sounds are “filtered out” of a loud noise created by adding all pitches together in a lengthy process; each individual sound is extremely quiet compared to the power of the noise. The more tones are filtered out of the noise, the weaker the overall sound becomes. Towards the end, only a fine, barely audible trickle of tones remains. The work must adapt to the site-specific characteristics of the room, which defines both the volume at the beginning and the audibility of the fleeting sound particles at the end. Cyrill Lim's musical study of perception impressively reflects the experience of refuge.
With thanks to Roman Lim for his support and programming.
Recording by Gerald Hahnefeld / SRF 2
Notes
Flight is the process of withdrawal triggered and accompanied by external or internal circumstances. For political or psychological reasons, flight often has the goal of achieving safety, security and peace.
I am now attempting to capture this process of flight musically.
In my approximately 50-minute-long piece, a process takes place between two musical extremes: from noise to silence. This progression is achieved solely by filtering the noise. The parameters of the filter are determined by the noise itself and by the circumstances, the environment, in this case by the room.
The piece is designed for an unspecified number of loudspeakers and one microphone per loudspeaker, with each microphone assigned to a loudspeaker and positioned in the same place as the corresponding loudspeaker. Noise is played on all loudspeakers. The noise is filtered, reflected or partially amplified depending on the position of the room and the listeners in the room. The microphone picks up this information and a computer compares the recorded information with the original noise. The frequencies acoustically filtered by the room are removed from the noise by means of a filter. This process continues throughout the entire duration of the piece and for each loudspeaker individually until all frequencies have been filtered out. In terms of sound, a loud noise will initially ‘thin out’ and become quieter until, at a certain point, individual pitches become discernible. The perception also moves between two extremes: loud and quiet.
This concept, which is simple in itself, is relatively complex both musically and technically. For example, I have to consider how I want to intervene in the volume ratios and the temporal progression of the filtering so that the piece does not begin with an overly deafening noise, but so that the individual remaining pitches can still be heard towards the end.
Specifics for the performance on 9 September 2011 at the Dampfzentrale
The original sketch was revised and adapted to the circumstances for the performance at the Dampfzentrale.
Four loudspeakers and microphones will be used. The noise used is white noise with a bandwidth of approximately 100 Hz to 12 kHz. Apart from the concept, the main part of the ‘composition’ consists of determining the temporal components and the type of filtering. Basically, the frequencies with the highest amplitudes are continuously filtered out of the noise. Although the concept (filtering noise) seems very simple, it is not easy to implement technically. This is mainly because the filter bands have to be very narrow so that individual tones or pitches can actually be recognised at the end. However, this requires an enormous number of filters. Roman Lim from ETH Zurich was responsible for solving this problem and wrote a programme specifically for this purpose.