Composing with and for moving speakers
The semester course Composing with and for moving loudspeakers provides an overview of the use of moving loudspeakers from 1940 to the present day; the strategies underlying moving loudspeakers in music theater, composition, and sound art are examined.
What happens when loudspeakers are moved? What are the creative possibilities?
The movement of a sound source causes amplitude and frequency modulation and changes in sound spatiality. The loudspeaker becomes a point sound source, clearly audible and localizable.
The movement of a loudspeaker breaks up its traditional role as an invisible sound transducer. It brings it into focus and turns it into a visible sounding object with instrumental character. The visual presence of the loudspeaker requires integration into the staging and is a challenge because the extra-musical staging must be in an appropriate relationship to the sound content.
Through movement, the loudspeaker becomes, so to speak, the center of a sound-spatial staging.
The movement and the associated acoustic effects are essential elements and cannot be substituted by simulations.
Spaces and sound movements are not made with the established procedures of fixed loudspeaker arrays, but are realized by moving loudspeakers.
The possibilities of how loudspeaker movements are performed range from manual handling to the exact control of stepper motors.
With their own compositional work, the course participants explore the consequences of moving loudspeakers and the possibilities that arise. At the end of a course, these works will be presented in the workshop presentation Sound In Motion.
Sound In Motion 1-3 already took place, the presentation Sound In Motion 4 had to be postponed due to the Corona Pandemic. The works from this course no. 4 will be shown together with the works from the current course no. 5 in Sound In Motion 4 & 5 on January 20, 2021 on the website of SoundInMotion.
