Field Recordings and Generative Playback / 環境錄音與生成播放
Every space has its unique acoustic quality, with respect to its form, and the objects it contains. The spatial quality of different spaces are usually captured or documented in a visual sense. This piece explores the possibility of mapping a building through sound through recording the ambience of every room in the building using an ambisonic microphone, and reproducing them in a surround sound speaker setting. Sounds of different objects within the space is being made by hitting them, activating the space sonically, to give an idea of how objects are organized within the space, invoking a sense of localization of objects.
The recordings are then cropped and encoded in ambisonics format, organized and played on Max/MSP, which a map with toggles is made to navigate through different rooms, as well as an option to randomly trigger sounds of objects to activate the space acoustically.
空間可用相片記錄，卻只限視覺上的記錄。若以聲音記錄，如何將空間感呈現？若説空間能呈現記憶，是否只限於視覺上的痕跡，聲音上又能否尋找到痕跡呢？
Remnants – Vogelsang
26.08.2020, Afternooon, Rain
Abandoned One-Storey House,
Vogelsang, Zehdenick, Germany
Microphone: Rode NT-SF1
Processed with Max/MSP
Binaural Reproduction
A small, one storey building in Vogelsang (Wannsee) which seems to be like a small office with reception was chosen, and the ambience of every room was recorded (on a rainy day), as well as sounds of different objects.
Axial Remnants – Rheinsberg Palace
13.09.2020, Afternoon, Cloudy
Rheinsberg Palace Area,
Rheinsberg, Germany
Microphone: Zoom H3-VR
Processed with Max/MSP
Binaural Reproduction
The transportation company in Berlin and Brandenberg offered free transport on weekends in September, albeit a really bad idea in the midst of the pandemic (since trains are filled with people close to each other), I still decided to take advantage of it to visit a few places of interest in Brandenberg. I went to Rheinsberg, a town which houses a former palace, Schloss Rheinsberg. It once belonged to the royal families of the Prussian Empire.
The configuration of the palace and its garden provoked my interest. The palace was symmetrical, which its center axis aligns with its bridge, entrance, courtyard and a main statue in front of the palace. The center axis extends across the lake in front of the palace towards the other side, which is an obelisk commemorating the Seven Years’ War. Beside the palace is a large backyard garden of the palace called Lustgarten, which also has strong directionality towards the palace and different important buildings within the park, marked by the roads towards the palace, creating a visual link between the building and the palace. For instance, the Fortuna Temple has a visual connection towards the statue of the palace. Though many of the buildings in the park has been demolished (marked ehem. in the map), including Bacchus Temple, Fortuna Temple and the Chinese House, the base of the buildings were left behind. Each of these spaces have their own unique acoustic quality.
Ambisonics Recordings were done in 15 locations in the area, in different key locations of the main palace axis, former building locations, and key locations of the garden.
This piece was made to “scrub” through sound spaces which are in the same axis. For instance, the Palace Axis, Fortuna Temple and the Statue, Bacchus Temple and the Salon. This tries to connect the spaces sonically instead of visually, overlapping the sound spaces, exposing the contrast of difference in sound between these spaces in these axes.
The structure of the piece is basically starting off by marking the main palace axis first, then travelling towards the obelisk in geographical order, while scrubbing through the two axis of temples, moving towards a fast random shifting in spaces, ending in a re-emphasis of the palace axis, slowly ending at the obelisk.