Helmut Lachenmann's 'strukturklang' 1 is a composition of all subcategories like 'kadenzklang', 'klangfarb', 'fluktuationsklang' and 'texturklang'. The "Wheels within wheels" sound installation is a bank of materials continously appearing in new combinations. There were three different sound installations, for three different locations and situations. A large collection of sounds was sorted in folders, while setups for type of sound and probabilities were different for each of the locations. A random sound within a sound category was triggered at a random time within a given time frame. In principle any sound should be able to be combined with any other sound. That requires thought about the independence of each sound, it's 'moment' character. Sounds should not require a particular context, rather act like inclusive environments.
For especially dense situations, I could have created mixes. There were however technical challenges about the size of these files. Each files was in high resolution audio, with 16-20 channels. 5 minutes of sound already introduces buffering challenges, a very long mix would not work. The file player from Ircam Spat 4.9.3, 'spat.sfplay~' , is able to handle these files. My computers were able to play up to 8 files simultaneously without risk of crashing Max. If 8 files were playing and a new was triggered, one of them were faded out and stopped. In the future, I would like to let all sounds finish. That will require more powerful computers. You will not have these capacity challenges with the stereo reductions in this exposition. These limitations gave slightly more silences than intended. I compensated for this by letting sounds be triggered more often. In a concert performance, it was always possible to manually intervene. I'm satisfied that the sound installation could be performed by a kaleidoscopic principle and not be a series of fixed compositions.
Potential combinations and patterns are endless and able to surprise me. Installations like these could play for years without repeating the same composition. I'm not concerned with exactly how many years. After some time you will have experienced the main fragment types.
Mouvance I: Mass, Mariakirken.
- Carillon, 10-45 seconds.
- Concrete mass text, 15-120 seconds.
- Insects and birds, 10-75 seconds.
Mouvance III: Distortion, Håkonshallen.
- Processed Ciconia, 45-143 seconds.
- Shimmer, 15-80 seconds.
- Processed shimmer, 8-45 seconds.
- Fluctuation, 15-180 seconds.
- Processed fluctuation, 10- 83 seconds.
- Attack, 10-120 seconds.
- Kadenzklang, 3-55 seconds.
- Granular attacks, 10-95 seconds.
- Glass and water, 10-90 seconds.
- Joyce texts, 25-69 seconds.
- Tårnsalen recordings, 15-85 seconds.
- Recordings from the anechoic chamber, 45-200 seconds.
- "Soto l'imperio", fractal cembalo phrases, processed, 35-210 seconds.
- Processed mass text, 15-120 seconds.
- Insects and birds, 10-75 seconds.
"Wheels within wheels" sound installation, Østre.
- Processed Ciconia, 45-143 seconds.
- Shimmer, 15-80 seconds.
- Processed shimmer, 10-50 seconds.
- Fluctuation, 15-180 seconds.
- Processed fluctuation, 10- 83 seconds.
- Attack, 10-120 seconds.
- Kadenzklang, 3-55 seconds.
- Granular attacks, 10-95 seconds.
- Glass and water, 10-90 seconds.
- Bass water bubbles, 120-800 seconds.
- Joyce texts, 25-69 seconds.
- Tårnsalen recordings, 15-85 seconds.
- Recordings from the anechoic chamber, 45-200 seconds.
- "Soto l'imperio", fractal cembalo phrases, processed, 45-180 seconds.
- "Soto l'imperio", processed sound tracks, 15-90 seconds.
- Carillon, 30-120 seconds.
- Concrete mass text, 15-120 seconds.
- Processed mass text, 15-120 seconds.
- Insects and birds, 10-75 seconds.
- Mouvance III MF sound tracks, 30-800 seconds.
- Mouvance III P sound tracks, 30-800 seconds.
- Processed discussion on tolerance for the Christie conference, 40-800 seconds.
Now you can go ahead and create your own composition from these building blocks of similar or contrasting families of sound. You will find again the previously demonstrated sounds, and a few types which will not be discussed in detail here. These are not all the sounds, but a good selection of them.
