ABSTRACT:

This research project is looking at the changes that have taken place in the performance of music and the innovations we have seen in its ‘staging' within the past decades. The interactivity of music with other art forms and with new media has intensified within the past fifty years in the most varied ways and as a result the acoustic sphere, first of all music itself, has changed extensively. We will investigate in which way the new, current forms of presentation and production modes affect and therefore change the (traditional) theoretical concepts as e.g. ‘musical material' and ‘musical structure'.

AREAS OF RESEARCH:

Performativity in sound and noise compositions

Sound compositions stood out from traditional musical context especially because their structure was no longer tied to working with distinctive pitches, intervals, defined tone lengths and/or rhythms. They were rather created with tone mixes, the changing and varying of tone colours and the construction of ‘flowing', rhythmically undefined sound carpets or sound masses. If we look at the composing itself and therefore also at the levels of form and action within music we will first of all have to raise the question of the functionality and performativity of certain sound qualities and sound activities within the formal process. Together with the seeming abolition of the traditional ‘sound language' we will discuss the maybe only supposed opposition of representation, meaning, semantics of sounds and sound as matter/material. This aspect concerns most of all the dimensions of musical perception but also the level of verbal interpretation.

Sound performance

We will look at the growing efforts of many composers/performers who are trying to encourage an aesthetic and phenomenological awareness of notes, sounds and noises and their physical characteristics. Especially within experimental instrumental and vocal performances they thus aim to confront themselves and the audience with the psycho-physical and psychological effects of sound. Furthermore we will discuss the usage of medium based techniques, i.e. the medialization of the actual body and sound to allow an interaction with the sounds at the moment they are created. The body and the physical actions of the performers however serve also as a mediator between the intuitions of the artist and the listener. A strong development in this area can be seen in vocal performances, in which body and sound form an unity through the voice, whereby this unique unity is not only based on the interpreter's individual body and sound experience but can also – in ritual or ceremonial situations – transcend to ‘higher' levels. By defining those "rituals" the aim is to show in which way they differ from the perception of culturally ritualized actions as they are apparent in the traditional concert. Experimental sound poetry for example clearly shows the changing between language, the sound of language and the voice.

Sound Art – Performativity of the act of listening and the listener

Sound Art, which has established itself within the past decades as an art form placed between the plastic arts and music, shows that the process of perception, i.e. the listening itself, can obtain an experimental character. In this part of our research we will put the main focus exactly on this aspect. Sound installations or sculptures are usually being exhibited as "acoustic scenes" taking into account the features of the surrounding space, which makes them into "site specific art". Spaces, their acoustic, their dimensions, their "interior design", have therefore an effect on the tonal results and the other way round the sounds will take possession of the space. It is up to the listener how he will react towards the sound activities; even with regard to interactive installations it is his decision whether he wants to change sounds or sometimes even produce them in the first place. In this respect the perception process of sound art opens up a performative dimension, which is also valid for installations in the field of plastic arts: essential are the processes that take place between the "sound object" and the listener or spectator.

Making sound visible

When we examine the visualization of sounds we are looking (both in a specifically artistic and in a general theoretic sense) at the discoveries that have been made with and through music within the past decades, i.e. the experiencing and thinking of space, time and movement in a new way. It is an age-old phenomenon, maybe even a basic human need, to combine presentations of sound or music with visual movement. All of this reaches a new stage due to the possibility of technical representation of the sound itself. Even though it is very difficult to find out how every individual visualizes the phenomena of tone or sound, there have always been paradigms, through which the well ordered notes or sounds of the notation system are presented. The changes that took place therein have always been of great musicological importance. The more complex visual possibilities of representation of sound for example of a keyboard compared with a monochord influence greatly the way of how a tone or sound is understood. Again, this visualization of sound has a reverse effect on the theoretical comprehension of the phenomenon.





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