Output details

Practice as Research: two related site-specific multichannel sound performances with additional live sound feed: Synecdoche:praha; The Ghost of Someone Not Yet Drowned (TGoSNYD)

Synecdoche:praha and TGoSNYD explore the trajectory of multi-channel sound performance with additional live sound in different spaces and configurations, over two broad categories: sounds designed for/influenced by a particular space; compositions introducing extraneous sound to existing sonic environments. The project(s) investigated novel approaches to producing site-specific and site-enhancing works (Kaye, 2000), also incorporating a live additional performer and sound-feed into multi-channel performance. The project(s) investigate spatialisation of performance, while incorporating theatrical aspects (text; visuals) into live, multi-channel, site-specific events. The sonic is prioritised and in TGoSNYD the text is decentralised, manipulated to create sounds rather than being recited, allowing it to influence the physical/visual work, thus examining composition in the broadest sense of the term 'performance', exploring how ideas of performance can be reinterpreted through experimenting with multi-channel, site-specific composition. Synecdoche:praha and TGoSNYD include the presence of the composer as a visual aesthetic of the piece by taking on theatrical principles of site-specificity. Sound is effectively repositioned as a key performance component, space dictating optimum positions for diffusion. This produces experiences in which the composer is foregrounded as a vital part of the performance. The project(s) fused the conventions of standard electroacoustic diffusion (visible speakers placed in optimum positions) with the conventions of performative theatrical sound (sound - often precomposed and prerecorded -is an aspect of performance; speakers concealed to serve dramatic illusion) (Harrison, 1999; Emmerson, 2007; Brown, 2010; Stefani & Lauke, 2010).

Research Questions:

Can diffused sound be combined with natural acoustics in performance spaces (e.g. Victoria Baths)?

How can space itself be a mutable sound source, changing/evolving with performer(s) and audiences?

Synecdoche:praha, selected, performed: Sound Kitchen, PQ2011; TGoSNYD, performed: Victoria Baths; in installation, Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, V&A Museum; exhibited, short-listed (one of three) finalists; Silver Award, Sound Design (World Stage Design 2013, Cardiff).