This project was born from several collaborations on research and/or artistic projects and through many a conversation shared between Gerhard Eckel and myself over the years. In one of those conversations in particular, already quite some years ago, we started to conceive and slightly develop the idea of a project on the spatial dimension of musical sound from a compositional rather than a technological perspective. The idea of the project, however, had to remain in latency until we found what looked like, and has indeed resulted in, the very best opportunity to present one such project. The context of artistic research, far from the pragmatic demands and the, at times limiting, conditionings of concert production, but as close to creation as one would will, has allowed for an intense concentration on the research aspects and their interrelationship with art creation which no other context could have offered. We wanted to linger in the experiment and reflect on the experience, to absorb their juices so as to refine the questions and ponder on their potentialities. We needed the freedom to go back and forth or move into lateral paths, following possible ramifications, alert to hidden suggestions. Creation at the service of research for once, for in the end, anyhow, all will flow back to creation.

As it could have not happened otherwise with a subject of such powerful attraction to both of us, until such opportunity took place each one of us evolved independently, differently, along related but diverging paths. It is in this frame of multiple paths and views, of plurality, that we joined forces once again to construct the proposal and later to start our work. There were many things to explore and many ways to approach such a fascinating subject. Being interested in each other’s ideas and yet willing to pursue in-depth explorations on our particular paths, we embraced willingly this plurality. Perhaps this lack of a common main line may have seemed an obstacle, an absurdity even, but to us it meant indeed a challenge, but a desirable, even willed situation, as more enriching and one through which we could encompass a broader field. To better handle this circumstance, however, we established from the start a network of communication paths: sharing experiences at the lab, designing joint experiments, opening a space for shared texts covering a wide range of different related topics, holding many, many conversations, and even conceiving a common sound installation for a symposium which unfortunately could not happen for some technical reason. The last part in the development of the project has naturally pushed us into a more introspective mode, having to finalize pieces for presentations, also to synthesize and sum up our itineraries in the project to build up a comprehensive documentation. There are many linking paths and many threads to go further exploring, but as a conclusion we thought that letting the individual voices express themselves independently was the most honest and enriching way to document our work to all external parties.

Soon after the beginning of the project we took an important conscious decision: to concentrate exclusively for all our research experiments on the characteristics and the possibilities of our laboratory – the Ligeti Hall at the Mumuth Haus für Musik und Drama. To consider it as the universe of experimentation, not caring whether the conditions, the setups, could be translated into other venues. The ideas, the methods, the techniques would be universal, but not the experiments, the studies, the musical pieces. A difficult decision; rather unpractical from the point of view of the creator –who was dooming his work to one sole space for its performance–, but wonderful from the point of view of the project. It meant indeed one more step in the path of concentration into our research, and I really feel it was a wise decision for it was extremely helpful in the progress of the project. In a certain way we were forced to take a decision one way or other, because our laboratory was not a tiny studio which we could handle with ease, quite on the contrary, it demanded quite some effort and dedication if we were to know and control it in some depth. The Ligeti Hall includes some very special characteristics which, in fact, make rather difficult any translation into other places. A brief description of the hall and its facilities can be found as an independent entry in the documentation (The Lab). Beyond the advantages and inconveniences already stated it meant entering into a mode of work which, although I had had a similar experience at the Kubus Hall of the Insitut für Musik und Akustik at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsuhe (ZKM), rarely may it be encountered in other circumstances. The attitude becomes that of squeezing out the advantages of the hall, absorbing through the pores its characteristics, and putting all that analytical and sensual knowledge at the service of the artistic work. On-site composition, as we may call it, is a working mode rather usual in installation art, but not so common, for obvious reasons, in concert music, where the composer develops the piece in the place where it will be played.

Having a concert-hall as a laboratory is a luxury with its fee to pay, for the hall is obviously used for a large amount of other projects and performances, and our lab-work has had to have an intermittent character, with periods of concentrated work separated by shorter or longer slots of lab-inactivity. This circumstance may account for what we could call mammoth Mumuth sessions, not rarely exceeding the twelve-hour working slots in a run. It is true that we had at our disposal yet another very wonderful studio, the Cube at the IEM, but for the reasons above mentioned only few of our running experiments could be adapted to this other hall. We knew of this circumstance from the start and we have certainly been generously provided (although nothing is ever enough when relishing in deep concentrated work), but it has marked to an extent the dynamics of the project’s progress. It is probably for this reason, for example, that the development of the VM software (the Virtual Mumuth, a dedicated software to create a virtual rendering of different setups at the hall) rose importantly in our priorities as a felt need to prolong our work beyond our assigned periods in the hall.

Another important decision, though I am not so sure how consciously was it taken at the beginning, was to expand the case studies into developed musical pieces. Once the first one had broken the ice, it was, of course, more natural for the rest to follow the same path. I have been tracing back my notes from the time, and have discovered what I think is the clue for this evolution. Let me quote myself briefly: “… it was clear what had to be achieved, and that meant making a study, a piece (even if short and not fully developed) of what was an incipient ‘naked’ test. Making from something dry, perhaps boring, an attractive, suggestive listening experience, to enhance its potentialities and by so doing discovering and accepting others.”  Short and not fully developed must have collided with attractive, suggestive listening experience. Recalling back those ‘first’ moments, I remember there was a simple gesture, a very attractive huge sforzando, with which it was impossible to end one particular short study, but that had just appeared as an unquestionable need at that precise point; including it was an unequivocal invitation to continue, to go ahead. Be that as it may, in a project like this one, stressing from its origin the importance of composition to achieve its goals, the idea of a case study was possibly too limiting.

Let me end this introduction by mentioning a noteworthy and somehow puzzling question. In our research we have been challenging our perception of sound. Perception is a complex mechanism were the information provided by the senses, the analysis processes put into action by the brain, and our previous knowledge come into interaction in order to decode and understand our environment. Perception, being based on previous knowledge, is therefore trained, it learns, and there is no doubt that the concentrated listening efforts we have been following in our research have ‘educated our ears’. I don’t think there can be self-delusion; against that our attitude was constantly alert, and our collaborative critical ears would have not allowed it. Seeking for something, however, listening attentively to subtleties and nuances must have trained our perception, or maybe we can just say they have contaminated it. As a matter of fact, because of this working dynamics of intermittent lab-periods, and very specially at the beginning of the project, returning back and recapturing work as it had been left required always some time, some reconditioning. Project presentations to external parties, private or public, have therefore been always of great importance, because they have allowed us somehow to ‘listen through the ears of our guests’. The responses have always been reassuring, but to say the truth we have not carried out any serious survey. And yet, what would we be able to say, and I am just letting my imagination go, if the results of our research would really require a certain training of the ears?

I have considered important to give an overview of the context in which the project has been developing, to mention details, circumstances and decisions, maybe of an apparent secondary importance, but which have influenced in one way or other the progress of the project. This kind of information and of reflections cannot really be qualified as anecdotic, but easily would have not found other place to fit in.

This part of the documentation has been conceived as a set of texts and documents, each one of which dealing with some aspect or other of my research during the project. I have allowed myself a personal, narrative character on my style; I felt it fitted better the contents and was more in accordance with the frankness with which I wanted to share. I hope the whole may transmit faithfully the work, the results and the foreseeable and desirable future developments.