"There is always something untried and old-fashioned about your work, Lars. This project shows a fully molded potential: The setup itself is very concrete; the room is physically shaking in here. This technology together with your music creates a passage to a sensuous experience; to an echo of a hidden memory - you sense the primates standing in the resonating landscape." - Ingvar Cronhammar, sculptor
My primary goal and focus with “Rooms of Resonance” has been to develop a physical format for music, that invites the listener to feel and become a part of the music, by physically moving the listener with vibration and resonance. By amplifying live-improvisations through existing objects in a room the music becomes present and site-specific; you can sense the inherent qualities of the amplified material, as well as the connection between the room and the improvising musician – the music becomes truly immersive. In a way, it is similar to when you play on the clarinet; the teeth are placed on the mouthpiece which does that the skull starts to vibrate and resonate; “the body” and “the world” is connected through sound.
The creation of a digital product for this exposition has made me to reflect upon what to emphasize in a non-physical format, which obviously cannot encapsulate all the elements of a physical experience. My digital works for this project are two music videos with surround sound, which are filmed in a point-of-view documentation. Further choices and reflections will be described after you have seen the first music video.
"En verden, der melder sig"
This work is an unedited 33-minute improvisation, performed on clarinets and recorded with one camera. “En verden, der melder sig” is hard to translate in short, but it contains meanings like “a world arises”, “a world uncovers”, “a world reveals”, “a world emerges” and also bears religious connotations.
The work is mixed in surround sound as an investigation in doing an ambitious translation from an immersive, physical and site-specific musical experience to a digital format. In order to make it fit this exposition, it has been reduced to a stereo image. I encourage you to use headphones, choose full-screen and lit it to max.
What you see and hear is a sensuous point-of-view documentation of a live clarinet improvisation in a room, where the audio signal is directly sent to eight drivers invisibly attached on a ventilation system, made of large tin pipes. The pipes run along the 25x50 meter empty hall, creating a resonating surround amplification of the live output from my clarinet. The location is “hall 6” in the international art center Copenhagen Contemporary, which used to be the working space for welders for “B&W”; a Danish shipyard and diesel engine producer.
As an improvisor, interplay is an essential element; to be able to listen and react to the setting, room and circumstances you are in. I practice this by finding an inner vision; a sound or feeling, and then try materialize this in into reality by continuously playing, listening and reacting on the sound of my instrument, the room and circumstances – the world. To me, successful interplay in this particular solo-setting is a dialogue between imagined and unimagined sound: When the sound of my inner vision agrees with the acoustic output from my clarinet, and this sound “ignites” a resonating sound coming from amplified objects. A sound I did not foresee coming. When this happens, I attempt to imitate or supplement this sound – which is interplay. This is essential and uplifting because I am creating something truly new; a mix between me and the uncontrollable world. I am playing and being played – A world, arises.
An example is at 03:30. My vision was to play some air sounds that had a limited frequency range and sounded static. A feeling of a gentle and warm wind. I did that by blowing air in the clarinet while it was upside down, having an open lip-embouchure on the mouthpiece and then force the airstream out while doing circular breathing. It makes the bamboo-reed create a very definite air sound, which is acoustically amplified through the conic clarinet. So my vision and the acoustic output was matching. The sound in the ventilation pipes was something else; I heard it is as a massive and quick stream of air consisting of multiple frequencies coming from the amplification as well as loose soldering and screws. I tried to connect my acoustic output to this, which made the frequency range in the pipes expand and slowly this new and unimagined sound was present. A sound I can change but not control. In short, the interplay is a constant iterative spiral starting from my vision -> the acoustic output -> the sounding objects/room.
Another important element for a successful improvisation is the preparation. For this video, the key elements are:
- Reflection on what I am informed by, and how; sounds, music, other art forms, nature, science, politics - life. See inspiration (hyperlink) for more info.
- Practice and reflect on how to adapt the above mentioned to my playing. A key exercise apart from the most conventional exercises is to imitate the impossible; a hum in the room, a field recording of rain etc. The aim is not always to do a 1:1 imitation, but also to do a blend that makes it hard to separate the two sources of sound.
- Practice my embouchure, which are the lip-muscles that are important to do long runs of circular breathing/continuous sound.
- Find a “venue”. In this case Copenhagen Contemporary, which was a great match in terms of being an international art center, has great acoustics, a perfect object/ventilation system to ignite and interplay with and a history of being a welder’s hall, that I sonically could tap into.
- Develop the setup – the elements that collaborate with the music. For this project the chain of gear going from the clarinet to the transducers were the main development. But also, the dialogue with photographer Andreas Johnsen, technician Simon Mariegaard and sound designer Morten Groth was essential which will be described later.
- And then before doing the actual improvisation, I start to ask myself a lot of questions. After setting up cables, eq’s, cleaning etc. there is a risk that I start to play and focus on concrete parameters such as bandwidths, how my reed is etc. So I try to open up for a larger scope by asking myself simple questions: Am I ok? What am I feeling in this room? What are my emotional obstacles and can these be turned into musical forces? This simple method invites me to listen to my self and the room. I will elaborate more on this topic, in “improvisation”.
Another level in this music video is that I tried to leave my own perception out, which is obviously impossible. I tried to follow Andreas Johnsen’s camera movements and imagine how the sound would be experienced from his lens’ perspective. For instance, imagining that Andreas might zoom very close to the pipes made me be more patient in my playing, and even more aware of any sound being of the utmost importance. I think this approach makes the video look almost choreographed, which makes the listening experience and video more inviting, spun together and immersive.
"Stille, stille hjerte" (“quiet, quiet heart”)
In this experiment, my aim was to test the potentials in amplifying my acoustic live improvisation above and below water at the same time, while recording both sound and moving picture in both elements. This presentation is a clarinet improvisation, amplified through two galvanized metal plates placed vertically, 50% above the surface and 50% immersed in water.
Like the previous presentation, I recommend listening to this surround-reduced stereo-mix with headphones in full-screen.
My aim was to investigate potentials in having music amplified above and under water, both in a live and video context.
In the video, I am particularly interested in and surprised by how the water surface reacted to sudden notes. At 02:50 this creates an unexpected kind of interplay, because suddenly I, as a clarinet player, was not only responsible for the listening experience but also for the visual output / experience. I wanted to bring the waves forward, so it made me play around specific notes when the camera was close to the walls. I was, to say the least, thrilled by creating improvisations where you can see what you hear.
Another unexpected interplay was something I did not realize before listening in a studio: from 11:15 I am playing two clarinets simultaneously, and you hear this multiphonic sound underwater: the actual pitch, a lower octave and a more floating deep voice. The latter is something I still do not understand in depth even after asking physicians. All I know is that it sounds amazing and is a resonance-like phenomenon I want to investigate further for future projects.
In the live experience, it was being in the water while the music was sounding that was the most appealing. Sound travels five times faster in water than air, which made the listening experience under water very present, immersive or simply “out of the world”, as Simon states in the small video. Especially the combination of diving and touching the vibrating metal wall was very powerful. It felt like the vibrating wall became a bone conducting amplifier. This experiment opens up for a lot of potentials for sound, music and art projects. My first thought and existing idea for a future experiment is, if disabled or hearing-impaired people might be able to take advantage in this very immersive amplification? If possible, would this change my way of playing?