The versatile use of the term is not surprising, considering the fact that, parallel to the development of music, the concept of space has been given interdisciplinarily new and historically noteworthy consideration, so that one speaks of the so-called Spatial Turn.
In view of the historically unique changes in dealing with and thinking about space, it would be desirable if the acoustic arts also had a different spatial concept. One which, on one hand, is less metaphorical and therefore more conceptually generalizable, and on the other hand, not only 'Cartesian', and rather, therefore, more interdisciplinarily oriented.
But which type of space, definition, or concept can make a practical contribution to composing with sculptural sound phenomena? Since computer music has always been interdisciplinary, it is obvious to include extra-musical considerations of space in the composition of different spaces. If one wants to investigate aural architectures and their sound phenomena with a loudspeaker system conceived for mobile use and to be used in different situations, one must develop an understanding of room acoustics as well as the different spatial ideas and their conditions for the sound resonating therein.
Here, models of psychoacoustics and room acoustics are superimposed with philosophical and sociological models of how we construct space in our perception. While electroacoustic music and with it the development of audio software and hardware in the last decades mainly follow the idea of Euclidean space, other spatial ideas are oriented away from this or understand physical space as a condition but more in the sense of a foil with other spaces unfolding in front of it.
The general theory of space distinguishes between absolutist and relativistic concepts of space. In the absolutistic concept, space exists independently of matter. Movable bodies and things are in a space that remains unmoving itself. Space exists continuously, for itself, and forms an equal, homogeneous basis for action for all. This idea of a container space has been replaced in science with the development of the relativity theory of relativistic spatial concepts. However, it still characterizes the everyday understanding of space and is usually an indispensable condition for psycho-acoustical studies and ingenious scientific research in the area of spatial-audio. In the relativistic concept of space, space does not exist independently of the bodies. Instead, space is understood as a relation, as a relational structure between bodies. The bodies, whose arrangements give rise to one another, are in constant motion.
»An initial, very simplified definition of the spatial turn
should take into account that something astonishing happened
in the last decade of the 20th century, such as what might be
regarded in the 21st century as one of the most significant
intellectual and political events of the late 20th century.
Some individuals, among them scientists, began to think about
space and spatial elements of human life seriously and
critically, similar in a way to what has long been thought
about time and the historicity of human life.
Over the last 150 years, we have become accustomed to seeing
the world through a historical lens rather than a space-based one.
But what happened now happened on an interdisciplinary,
transdisciplinary, and, if so, a pandisciplinary level.
In the late 20th century, space-related thinking broke out
of the traditional disciplines - geography, architecture,
urban development, regional sciences, and sometimes sociology
and art history. The sudden width of the spatial turn is
remarkable beyond all measure.«
[Soja, 1989, 243]
Thus space itself is no longer static, but becomes processual and constantly changes over the course of time. Since the arrangement of bodies cannot be thought independently from the observer’s reference system, space is not absolute, rather always exists relative to the consciousness of the observer.
»Sound and space converse by multiplying and expanding the point of attention, or the source of a sound: the materiality of a given room shapes the contours of sound, moulding it according to reflection and absorption, reverberation and diffraction.«
[LaBelle, 2006, ix, xi]
»[At the same time] sound makes a given space appear beyond any total viewpoint: in echoing throughout the room, my clapping describes the space from a multiplicity of perspectives and locations, for the room is here, between my palms, and there, along the trajectory of sound … What we hear in this clapping is more than a single sound and its source, but rather a spatial event.«
[ibid., x ]