NON-REPRESENTATIONAL SPATIAL SOUND WORKSHOP

MAY
2015
Knockdown Center
NYC
JUNE
2015
Hangar, Loop Festival
Barcelona
Non-representational Spatial Sound Composition 
A workshop by Daniel Neumann

This is a 2-3 day workshop (with presentation days following after) catered to sound artists, noise producers, composers of electronic and electro-acoustic music, as well as experimental musicians and sound designers, that want to deepen their practice and explore spatialization as a creative element.

daniel neumann sound art soundart klangkunst venue city

The workshop will give a historical overview on the subject with some technical background and explore aesthetics and techniques for spatialization. Listening will be practiced as a phenomenological activity: the listener immersed in inner spaces; distance and continuity; sound as intersubjective space. A central question thereby is how to dramatize the distinctions between interior, exterior, and interior beyond the exterior space?

daniel neumann sound art soundart klangkunst venue city

Personally, as a sound artist as well as a professional live sound engineer, I understand a loudspeaker in a certain space as an instrument, as my main instrument. The speaker is the resonating exciter - like a string; and the space is the resonator - like the wooden body of a violin for example. Every space and every speaker system will act differently.

As indicated in the title, with this short workshop I want to develop a counter-concept to the common understanding of spatial sound as this typical surround sound, that represents a certain studio-made spatiality and claims transferability - in cinema for example, where you have an apparatus of reproduction that allows to ensure and repeat a certain experience in many different locations world-wide. In exchange these techniques require to compromise and to standardize, and often rely on extremely expensive technologies.

daniel neumann sound art soundart klangkunst venue city

Now, for my workshop I'm more interested in exploring spatialization, sound projection and interaction with architectural spaces as an open and creative individual activity. Summarized, I'd say the workshop is about how to play the space-speaker-instrument.

The workshop concludes with a group presentation of short pieces developed by the participants. At the Knockdown Center in May 2015 the pieces were presented as part of the Ende Tymes Festival.

daniel neumann sound art soundart klangkunst venue city