THRESHOLDS OF DECENTERING
NOV 2022 Festival Espacios Resonantes Santiago de Chile

The festival Espacios Resonantes took place at the site of an abandoned underground cistern and water tower in Recoleta, Santiago de Chile. Daniel Neumann developed a soundfield composition for the peculiar architectural and acoustic space of the cistern, infusing its internal space with artificial tonalities.

He was using his Room Tone Generator [RTG] software synthesizer to create 56 tri-phonic (3-ch) tones. Each of the 3-channel tones were placed in 3 of the 8 speakers. There are 56 different triangles in an octagon. This gave the basic spatial form and structure. For the concert Neumann was mixing the 56 tri-phonic tones live, shaping them into an expansive dialog with the unique acoustic space of the cistern, 17 meters in diameter, 5 meters tall, made out of concrete, round, with parallel surfaces of floor and ceiling.

Yet, beyond these physical parameters of the performance, listening as a process was the main driver of it. For this process Neumann is borrowing a term from psychology and applying it to a mode of listening: aural de-centering. Neumann sat in the middle of the audience, the audience on scattered chairs, and was mixing and shaping the performance with an iPad mixer. De-centering means taking on multitudes of perspectives, consciously leaving your own center and taking on different standpoints. Applied to listening it’s guiding one’s attention to various points and peripherals of the always dynamic acoustic horizon - a form of active spatial listening.

When listening to spatial sound this wandering of our attention is activated and engaged. We travel around the room with our attention, and when listening to a changing soundscape, as is the case with listening to a musical work, we encounter certain thresholds that will make our listening direction change - fast, or very slowly, sometimes even going back in time! The term ‘acoustic horizon’ (Barry Truax, quoted in Spaces Speak) to me is a very useful term, and it defines the acoustic field around a listener, the subjective perspective of what and how far one can hear. Since sound is ephemeral and changing, the 3-dimensional acoustic horizon is also constantly morphing and changing, contracting and expanding. With the spatial and dynamic shaping that the performance of live mixing is offering Neumann can basically play, morph and shape those listening thresholds.

Daniel Neumann 13

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