Improvising with spaces
Pauline Oliveros · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
This paper explores qualitative changes that occur in voices and instruments in relationships with changing spaces that ordinarily are held in a stationary paradigm of performance practice, spatial transformations, and the effect on sounds in multi-channel speaker systems. Digital technology allows one to compose and improvise with acoustical characteristics and change the apparent space during a musical performance. Sounds can move in space, and space can morph and change, affecting the sounds. Space is an integral part of sound. One cannot exist without the other. Varieties of sounds and spaces combine in symbiotic relationships that range from very limited to very powerful for the interweaving expressions of the music, architectures, and audiences.