Archiving the Sonic Ephemeral: Towards a classification of sound installation documentations through spatial audio features
Nicolas D’Aleman Arango · 2021
This paper proposes the application of audio feature extraction for the classification of sonic documentations of the works presented during the Singuhr Hoergalerie Project from 1996 to 2014. More specifically, I utilize the Stereo Panning Spectrum Features to discern some of the relationships between the artworks based on the spatial characteristics of said documentations. The first part of this paper addresses the theoretical concerns that emerge from documenting a form of art that champions ephemerality as one of its core characteristics. Audio recordings force sound installations into an ontological reality and effectively positions them in the musical realm, thus subjecting them to a one-dimensional interpretation. An approach to overcome this paradox is built upon Kersten Glandien’s proposal to analyze sound art. The second part describes the technical processes of examining the Singuhr recordings through the proposed algorithm. The results present a novel form of approaching sonic documentations by analyzing spatial relations between audio sources, and how to incorporate them into additional documentary and archival material.