Display ('Different Places, Different Stories', 'Vlakwaterverhalen', 'Klankatlas van Limburg', Odapark Venray, 2009. With support of Odapark, Venray, Intro / In Situ, Maastricht, JSK Nanoball GmbH, Wermelskirchen.)

(click here for hi-res pictures. second picture by Zebra fotostudio's Venlo)

(click here for sound)

“Display”* localizes and isolates moments from an everyday sonic reality and represents this, filtered and reorganized, in a new and exclusive space.

The two parts of this process divide into a series of recording sessions in the surrounding region of the exhibition space and into the construction of a “sound house”**, resembling a pavilion, in which the processed recordings can be heard.

“Display” issues the concept of authenticity of moment and place or position. The discharge of sound from the original colour of other surrounding sounds and from the context of the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ makes that sound to lose the original meaning and gains the potential of another meaning.

Helmholtz-resonators (developed around 1850 by Hermann von Helmholtz) are being used at the recording sessions. These are bronze ball-shaped objects with one hole for the input of sounds and another hole to put the ear to.  Because of the calculated relation in between volume, width of the casing and measurement of the input, one single tone or frequency can be heard more loudly than any other occurring tones.***
To filter the sounds from the environment, up to ten of those resonators with various sizes, are being appropriated for “Display”. The resonator is like a tuned micro-space; the mere introduction of this physical object sets apart a narrow tonal range from the initial ‘soundscape’ in a natural way. The recordings form the basis for a surround sound composition by six loudspeakers. This composition is played back at an ‘optimized listening situation’; a custom designed architectural shape, with a reference to the “sound house” from “New Atlantis”, serving as a carrier for the sound. The audience is invited to experience the symbiotic composition of sound and architecture.       

*
dis·play v
a collection of things arranged or done for others to see, especially something considered attractive, interesting, or entertaining (often used in combination)

**

"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it: and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.." — Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1624)

***

This behaviour occurs in the resonance boxes of a guitars and violins, in vase-drums like the djembé and the darbuka as well as in the combustion chamber of particular engines.

display
wit