‘Extending Musical Form Outwards in Space and Time: Compositional strategies in sound art and audiovisual installations‘
Considering the form of audiovisual installation works-
Established forms of artworks tend to have a solid set of conventions, for example one might see a concert as being contained by the entrance into the space and ended with an applause. Also the viewer can expect a standardised format of location, one sits in a static place with the work emanating from one location in the room, eg. the stage. Audio visual installations do not have these rules or conventions, the presentation of the work is fluid or malleable. Audiovisual installations contain the presence of a ‘mobile visitor’, this audience member has agency over the temporal framing of a piece. They can move where they want, and stay as long as they please. This, in a way, is stripping the artist of a power to define their work. This form of artwork forgoes the traditions of musical artwork.
Installations ‘[eschew] tem- poral narrative progression … [and] instead [unfold] in space through … our perceptual investigations of [spatial] surroundings’ (Minard 1999: 81).
‘Perceptual investigations of [spatial] surroundings‘ – I would like to consider the audience’s experience in this way. I want my piece to be an invitation for investigation.
Olafur Eliasson posits that the dimensions of an installation piece, Euclidian (Width, depth and height), are modulated by not only the fourth dimension of time but also your engagement sequence. This is the first-person sequential unfolding of four-dimensional experience
Through Eliasson’s concept, we can consider the work as within a frame, a frame in which a subject can move in, through and out at will. Our work is an environment for experience, and the ‘form’ is the subject’s first person experience as they navigate within the frame we create.
We can analyse an installation piece by considering the ‘average’ movement of a visitor and understand how it modulates the piece. In the example provided by Adam Basanta we see a square room in which a speaker is placed in the corner opposite the entrance, it is fair to assume that most visitors will enter through the door, move towards the speaker to investigate the source, and at some point return to the door moving away from the speaker. These movements are modulations of experience, increasing and decreasing audio clarity and loudness. Although the temporal aspect of this modulation will differ between individuals, the general shape of the modulation will be similar. An increase in loudness and clarity, a plateaux, followed by a decrease. Loudness and clarity are not the only aspects ripe for manipulation. There are psychological aspects such as the urge one might feel to investigate when being confronted with the space, the speaker placement influences the audience’s perception of the content. A speaker placed high above the subject might feel looming or imposing, small speakers hidden in cracks in a wall might intriguing and invite exploration, a head height speaker whispering might result in a feeling of intimacy.
I haven’t finished this article but what I have read so far has influenced me to consider the subjects movement as a modulation of the sound and space, also to consider my job as an artist to create an environment for investigation, to create the confines in which the subject can move and shape their own formal experience of the piece.