Notes from the floor

(Transcribed from the sound designer’s notebooks, final rehearsal, date not marked)

So, we’re on the floor for this new show. Not new because it hasn’t been done. A new type of show. The start time is translated for the 37 global time zones, but we can’t actually run the show – we’ll just slip side-ways from where we are (meetings, email, home, commuting, reading, talking, making) to where we’ll be to start be-ing. And there’s a huge spatial sound design.

In a satellite lecture for ACMI, Peter Weibel was asked ‘What is the future of cinema?’ He starts, “When images are transmitted directly into the brain … oh, but that would be sound.”

So, we’re running a 48 channel system through the space and the audience sit on a mesh floor above eight of the loud-speakers. The others sit on three levels around and above the audience, concealed inside the shadow lines. We can produce vistas, point sources, and project sound images into the minds of the audience. It goes black and I track David’s footsteps over the stage. Glad we changed his shoes to leather so we can hear his path, and the cue; his final steps crunch into a recessed tray of sharp pebbles layered over a resonant box. The 12 miniature blue-tooth microphones in the tray shoot off every footfall or shuffle into granular lines we process and spatialise in the theatre.

The mics across his body amplify every breath, rustle, or shift in position. The audience can barely see him, but his body extends to their ears. It’s intensely intimate with no space between us – just a shared sound-filled presence.

On-line a binaural mix from the theatre – the pebbles, the body mics, his voice, the spatialisation – is projected in a stream for headphones and a multi-channel mix for spatial sound systems in theatres, arts spaces, and museum spaces around the globe.

Since 2018 we’ve worked as a sonic-spatial ensemble: 2 source navigators, 4 spatialisers, and a spatial director. We rehearse in semi-darkness enough to see the table of data-controllers and heighten our auditory imaginations to better auralise (think visualise) sonic geometries and landscapes. Each syllable of David’s voice becomes a volumetric entity. Orbiting morphemes from every word stay draped throughout the theatre.

The sonic bed lingers as sounds from the pre-show audience queue rotate in pianissimo layers through the theatre; a cough, a shuffle, a ‘hmm’, murmurs from people who were somewhere and are now here (hear?). Peripheral auditory awareness is speeding and my attention is like a still focal point. Each time dp tries a line from Sam B we snapshot the utterance and stream it to the sonic vortex building in the space. Our headphone mixer signals ‘gravity moment’; the sound makes it difficult to tell which way is up.

David keeps on with the Sam B syllables – each try, fail, try, drops another layer into the surrounds and this incessant movement drives to stillness.