Introduction
In “Craving” Bernhard Garnicnig and Gottfried Haider aurally stage a text inspired by the late Sarah Kane’s play Crave in public space. It unfolds while members of the audience individually wander a high-rise area, wearing headphones and a mobile computing device.
Process
The audience is escorted from the Mobile Music Workshop venue in Vienna’s city center to the site of the production. Once arrived, they have the opportunity to explore the location two at a time. Equipped with a Wearable Computer and headphones the recipient is immersed in sound surroundings he can physically navigate. The path they chose is in no way - auditory or visually - predetermined, thereby allowing the audience to let themselves be guided by aspects of the place itself such as its architecture while experiencing the production.
Text
The text used in Craving draws on Crave, a play by British dramatist Sarah Kane (1971 - 1999). In it, four sparsely drawn characters weave a tapestry made up of quotations and fragments, the cloth of which are their individual traumas, loves, grieves and resignations. Plot and signs indicating temporal developments are reduced to a minimum. It is in repetition and the final defeat of communication of internal landscapes that we come full circle to the urbane Wüste (the urban desert) in between the towers of the Donaustadt.
Kane’s text, which is filled with elements of subjective meditations on urban surroundings, but devoid of stage directions has been rearranged and expanded using pieces of everyday conversations to work with individual clusters according to the demands of certain places.
Method
The selection and spatial and temporal distribution of sound elements require a detailed study of text and conditions of the space such as architecture, flow of movements and rhythms. The technology (GPS, etc.) framing the production obviously plays another, very important role.
As environmental influences such as weather or social interaction surrounding the participants or their personal movement patterns cannot be foreseen, the sound design is not geared towards constructing a linear narrative. It aims, rather, to create individual, but loosely-connected scenes. To achieve this, acoustic elements are placed on street corners, on wide, open spaces or in lively passage ways as they relate to a sensation and meaning created by their architecture or the human beings inhabiting it. In order to do this the artists have developed a software, which enables a composition of temporally and spatially dynamic acoustic scenes.
Sound fragments such as spoken language or music are grouped together, following an internal temporal logic. These groups are distributed all over the area and linked through the recipient’s perception as he moves through the space.
Applying their other senses and their feeling for the specific place the participants then put the perceived sensations into a larger context. This ability to freely associate intentional design elements through reflection accepts the spectator in the temporal and spatial complexity of his cognition.
Technology
The participant is equipped with a wearable computer and headphones. Custom software determines his position via GPS, tracks his head- and body movements through a magnetometer. Based on their results the computer renders the audio composition in real-time. Through a simulation of binaural hearing, sounds previously affiliated to certain places now become audible from their specific direction. The software incorporates a real-time virtual acoustic environment rendering engine. It is based on head-related transfer function (HRTF), describing how a given sound input (parameterized as frequency and source location) is filtered by the diffraction and reflection properties of the torso, head and pinna before reaching the eardrum and inner ear. These location-specific filter effects provide the human neural system with enough cues to properly locate a sound’s source. Through the realistic simulation of these effects it is now possible to place sound emitting “props” into the listener’s environment.
Site
Craving was envisioned for production in Vienna DC, a modern complex of commercial and residential buildings in the city’s Donaustadt district. This most preeminent area is defined by a branch of the river Danube in the south and the United Nations building in the north. Vienna DC was conceived entirely on the drawing board after plans for a World Fair in this location had been vetoed in a referendum in that same year of 1991. Nevertheless, ten years after its opening, the area is still urbanity in progress, as various vacant lots create a layered surface, whose heaps of dirt contrast with the spotless facades otherwise dominating the view. Vienna DC houses numerous multinational corporations and information technology firms in office skyscrapers, but there are also vivid residential zones in between. One can literally walk around a corner to see the number of suits diminished and people leading their lives in a slower and more informal way. There is a bizarre city within, whose 4.000 inhabitants have adopted to the given system of open spaces and the spatial logic of the complex. For them the architects envisioned a church, a museum exhibiting works of an Austrian sculptor, a bilingual school and kindergarten, a supermarket, a number of cafés located in the lobbies of skyscrapers, and a restaurant. Other unique architectural features also strongly influence the way in which the space is perceived: a wide flight of stairs leading up to nothing, surveillance cameras places at eye level, deserted children’s playgrounds, a vast empty space whose floor is covered in glaring white paint. This microcosm allows the artists to use the space’s emotional tectonics and possible associations while breaking with the normal patterns of movement, perception and interaction with the environment and other people.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the University for Applied Arts Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture. We would also like to thank Anatol Vitouch, Amira Ben-Saoud, Anne Thieme, Max Berger and Sarah Rechberger for lending our project their voice and Angelika Katzinger for designing and fabricating our wearable computer jacket.
I’m walking through the Donau City, a remote business district in Vienna, over wide concrete surfaces surrounded by tall commercial buildings. Headphones on and a mobile computer in my pockets, my movement contrasts to the systematic paths the people around me seem to follow. Some of them glance at me with a slightly puzzled look on their faces, probably I appear disoriented to them as I walk back and forth or just stand still where nothing seems to be. But there is something happening only I can hear – voices and music are scattered all over the place. I discover new things everywhere I go; I hear men and women talking, fractions of dialogues in a street corner, an intensely emotional monologue just a few steps further. Words, noise and the musical droning blend into space around me. As I further explore the site a fragmented story evolves that colours the places I visit in unexpected dark but rich tones.
Watch the demo video