Screenshot of audio editing session for the piece in the `Ardour' digital audio workstation
FULL AUDIO | VIDEO: EAR TAXI FESTIVAL
STIMMEN:
a five-channel electroacoustic composition for voice (2019)
Florian Hollerweger (Assistant Professor, Audio Arts and Acoustics): recording & electroacoustic composition
Christine Scherzer (Berlin, Germany): vocals
The five-channel electroacoustic composition `Stimmen' (German: `voices') is a celebration of the human voice, of orality as a medium of communication that—precisely by stretching the securities of asserted meaning—reveals its truth to those who keep listening in the absence of words. Berlin-based vocalist and performance artist Christine Scherzer has given the piece its voice. Sound artist Florian Hollerweger has assembled the resulting recordings into the final composition. The piece was premiered in October 2019 at Chicago’s Rare Nest Gallery, with the kind support of Keith Bringe. It was also performed at the 2020 Linux Audio Conference in Bordeaux, France, and at the 2021 Ear Taxi Festival in Chicago. This project is partially supported by a Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago.
STATEMENT:
`Stimmen' became the first focus of my creative practice after I joined Columbia College in January 2018 until its premiere in October 2019. Both its second and third performance (as well as a follow-up project) were then delayed by the ongoing pandemic. I therefore was thrilled to perform the work as a mainstage event at the 2021 Ear Taxi Festival in Chicago in October 2021. The work reflects my artistic and scholarly fascination with the aestheticization of everyday sound in general, and of the human voice in particular. My artistic collaboration Christine Scherzer and I had previously been exploring fringe phenomena of vocal utterance, such as the normally unnoticed small breaths between words. With `Stimmen' we set out for a more systematic inquiry of the human voice and its sound-producing capabilities. The result is an acousmatic piece of music for `loudspeakers only', with no on-stage performers. This turns out to be a useful format to work in when your artistic collaborator is refused the National Interest Exception that remains required for travel from the Schengen area to the US. I was therefore able to perform the work from a mixing desk in DePaul's Allen Recital Hall even in Christine's absence. From the audience's perspective, Christine's vocal performance ironically nevertheless conveys the primary sense of `presence' in this work. Another dimension of this piece that relates to my scholarly and creative interests is the fact that it is composed as a five-channel work for loudspeakers surrounding the audience to immerse them in sound. Formats like these have become quite common in electronic music composition as a means of exploring the relationship between sound and space, and this piece uses sound spatialization techniques to turn a single voice into a choir of voices that speak to us not primarily through language, but through sound itself.
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
- Ear Taxi festival announcement 1: https://www.eartaxifestival.com/mainstage-2/stimmen
- Ear Taxi Festival announcement 2: https://www.eartaxifestival.com/mainstage/florian-hollerweger-christine-scherzer-stimmen-a-five-channel-electroacoustic-composition-2019