SUBTROPICS XXIII
FROZEN MUSIC: SOUNDSPACE
WED FEB 18 | 4-8PM
new world center’s soundscape park performable sound installation
500 17 street, miami beach
additional prerecorded broadcasts on
FEB 25, FEB 27, and MAR 4 | 3-5PM
FM: SoundSpace
or … a Theater of the Mind
It’s 4 p.m. on Lincoln Road. Wednesday. Movie night isn’t ’til 8 o’clock. You’re thinking happy hour while grabbing and unfolding a newspaper. “That looks like a parakeet. Hmmm, let see. Guess I could check out the new exhibits at the ArtCenter, pickup a black bean soup to go at Books & Books and that iPad charger at the Apple Store, go buy Claudia Quintet tickets at the Fillmore…” a few more items cross your mind while walking through SoundScape Park and, BOOM! suddenly, “a moment of zen”.
“Who’s driving this thing?” Hundreds of sounds surround you and move around like flocks of birds or schools of fish. You’re no longer where you are. You snap a picture and share it on social media with the caption: “Phffft! I’m in the swamp. It’s the freaking Everglades in the middle of Miami Beach!”. Moments later a couple of LIKEs appear on the screen. You look at the posted picture and realize it is just that, only a picture … not really a thousand words.
Like radio art—a kind of “theater of the mind”—public sound art installations like SoundSpace can transform your psychological space. They occupy the acoustical space of a site without altering its physical layout. These pieces don’t force you to do anything. But like a sunset or the ocean, you happen upon them and they can overwhelm you into a “deep listening” experience.
The design of SoundSpace involves set trajectories for groups of sounds to follow, trajectories controlled via three wireless handheld interfaces that access over 100 discreet loudspeakers. This causes hundreds of sounds to move around SoundScape Park in ways that resemble shapes of things we find in the Everglades, like the outline of Lake Okeechobee or the silhouette of a laurel tree leaf. And from the combination of actual wildlife, manmade and the city sounds that happen during the piece, an immersive experience emerges that evokes the complexity of healthy natural soundscapes.
To make this piece possible the core members of Frozen Music (FM) — composers David Dunn from New Mexico and Miami’s own Gustavo Matamoros and Rene Barge – have collaborated with Roberto Toledo, Director of Audio Services at New World Symphony and with folks at Art and Science Laboratory directed by David Dunn in the development of a set of spatialization strategies that will. Special thanks to Gary Farmer, Cultural Affair Program Manager at the City of Miami Beach and Victoria Rogers, Executive Vice President at the New World Symphony.
On behalf of the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami Beach, please accept this invitation from Subtropics.org—the 23rd biennial of experimental music and sound art—to “take a walk in the park” … Miami Beach’s SoundScape Park, that is … during the world premiere of SoundSpace: a new 3-hour-long, large scale performable sound installation by Frozen Music.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT FROZEN MUSIC
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