SUBSTANCE (stereo mix)
Final Resolved Work
This is the finished composition of SUBSTANCE that I have recently mastered as a stereo version. As discussed throughout the exegesis, I now understand SUBSTANCE as a spatiotemporally unfixed artwork that exists in multiple forms. Here, we listen to the work in stereo form, whether on a speaker system, or confined to a pair of headphones. Though SUBSTANCE is not constrained to the stereo realm, it mutates into any physical space that it pleases. The final presentation of the work will be a 12-channel diffusion in the life drawing room, providing its largest space yet.
The finalised work demonstrates the full power of the acousmatic, or sound unseen, showing how in the acousmatic space, anything may always be anything else. The final section of the work covers many sonic palettes in a very short time, reintroducing many sounds heard earlier in the piece. It acts as a concluding and powerful eruption or implosion into silence. Here, I have incorporated many of my recently documented field recordings: my voice, sticky tape and flute/recorder. The recording of the sticky tape has been spatially and temporally mutilated to provide an intense feeling of instability in the ending of the composition. We hear it, along with the synthesised chord, continuously lose a stable pitch until the final outburst. The recording of my voice brings a strange change to the work, as we have yet to hear an utterance of human sound from SUBSTANCE’s strange morphings. Unable to determine a clear speech from the voice-texture, the substance pushes it around the virtual acoustic space and moulds it between other sound objects.
This section from the exegesis best explains SUBSTANCE as a whole composition:
The beginning of the composition utilises sound as a type of ‘cloud’. As heard directly after the opening sequence of the piece, sound appears as a mass of particles that gradually transform inside the virtual acoustic space. Emerging out of a wall of noise, this sonic cloud initially surrounds the listener in the form of sparkling glass-like objects. This shimmering structure was generated through granular synthesis, a technique that involves the breaking down of audio material into very small grains that can be played back in random succession. When heard over an immersive multichannel speaker array, this cloud of sound appears as a morphing architectural structure composed of many interconnecting points that evolves around, above, inside and through the listener. We hear the initial ‘sparkling’ sound turn into chirping birds, then to crackling fire, to crunching rocks, to water, to rain. While these transformations unfold, our causal listening is frequently stimulated and the acousmatic situation forces us to link these perceived physical causes together. Desantos, Roads & Bayle (1997 p. 17) compare this phenomenon of acousmatic listening to a ‘detective story’, suggesting that ‘one invents a scenario to find the chain of causality that explains the situation’. As our causal listening automatically assimilates the ever-changing sonic makeup of SUBSTANCE, we perceive the structure as a single shape-shifting entity. Sound is presented as a deceptive physical object, a kind of gaseous or liquid substance, contracting and expanding as it continually mutates throughout the acoustic space.
And finally, this deceptive and manipulative substance continually evolves at an accelerating spatiotemporal space, until shrieking with an endless array of sonic utterances before eventually erupting into silence.
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