Audience Experience (Proposal) - Presencing Piece No. 1 (Fed Plaza)
2 minutes: A woman enters the plaza from Lafayette Street and stops near the top of the steps. She becomes aware of unusual sounds mingling with the crowd noise and then notices a series of speakers spread through the space. A sudden burst of ricocheting acoustic trumpet sound from across the plaza grabs her attention. A moment later, an almost ghostly, deformed version of that same trumpet blast returns, bouncing around the plaza. Another burst of trumpet to the left pulls her attention. As that sound again returns altered and from multiple speaker locations like the first, a very present, unwavering high frequency sound emerges from closeby. She realizes it’s emanating from a snare drum sitting alone with nothing but a wire leading away from it. As the snare pitch very gradually modulates, she leaves the plaza to walk to the Brooklyn Bridge, hearing the penetrating frequency of the snare for another minute as walks away.
15 minutes: A man enters the plaza, again walking the steps up from Lafayette, and enters the din of sound being produced by the various speakers. He walks through the garden beds to his left and right. He scans the space and sees a group of 5 trumpet players, dressed in matching outfits, walking in tandem toward the plaza center. They ritualistically break formation and deliberately walk to equally spaced locations along the buildings to the south and west. As if on cue, the trumpets point their bells at the building next to them and begin a throbbing collective gesture that caroms around the space. They all gradually turn around and quietly play directly into microphones. As if opening and closing a lid at whim, their sounds pop in and out of the soundscape via the arrayed speakers. The man looks at the card he was handed as he entered the plaza. It instructs him to put headphones on and directs his smartphone to an online soundfile via QR code. He does so, trumpet sounds still audible through the ear buds. The sound of a man speaking enters his hearing: inscrutable but oddly compelling lists of minerals, rock types, and other geologic facts. While the trumpets blare, the virtually located arcana of the text is foregrounded in the man’s perception. He sits within the plaza’s water garden taking in the dichotomous sounds before heading for a nearby lunch.
30 minutes: A woman enters the plaza from Worth Street, seeing the gathering of trumpets along the building fronts. She gradually becomes aware that their sounds are being captured by microphones and eventually sent spinning around the site through the speakers sitting atop raised stands. An immersive sonic din has enveloped the plaza as she walks past the air intake structure and then along the western-most sinusoidal plant bed. Suddenly, the sound coming from the speaker nearest to her jump-cuts to a woman quickly reading a list of names in a neutral voice. She then notices another sudden change 20 feet away, hearing what sounds like cut-up Irish Ballad singing. Eventually all the speakers change over to either text or mechanical sounds and the trumpets come to a sudden stop. Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of sonic information, she sits down near the southern plant bed. Gradually the speakers go quiet while an unfamiliar buzzing sound emerges. She realizes the buzz is emitting from the series of unmanned snare drums scattered about the plaza. Then to her right, a trombonist slowly walks toward her, then another emerges, and another. Seven altogether in identical outfits, walking in formation toward the central area between the plaza plant beds. Eventually they all stop, lined up in a slightly curved linear formation and begin to play. A constant bed of low, staggered sliding sounds ebb and flow for several minutes. Waves of volume enter the flow, the snare drums change to etherial high droning pitches, matching the trombone shapes. This combinatory sound world remains in a steady state for nearly 10 minutes and the woman’s mind wonders, looking around the space. She picks up the card handed to her as she walked and sees the QR code created for this particular moment. She puts on her ear bud headphones and upon arriving at the webpage hears male voices singing a vigorous low-pitched chant that meshes with the trombone sound in pitch. She sits listening to the soundfile while hearing and seeing the septet until they finish. The trombones leave as they arrived and the woman decides to walk out of the plaza with them.