An experiment in Wave Field Synthesis using the Game of Life mobile system, normally housed at the Scheltema complex in Leiden. The irony of a mobile WFS system is that the “illusion” is seriously undermined by environmental acoustics, so moving the system from one room to another makes it nearly impossible to compensate for or perfect a “spatial image”. I wanted to do something with the system in situ that would treat the room’s acoustical qualities as complementary to the Wave Field Synthesis, rather than as “artifacts”. I also wanted to get away from the electroacoustic convention of spatialization through “objective” movement. The idea was to repeat a simple action in the room several times, recording each repetition from a different perspective with an omni-directional microphone, and then playing back the recordings simultaneously so that the multiple actions could take their different places in the room at the same time. So I’m synchronizing this set of recordings where each hinges on a repeated central “event” so that the multiple repetitions can be recomposed into a single event. Other than the synchronization of the soundfiles no editing takes place. My repeated action was simply moving the microphone and then playing back the late 1970s disco ballad There will always be a you on the WFS system itself. As I worked, I decided that I would stop when the room felt “filled” by the music. This seemed to me to have happened after 33 iterations. The work was done over the course of four afternoons in December 2008 and January 2009. There will always be a you was first presented at the Scheltema Complex in Leiden in April 2009.
In May 2009, I gave a presentation on there will always be a you at the Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. The paper is available in the conference proceedings at the De Montfort website.
