At the centre of my work is the discourse with sound as a visual
material. Sustained tones evoke images. Analogously to imagistic art,
these tones are intended to generate a COUNTERIMAGE
in the viewer/listener's mind that is completely his own.
Following the idea of analysing music into tone and rhythm (the
arrangement of tone in time) the alternative possibility is revealed:
tones can be structured spatially, thereby releasing features which
have no essential place within the framework of musical function.
By experimenting with a church organ I was able to establish that the
nature or colour of a tone
only remains indicative of the instrument if
it is played in a certain way. As soon as one immerses oneself in the
sound over a long period of time, it opens itself and releases its
constitutive components (keynote, overtones in varying evaluations).
Movement has a similar effect: if one follows a tone in a given space
one notices that it is broken by the architecture - like light in a
prism. In different places other aspects of the overtones can be clearly
distinguished.
Since the deployment of such qualities requires their continuous
presence, I am currently using for my installations either organ pipes
or 'Singing Flames' (inspired by Frédéric Kastner's pyrophone of 1870).
These are gas flames which burn in glass pipes. The length and diameter
of the pipe determines the colour and pitch of the tone.
Important for me with these media is the analogy between their form and
the qualities of sound resulting from it.
All work with sound is of necessity bound by the space in which it
occurs, primarily through the acoustic qualities of the space. By
placing the sound sources in a particular way, an Acoustic Architecture
is created; in addition the appearance of the media affects the
sculptural structure, the look of the place.
Andreas Oldörp
