ECHO-OVATIONS WITH SLAMMED DOORS (performative 8-channel installation, 2022)

performative installation in reverberate spaces for 8-channel, controllers and live claps

 

8.1 speakers, one performer
 

concept, compositions, performance: David Helbich
recordings: Frank van der Weij

edits, mastering: David Helbich

This work runs as an installation and can be performed live. At a first version at the In Situ Festival at Simian in Copenhagen (October 2022) the installation and the performance were two parts and aspects of the same material. 

 

It is based and inspired by the version of 2016, where instead of recordings, 14 performers were slamming the actual doors of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, while the audience was walking choreographies in the space. more on this:
https://davidhelbich.blogspot.com/2016/08/echo-ovations-2016-slamming-doors-at.html

 

program note:

Echoes come back to you, reverbs leave you. 



"Echo Ovation with Slammed Doors" ritualises the transformative power of disappearing sounds. In contrast to the spatial overlays of sounds that can be sustained, the reverb tail of explosive sounds gradually reveals their entire inner life. Depending on the size and conditions of the space and the presence of people, the components of the event unfold differently, sometimes faster and sometimes slower, sometimes from top to bottom and sometimes from bottom to top.

A performative act to impress the living and honor the dead.



For this performative installation, the 14 doors inside the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam's oldest church, were recorded. Under the church lie up to 10,000 people buried from 8 centuries. I can't help but imagine a transmigration of souls with each slamming of the doors. 
Distributed over eight loudspeakers, ever new spaces are created in the superposition of composed constellations, the space within the recordings and the current space in which we are now together, a space so reverberant, that once you lost certainty about when sound events are done happening, 
you might get uncertain as well about when they start.

 

extract:


 

instrumental compositions & co.

Album

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