SSI



Spatial Sound
Institute


Auralisms: The Relativity
of Acoustic Presence
(2021)


Constanza Bizraelli

“Auralisms: The Relativity of Acoustic Presence” by Constanza Bizraelli is an interdisciplinary research-based interactive sound installation project that explores the notion of presence through Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.

The project aims at creating an aural experience that is capable of providing alternative structures for the intuition and cognition of spacetime. This will lead to a new conceptualization of presence, which will be characterized as the imprint of a disturbance relative to an energy field.

Some of the questions explored throughout the development of these ideas are: Can abstract space and time be grasped outside of our referencing networks and the usual routing of our sensorial capabilities? Is it possible to divert human intuition of spacetime from the conditions by which we are both cognitively and sensorially inscribed to its coordinates? Is it possible to intuit spacetime in an alternative manner?

Within the ethos of this project, the answers to these questions will reside in sound. The created experience will attempt to reunite and synchronize the faculty of listening within a non-spatiotemporal intuition of spacetime.

The methodology for transposing Einstein's mechanics onto the realm of sound will be based on a conceptual grasp of Einstein's theory of general relativity. This will be achieved by means of a speculative twist and a thought experiment, namely, the utilization of “sound” as a metaphor of spacetime. The audience will be able to listen to spacetime and its gravitational flux, as well as affect this flux and its sonic becoming, as a result of their participation in the installation. By affecting sound in an analogue way as mass and energy affect spacetime, audience will be able to listen to the changes in the sound field triggered by their presence.


A project by Constanza Bizraelli

Team:

Dimitris Menexopoulos: sound technology
Lennart Melzer: Sound technology consultancy
Giovanni Muzio: Visual composition & development
André Souto: GR Physics consultancy

A special thanks to Vladimir Razhev, Gabriel Catren, Tessa Nijdam and Gabriela Nuñez Melgar Molinari.

This project is made possible by the generous support of Stimuleringsfonds Creative Industrie NL

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    Photo Credits: Alifiyah Imani