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the »grenzenlose freiheit« has been inscribed into three connected rooms of
the old "staatsbank" building in the center of berlin. the
three spaces, which are connected through two small doors, possess
quite distinct acoustic features ranging from rather dry and spacious,
over small and more responsive to large and very reverberant. the aura
of the empty old communist office spaces has been left untouched with
the exception of an oriental carpet that has been put into the small
middle room to make it dryer and more cozy. the carpet also functioned
as an invitation to the audience to sit or lie down, which has been
appreciated frequently.
the different acoustic characteristics of the three rooms have been
reflected in the arrangement of the 24 loudspeakers, which were
distributed equally over the three rooms (eight per room). in the dry
and large room, the speakers were arranged in a line above the heads
of the audience projecting the sound from one wall directly into the
space and forming a frontal display-like situation. in the large and
reverberant room, the speakers were positioned on the floor facing the
walls. such they drove the room indirectly making use of the rich
reflection pattern one could observe there. in the small middle room
the speakers were also positioned on the floor and close to the wall
but were facing the audience and thus creating a middle stage between
the two large rooms. the idea of this arrangement was to emphasize the
particular acoustic situation of the site, which has been chosen as a
basis and generative structure of our work.
no special arrangements for lighting the rooms have been made, as the
piece was shown during daylight hours and enough light entered through
the large windows overlooking a large and noisy street and a
pedestrian road (the three rooms were located on the first floor at
the south-east corner of the "staatsbank" building).
the graphical user interface
running on the handheld computers is operated with a ready made
cotton swab (a q-tip®, "q-t", like the gui library which
is used for the interface). this was suggested by a visitor at the
opening after the first handheld stylus had broken down under the
pressure of an over-excited visitor eager to control the
installation. while the q-tip® isn t operating the interface, the
unused (sic!) end may be used to clean the user's ears.
the graphical user interface is based on the floor plan of the three
rooms and shows one's own sound texture as a filled and dragable
circle and the texture of the other players as empty circles. the
texture type is color coded and may be selected from a palette. the
texture density is controlled with a slider and is also symbolized by
the size of the circles. the loudspeakers installed in the rooms are
also represented in the interface and are activated depending on the
position and proximity of the sound texture circle. one's own active
speakers are displayed as filled red boxes whereas the speakers of the
other two visitors are displayed in gray.
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deutsche version
