Slingshot 2014

Sliding Doors was selected for inclusion in Slingshot Festival 2014 in Athens, Georgia, between March 19-22. This event is spread over 4 city blocks and dozens of venues dedicated to music, comedy, exhibitions, audiovisual programs, performances and presentations. Sliding Doors was chosen for the Soundscape audio program to be played in the Cinélab.

This project is a sound spatialisation that seeks to explore spatial orientation and the relationships between the inside and the outside within a cubic octophonic setup. The installation ran for 20 minutes at the beginning of each program, during which people were free to enter and leave the Cinélab at will.

This configuration virtually defines a closed space such as a cell, a cabin or a capsule of which the walls and the ceiling are independently retractable. The idea is to give the listeners the sheer conscience of their finite being in a closed room as well as a perspective of infinity given by temporary openings. The initial claustrophobia one can feel in a confined environment is broken by the succession of loud sliding doors around and above the listeners, revealing snapshots of the outside world. The multi-channel setup makes it possible not only to consider sound coming from discrete stationary sources but also as moving objects along geometric planes in the three dimensions. Audience experience At first, only sounds of a beating heart and streaming blood inside the body can be slightly heard, as if the listener was in an anechoic chamber, with no sonic influence coming from outside. This situation brings the listener to face him/herself and makes him/her more receptive to new stimuli. After a while, he can hear the remarkable sound of a heavy door sliding along one side of the cube to let outer sounds enter the room. Then a second windows opens, thus revealing new background sounds coming from another direction. As new doors are released, some others close and modify the spatial perspective. This brings to develop complex rhythmic patterns so that the listener will not pay attention to the initial heart beat and blood stream sounds any longer, although these will still be present but buried in the mix. The ballet of opening and closing doors in all directions (left/right, front/rear, up/down) exacerbates the consciousness of the three dimensional space through the manifestation of sound. The contrast between the massive sliding and slamming sounds of doors with the discrete ambient textures adds a dramatic feeling to the scene. Finally, all doors progressively close again, letting the listener alone with the sound of his/her heart and blood. Technical description The site for which the present project has been imagined is the Ciné Lab. It uses a minimalist setup of 8 individual speakers in a cube configuration, about 6 meters on each side. Four speakers are set at ground level, and the four others at about 3-4 meter height. This is the standard setup used for most of the multi-channel sound works in Ciné Lab. The 8 speakers are fed with 8 different monophonic tracks, synchronised together. At the end of the sequence, each track must automatically restart from the beginning, creating a loop effect. The volume of each track is set in advance, but small adjustment might be needed to fit the real conditions. The lighting should preferably be dim with the exception of one top-down spot lighting the centre of the cube floor.