Chris Cundy and Brona Martin
Interview 17th November 2023
Below is an interview between Dr. Brona Martin (Sound/Image Research Centre) and Chris Cundy where they discuss the IKO Loudspeaker within a site-specific performance that took place at The Roman Baths in Bath, England on 25th October 2023, and what they both learned from this collaboration:
First Impressions
BM: When you first saw the IKO at the Everyday is Spatial Conference at the University of Gloucestershire, what was your first impression of it? And why did you want to use it in your project?
CC: My first impression was this is different. And this looked quite different to how I had previously explored a surround sound speaker configuration. So, I was very intrigued that you could have a device, a single object in an inner space, that sort of inverted or converted that sound source. I was curious about how it was working when I first saw it in that big atrium space at University of Gloucestershire’s Park Campus. I wanted to know more about that. I think it was very much a case of intrigue, and wondering how it would work in another space? How might you think about configuring the sound, the material itself?
CC: The other intriguing thing about it is related to practicalities. The Roman Baths originally only offered me an hour and a half installation time. And I managed to push that to two hours. And even with that it was looking, even with a more simple four piece configuration, the timing of the installation was an issue. So, from a practical point of view, the IKO solved some of these problems. But also I should say it was by no means a foregone conclusion that I knew what was going on.
Instrumentation and Space
BM: I think I’d like to just go into more detail about that. Because for me, I only really began to fully realise the concept of your piece and your thought about spatialisation when I went to the Roman Baths and I discovered that you were thinking about space, in many ways you were thinking about space in terms of the instruments. So yes, you had your quartet, if I can call them that. So let’s go through that, you also had percussion and bass clarinet, which you played?
CC: That’s correct. We had cello and live electronics. Yes and the fourth one was violin and then the Japanese flutes.
BM: But what I’m saying is that you had the four instruments then you had the Japanese flutes, to the left, and then you’re creating a soundscape?
CC: I was attempting to place things spatially during preparation, which is really in some ways almost an impossible task without being in the space itself, so in other ways it invites imagination, you know, you have to work through a sound design in quite an abstract way. The score aspect for me became the real interface between how the musicians move and how they work alongside the playback. Now that was really something I could prepare, something I could really kind of almost lock into, even though we’re talking about margins of time, and some flexibility within that, which is very important due to the nature of that ensemble and of that music, of how the score works, and how it can be interacted with. But then the reality of hearing that in the environment, or on location itself, was always going to be completely new.
CC: But I’m very interested in trying to find, you know, find more ways of working gesturally with the musicians and with, how the spatial audio aspect can also work gesturally. One thing I’m still looking for is that real-time experience between the two.
CC: This is one major sort of observation which I’d be interested in if I were to revisit that space, and it was a complete one off event, so I’m not really entertaining that idea immediately. Hearing that spatial audio from the IKO speaker proved that it was obviously really working in certain spaces and areas due to the architecture of the space. Although from where we were positioned as a musical ensemble, at times, it was hard to gauge the spatiality of the sound. It was easier in a more controlled environment at the university. But that’s not putting me off from, you know, wanting to get around that. And my immediate thought is, maybe there should have been some kind of monitoring, but then I don’t really know whether that’s even possible with how the IKO speaker operates. So really it presents quite challenging ideas about how to reconfigure the space and how to orientate ourselves within it.
CC: Anyway, these are just some thoughts on my immediate response and to reading the space itself. So maybe there are some experiments we can do with that, but also, yeah, I am leaping ahead here in my thought processes. But another observation that I came to was, I’m keen to find more integration within the electro acoustic aspect of the ensemble. I think it’s getting there and I think actually, I’ve got that in my favour, because what we’re already exploring is very integrated material in terms of surface textures and as you know, the projection of acoustics itself. I’m trying to find a balance but I would be more intrigued in looking for ways, electro acoustically of how these things could be interactive and maybe having a little more control over the playback during the performance somehow.
Setup
BM: I was just interested in the potential that you felt that the IKO could bring to your piece? It’s a single unit that can project a spherical scene, a spatial scene all around us. However, the impact of the acoustics of the space will have a huge impact on how the sounds are perceived within that space, and you can lose control of the spatialisation once you leave a more controlled environment.
CC: Yeah, so there’s two parts. There’s the setup and then how everything was spatialised.
BM: Yes. So when you’re talking about electroacoustic techniques, so firstly, I was amazed that the instruments themselves were routed to the IKO. I was amazed. I was like, okay, it works. But also you could have just got a PA system for that.
So my thought is, you’ve spent so much time thinking about, you know, you’ve put the flutes over to the left. You’re already thinking about space?
CC: Yes, yes. Originally my intention was to have them a little further away from the rest of the ensemble and being mobile, but other practical issues came into play with that. I think we found a pretty successful solution for that from the audience’s point of view. And from our point of view, considering the space in terms of how we’re performing within it is certainly one of the starting points. Then it’s a matter of how much of that space can we use practically and realistically and all the rest of it.
CC: So the mixing of the live feed of acoustic instruments to the playback itself, and in this case to the IKO Speaker. It was something that had worked very well during experiments at the University of Gloucestershire but using a completely different loudspeaker array.
CC: It has a whole different sort of set of perspectives and all of that stuff. But yeah, that was the approach. So how, how would that then work with the IKO speaker?
Thinking about Space
BM: The IKO is very visual, and then we have the flutes on the left. And then I’m at the IKO and I can hear them coming from the IKO. I suppose my point is, you’ve gone to all the effort of thinking about space and the location in the Roman Baths, which is so beautiful. Like, her playing (the flautist Emi Watanabe) was amazing. And her costume. She just looked gorgeous in that space with the water reflecting. But then I’m hearing it (the flutes) coming from the IKO and I don’t know, am I being unfair to say that it kind of disrupted the spatial projection of her sound, like she’s over there, but the sound is coming from here (from the IKO). But I really want to hear it just coming from her and how it works within the space. And the fact that it’s coming from the IKO. Are you using the IKO to amplify the flutes, to bring the sound closer to the audience or are you processing it in some way? Which I don’t think you did or to try and mix it in with your soundscape material?
CC: Well, one thing is, I wasn’t looking for volume at all. I’m more along the route of looking for how to blend the acoustic instruments with the sound source of the spatial audio and that just seems really crucial to me. There isn’t much else other than sending signals to the IKO. The alteration of sound happens by it being projected elsewhere or by it being placed elsewhere. And I don’t quite know how I feel about that. Well, if there is a process I’d like to be able to reveal a sense of that process, rather than trying to recreate artificial replications of natural sound sources. So, I don’t mind the fact that it’s like, oh, there’s something going on over there, somehow transformed in the space and even in a very altered way. The disruption interests me because it might feedback to what we’re doing musically. I actually want to get to a point where the soundscape, maybe I can call this feedback, starts having a noticeable effect on the live aspect itself.
CC: I mean, it does make it closer to the audience in one way, but not in the sense that oh, you know, we’re trying to say the flute player is over there or we’re trying to tell the audience where to listen. It’s much more about how those sound sources are perceived and how they are displaced by the IKO.
BM: I think you would have benefited from spending more time with it.
CC: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Soundscapes and IKO Spatialisation
BM: Even your soundscape part of that was a huge project file.
CC: Yeah, it’s a huge file. It has a lot of components to it. Yeah, but my reaction was like that too, because I was like, god, if I had to spatialise all that for the IKO, it would take a long time. I really felt that it was a little bit out of my hands, in a sense of where it was. I’ve been introduced to working with ambisonics and spatial audio, both to record and to explore locational space, and also to present projects like this, through working with Şafak Ekmen who is a very experienced sound engineer. I started working with him more than a year ago. We were at the beginning of a project that I worked on for Corinium Museum in Cirencester. Şafak is very determined to remind me he’s an engineer, and not an artist, and that’s actually a good relationship for me. But there were times I wished I’d had a bit more artistic control over how to input the spatial audio.
CC: On the other hand it has been very successful with the project in terms of, really getting in very deep with the material. Having said that, I would have benefitted from having more time with the IKO speaker, exploring how it moves.
BM: Because I did send an IKO ambisonic template so you could have been composing and mixing in ambisonics and monitoring in binaural. Because you were composing for stereo, weren’t you? You were monitoring through stereo.
CC: Yes, that’s right. Yes. On the whole that’s what we did. Yeah, mainly, we did a few sessions at the university that sort of opened it up a bit.
BM: So ideally, the workflow should really be that you encode everything to Ambisonics so that it is in this sphere, but then you decode it to binaural all within the Reaper session so you can monitor the mix without the IKO.
CC: Yeah, I have a binaural encoder there for listening back to those sessions.
BM: So when you encoded into ambisonics? Did you use the encoder to spatialise the audio?
CC: Yes, to a certain extent, and that’s something I feel like I really would like to know more about.
BM: It just means that when you get to work with the IKO you have a lot of the panning automation drawn in already. So then when you’re working with the IKO, you spend a lot of time listening, and maybe just tweaking and using EQ.
CC: If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re talking about the kind of animated aspect of the spatial audio. Is that right?
BM: Yes, you send sounds through it. The whole idea is it projects a spatial image.
BM: But sometimes we put sounds on the IKO and they just seem to sit on the speaker. It’s very difficult to get the sounds away from the speaker. It all depends on the acoustics of the space, the material and how the sounds reflect within the space.
BM: So, when I was composing with the IKO, I spent hours spatialising and EQ’ing. So every track had a spatialiser which was a third order ambisonic encoder. Then I would have a multi-channel filter too. Then as you are you’re trying to create perspective, distance and motion you can use your filter to sculpt the sound.
The Concert
CC: I mean, certainly, you’re right. I feel like I’m sort of feeling my way through this. But it would be helpful to get more of an understanding of how to prep stuff. Just so that when it comes to the actual interface. But the evening was great, there was a great atmosphere and there was something really, really electric I thought about being in a location like that with those musicians. I’m working with musicians who really are very engaged in the world of improvisation and free improvisation and I’m not interested in creating kind of mysterious graphic scores or anything like that as isolated works. I mean, working with those musicians is just a brilliant situation for me. And I think there was a lot of interest in the process. I mean, if we had more engagement and more time with that, I think we could really get to other places with it just to see the engagement and the curiosity and the process itself unfolding. That was brilliant. I’m really encouraged about prospects of presenting this elsewhere, whether that’s in a festival situation or another location.
CC: It is the type of piece that you can adapt it for different spaces, different types of spaces, I think, which is really exciting. Yeah, I think because there’s so many layers to it, there’s, you know, you’ve got the instrumental layer. Then you have the processed layer that is coming from the cello. You have the poetry, you have the electro acoustic part, and then you have all of the sounds behaving in that space together in surprising ways. And then you have the impact of what the IKO is doing in that space too. Yeah, all the reflections around it or into that space. And then yeah, you have the aesthetic impact of the Roman Baths with the natural colours, and the light, you know, these lovely yellow and green surfaces and the reflection of the water and the fire, which is like, my god, it was magical. It was one of the most satisfying events I’ve been involved with.
CC: I still can’t quite believe they let me in there actually. The installation of it was a bit insane, but it worked. And yeah, just like you say, it really elevates the work just by being there in that shared space as well. And seeing people within it in that very live sense was exciting.
Documentation and Other Outputs
CC: We have been doing some filming there as well. One thing that we’re doing with my team of people, and I think you’ve met Dominyka Vinčaitė. We’re presenting a few video shorts, which will be going up on the Roman Baths website once a month. And we’ve got some nice footage that Dominyka took using submersible cameras below the sacred spring, really getting up close to the very substance of the place. And like you say, the colours of it, and the phenomenon of being there. That excites me.
BM: It’s exciting. Because when we compose a piece, we perform it in a concert and often that becomes the end of the journey. Well, I don’t believe in that because for me, when I perform a piece, you learn so much more about it, because you listen in a different way. It’s in a different space and you might go back and revisited it. But with your project there’s so many different elements, and the fact that you can’t just go to the Roman Baths once a month and perform it, you may never perform it there again. If you want your work to reach a wider audience you have to think about all these different types of outputs. And the more outputs you have and the more variety you have in your outputs, the broader your audience is going to be right. And then you have to think about the fact that it was quite a site-specific work. I mean, it was about the Baths. So what happens when you take it to another space?
BM: But can you talk a bit about the electro acoustic part, and the relationship of your sounds with the place and how you captured those sounds, and the relationship of that component with your live instrumental part?
Gathering Field Recordings in the Baths
CC: Yeah. Okay. Already, there’s a lot going on there. So when you’re asking me about the electro acoustic part you are asking me about the field recordings that I have processed. Sure, we did a few field visits there. I made choices about where to record, using a pair of hydrophone microphones, and the Sennheiser ambisonic microphone, and a few other stereo microphones. So, we have some wonderful recordings from the sacred spring. Listening to what that sounds like, under the water, really listening to geo-thermal bubbles and stuff. It’s a very chattery sound. And it’s very much alive.
BM: Where are the sacred springs?
CC: It’s right next to the Great Bath but you don’t see it. There is no public access to it really. You might pass by it through a set of Roman arches that come from the museum entrance into the Great Bath. And that’s the only aspect as a visitor where you will actually smell it and see it. In other words, you might miss it. And the spring has very very tall Victorian architecture surrounding it on all sides, so it’s very contained. So it’s very exciting actually having access to this space first thing in the morning and doing work there. And we did this on a couple of occasions. This is the spot where people would have thrown curse tablets and approached the goddess and all this stuff. And so there it is, and what you see is a natural water source with this very lively, rippling and rising bubbling surface, hot gases coming to the surface, and this place has an amazing appearance. So we did a bit of filming there and recording. Most of the hydrophone recordings came from there but we also recorded some of the running water streams. There is a culvert stream that goes from the spring to the Great Bath, which is fairly gentle, but it has a different nature and different sound to it. And then we did some recordings at what’s called the waterfall, which is a very, very rapid channel which comes from the sacred spring into a stream underneath the Roman Bath complex, and channels the water much more quickly to other areas of the building.
I came away with recordings, both below the water and above the water. And that was my view of it. I’m also using a whole bunch of recordings from outside the building, and different atmospheres. Then it feels like a process of almost containing those things, you know, have them sort of bottled up somehow with little labels on, and it’s picking and choosing, how to react, and how to explore this recorded world.
Using the recordings within the work
CC: So we have recordings played back at the very beginning of the performance, which are sourced from a modern borehole which has been driven deeper into the reservoir that was, I believe, put there to overcome contamination problems they had at the Roman Baths back in the 1980s. So we did a bunch of recordings there too. And what you’re actually hearing is a mechanical device, which is whirring away and diverting spring water upwards to another outlet. So that’s a very different sound source. And the whole beginning of that piece lands on layers of that, of that particular sound, which is continuous, an everlasting sound. I prepared some bass clarinet multi-phonics into that which I moved around and pitched so that they would make sense both to the pre-recorded aspect and to how it would then be played out live with a score and an ensemble of musicians.
BM: And then you’re using the IKO to project those sounds into the space.
Going Forward
CC: So, yeah, I’d like to look at more options of how that is then projected into the space. I think what I’m beginning to understand is that there could be more of that aspect which could influence the process of putting the work together itself in some shape or form in a different way?
BM: So if you had the IKO from the beginning, and you were composing for it from the beginning, that would have an impact. This is what we’re learning. And I’ve had this discussion, with my colleagues that I’m so glad we collaborated on this project with you, because majority of the stuff we’ve done, has been fixed media, you know, it’s a piece, replaying pieces back on the IKO in different spaces. And we learn so much about it when we take it into a different space, using it in a different situation and really realising the potential of it as an instrument. Yes, but in order for that to work, the composer needs to spend time with it.
CC: I mean, exactly that. As you would want to have a close relationship with it, the same as would have with a musical instrument. I mean, it’s the same really.
BM: Yeah, that’s 100% right. And I’m not saying that because it didn’t work. It absolutely did work. But going forward and learning from these wonderful experiences, like the fact that I got to hang out with you guys and go to this event. It has made me think about my creative practice and how I might use the IKO going forward. And also how I might share my knowledge of the IKO with other people, and how I might try and engage other people with it. This is so important for me.
Conclusion
CC: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Should we have a conclusion?
BM: Yes. It is so important to reflect, because this project is huge. You know, you compose music, you compose the electro acoustic part. There’s a lot of different elements. And then you perform it in a space that you haven’t even had the opportunity to rehearse in. But it’s also exciting, because you’re putting yourself in a position where it’s like, well, the space will take control over this piece. And, I can only have so much control over that.
CC: Yeah, I mean, that’s fine. I’m kind of very used to that. Throwing oneself into stuff. Sometimes you just have to, to get the work done and actually, if that’s an aspect of the work itself, then yeah, it makes it all the more interesting when you introduce new technologies and new processes. I think it’s all about challenging and adjusting our sense of perspective and realising there will always be new ways of hearing the world around us.
Interview 17th November 2023
Below is an interview between Dr. Brona Martin (Sound/Image Research Centre) and Chris Cundy where they discuss the IKO Loudspeaker within a site-specific performance that took place at The Roman Baths in Bath, England on 25th October 2023, and what they both learned from this collaboration:
First Impressions
BM: When you first saw the IKO at the Everyday is Spatial Conference at the University of Gloucestershire, what was your first impression of it? And why did you want to use it in your project?
CC: My first impression was this is different. And this looked quite different to how I had previously explored a surround sound speaker configuration. So, I was very intrigued that you could have a device, a single object in an inner space, that sort of inverted or converted that sound source. I was curious about how it was working when I first saw it in that big atrium space at University of Gloucestershire’s Park Campus. I wanted to know more about that. I think it was very much a case of intrigue, and wondering how it would work in another space? How might you think about configuring the sound, the material itself?
CC: The other intriguing thing about it is related to practicalities. The Roman Baths originally only offered me an hour and a half installation time. And I managed to push that to two hours. And even with that it was looking, even with a more simple four piece configuration, the timing of the installation was an issue. So, from a practical point of view, the IKO solved some of these problems. But also I should say it was by no means a foregone conclusion that I knew what was going on.
Instrumentation and Space
BM: I think I’d like to just go into more detail about that. Because for me, I only really began to fully realise the concept of your piece and your thought about spatialisation when I went to the Roman Baths and I discovered that you were thinking about space, in many ways you were thinking about space in terms of the instruments. So yes, you had your quartet, if I can call them that. So let’s go through that, you also had percussion and bass clarinet, which you played?
CC: That’s correct. We had cello and live electronics. Yes and the fourth one was violin and then the Japanese flutes.
BM: But what I’m saying is that you had the four instruments then you had the Japanese flutes, to the left, and then you’re creating a soundscape?
CC: I was attempting to place things spatially during preparation, which is really in some ways almost an impossible task without being in the space itself, so in other ways it invites imagination, you know, you have to work through a sound design in quite an abstract way. The score aspect for me became the real interface between how the musicians move and how they work alongside the playback. Now that was really something I could prepare, something I could really kind of almost lock into, even though we’re talking about margins of time, and some flexibility within that, which is very important due to the nature of that ensemble and of that music, of how the score works, and how it can be interacted with. But then the reality of hearing that in the environment, or on location itself, was always going to be completely new.
CC: But I’m very interested in trying to find, you know, find more ways of working gesturally with the musicians and with, how the spatial audio aspect can also work gesturally. One thing I’m still looking for is that real-time experience between the two.
CC: This is one major sort of observation which I’d be interested in if I were to revisit that space, and it was a complete one off event, so I’m not really entertaining that idea immediately. Hearing that spatial audio from the IKO speaker proved that it was obviously really working in certain spaces and areas due to the architecture of the space. Although from where we were positioned as a musical ensemble, at times, it was hard to gauge the spatiality of the sound. It was easier in a more controlled environment at the university. But that’s not putting me off from, you know, wanting to get around that. And my immediate thought is, maybe there should have been some kind of monitoring, but then I don’t really know whether that’s even possible with how the IKO speaker operates. So really it presents quite challenging ideas about how to reconfigure the space and how to orientate ourselves within it.
CC: Anyway, these are just some thoughts on my immediate response and to reading the space itself. So maybe there are some experiments we can do with that, but also, yeah, I am leaping ahead here in my thought processes. But another observation that I came to was, I’m keen to find more integration within the electro acoustic aspect of the ensemble. I think it’s getting there and I think actually, I’ve got that in my favour, because what we’re already exploring is very integrated material in terms of surface textures and as you know, the projection of acoustics itself. I’m trying to find a balance but I would be more intrigued in looking for ways, electro acoustically of how these things could be interactive and maybe having a little more control over the playback during the performance somehow.
Setup
BM: I was just interested in the potential that you felt that the IKO could bring to your piece? It’s a single unit that can project a spherical scene, a spatial scene all around us. However, the impact of the acoustics of the space will have a huge impact on how the sounds are perceived within that space, and you can lose control of the spatialisation once you leave a more controlled environment.
CC: Yeah, so there’s two parts. There’s the setup and then how everything was spatialised.
BM: Yes. So when you’re talking about electroacoustic techniques, so firstly, I was amazed that the instruments themselves were routed to the IKO. I was amazed. I was like, okay, it works. But also you could have just got a PA system for that.
So my thought is, you’ve spent so much time thinking about, you know, you’ve put the flutes over to the left. You’re already thinking about space?
CC: Yes, yes. Originally my intention was to have them a little further away from the rest of the ensemble and being mobile, but other practical issues came into play with that. I think we found a pretty successful solution for that from the audience’s point of view. And from our point of view, considering the space in terms of how we’re performing within it is certainly one of the starting points. Then it’s a matter of how much of that space can we use practically and realistically and all the rest of it.
CC: So the mixing of the live feed of acoustic instruments to the playback itself, and in this case to the IKO Speaker. It was something that had worked very well during experiments at the University of Gloucestershire but using a completely different loudspeaker array.
CC: It has a whole different sort of set of perspectives and all of that stuff. But yeah, that was the approach. So how, how would that then work with the IKO speaker?
Thinking about Space
BM: The IKO is very visual, and then we have the flutes on the left. And then I’m at the IKO and I can hear them coming from the IKO. I suppose my point is, you’ve gone to all the effort of thinking about space and the location in the Roman Baths, which is so beautiful. Like, her playing (the flautist Emi Watanabe) was amazing. And her costume. She just looked gorgeous in that space with the water reflecting. But then I’m hearing it (the flutes) coming from the IKO and I don’t know, am I being unfair to say that it kind of disrupted the spatial projection of her sound, like she’s over there, but the sound is coming from here (from the IKO). But I really want to hear it just coming from her and how it works within the space. And the fact that it’s coming from the IKO. Are you using the IKO to amplify the flutes, to bring the sound closer to the audience or are you processing it in some way? Which I don’t think you did or to try and mix it in with your soundscape material?
CC: Well, one thing is, I wasn’t looking for volume at all. I’m more along the route of looking for how to blend the acoustic instruments with the sound source of the spatial audio and that just seems really crucial to me. There isn’t much else other than sending signals to the IKO. The alteration of sound happens by it being projected elsewhere or by it being placed elsewhere. And I don’t quite know how I feel about that. Well, if there is a process I’d like to be able to reveal a sense of that process, rather than trying to recreate artificial replications of natural sound sources. So, I don’t mind the fact that it’s like, oh, there’s something going on over there, somehow transformed in the space and even in a very altered way. The disruption interests me because it might feedback to what we’re doing musically. I actually want to get to a point where the soundscape, maybe I can call this feedback, starts having a noticeable effect on the live aspect itself.
CC: I mean, it does make it closer to the audience in one way, but not in the sense that oh, you know, we’re trying to say the flute player is over there or we’re trying to tell the audience where to listen. It’s much more about how those sound sources are perceived and how they are displaced by the IKO.
BM: I think you would have benefited from spending more time with it.
CC: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Soundscapes and IKO Spatialisation
BM: Even your soundscape part of that was a huge project file.
CC: Yeah, it’s a huge file. It has a lot of components to it. Yeah, but my reaction was like that too, because I was like, god, if I had to spatialise all that for the IKO, it would take a long time. I really felt that it was a little bit out of my hands, in a sense of where it was. I’ve been introduced to working with ambisonics and spatial audio, both to record and to explore locational space, and also to present projects like this, through working with Şafak Ekmen who is a very experienced sound engineer. I started working with him more than a year ago. We were at the beginning of a project that I worked on for Corinium Museum in Cirencester. Şafak is very determined to remind me he’s an engineer, and not an artist, and that’s actually a good relationship for me. But there were times I wished I’d had a bit more artistic control over how to input the spatial audio.
CC: On the other hand it has been very successful with the project in terms of, really getting in very deep with the material. Having said that, I would have benefitted from having more time with the IKO speaker, exploring how it moves.
BM: Because I did send an IKO ambisonic template so you could have been composing and mixing in ambisonics and monitoring in binaural. Because you were composing for stereo, weren’t you? You were monitoring through stereo.
CC: Yes, that’s right. Yes. On the whole that’s what we did. Yeah, mainly, we did a few sessions at the university that sort of opened it up a bit.
BM: So ideally, the workflow should really be that you encode everything to Ambisonics so that it is in this sphere, but then you decode it to binaural all within the Reaper session so you can monitor the mix without the IKO.
CC: Yeah, I have a binaural encoder there for listening back to those sessions.
BM: So when you encoded into ambisonics? Did you use the encoder to spatialise the audio?
CC: Yes, to a certain extent, and that’s something I feel like I really would like to know more about.
BM: It just means that when you get to work with the IKO you have a lot of the panning automation drawn in already. So then when you’re working with the IKO, you spend a lot of time listening, and maybe just tweaking and using EQ.
CC: If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re talking about the kind of animated aspect of the spatial audio. Is that right?
BM: Yes, you send sounds through it. The whole idea is it projects a spatial image.
BM: But sometimes we put sounds on the IKO and they just seem to sit on the speaker. It’s very difficult to get the sounds away from the speaker. It all depends on the acoustics of the space, the material and how the sounds reflect within the space.
BM: So, when I was composing with the IKO, I spent hours spatialising and EQ’ing. So every track had a spatialiser which was a third order ambisonic encoder. Then I would have a multi-channel filter too. Then as you are you’re trying to create perspective, distance and motion you can use your filter to sculpt the sound.
The Concert
CC: I mean, certainly, you’re right. I feel like I’m sort of feeling my way through this. But it would be helpful to get more of an understanding of how to prep stuff. Just so that when it comes to the actual interface. But the evening was great, there was a great atmosphere and there was something really, really electric I thought about being in a location like that with those musicians. I’m working with musicians who really are very engaged in the world of improvisation and free improvisation and I’m not interested in creating kind of mysterious graphic scores or anything like that as isolated works. I mean, working with those musicians is just a brilliant situation for me. And I think there was a lot of interest in the process. I mean, if we had more engagement and more time with that, I think we could really get to other places with it just to see the engagement and the curiosity and the process itself unfolding. That was brilliant. I’m really encouraged about prospects of presenting this elsewhere, whether that’s in a festival situation or another location.
CC: It is the type of piece that you can adapt it for different spaces, different types of spaces, I think, which is really exciting. Yeah, I think because there’s so many layers to it, there’s, you know, you’ve got the instrumental layer. Then you have the processed layer that is coming from the cello. You have the poetry, you have the electro acoustic part, and then you have all of the sounds behaving in that space together in surprising ways. And then you have the impact of what the IKO is doing in that space too. Yeah, all the reflections around it or into that space. And then yeah, you have the aesthetic impact of the Roman Baths with the natural colours, and the light, you know, these lovely yellow and green surfaces and the reflection of the water and the fire, which is like, my god, it was magical. It was one of the most satisfying events I’ve been involved with.
CC: I still can’t quite believe they let me in there actually. The installation of it was a bit insane, but it worked. And yeah, just like you say, it really elevates the work just by being there in that shared space as well. And seeing people within it in that very live sense was exciting.
Documentation and Other Outputs
CC: We have been doing some filming there as well. One thing that we’re doing with my team of people, and I think you’ve met Dominyka Vinčaitė. We’re presenting a few video shorts, which will be going up on the Roman Baths website once a month. And we’ve got some nice footage that Dominyka took using submersible cameras below the sacred spring, really getting up close to the very substance of the place. And like you say, the colours of it, and the phenomenon of being there. That excites me.
BM: It’s exciting. Because when we compose a piece, we perform it in a concert and often that becomes the end of the journey. Well, I don’t believe in that because for me, when I perform a piece, you learn so much more about it, because you listen in a different way. It’s in a different space and you might go back and revisited it. But with your project there’s so many different elements, and the fact that you can’t just go to the Roman Baths once a month and perform it, you may never perform it there again. If you want your work to reach a wider audience you have to think about all these different types of outputs. And the more outputs you have and the more variety you have in your outputs, the broader your audience is going to be right. And then you have to think about the fact that it was quite a site-specific work. I mean, it was about the Baths. So what happens when you take it to another space?
BM: But can you talk a bit about the electro acoustic part, and the relationship of your sounds with the place and how you captured those sounds, and the relationship of that component with your live instrumental part?
Gathering Field Recordings in the Baths
CC: Yeah. Okay. Already, there’s a lot going on there. So when you’re asking me about the electro acoustic part you are asking me about the field recordings that I have processed. Sure, we did a few field visits there. I made choices about where to record, using a pair of hydrophone microphones, and the Sennheiser ambisonic microphone, and a few other stereo microphones. So, we have some wonderful recordings from the sacred spring. Listening to what that sounds like, under the water, really listening to geo-thermal bubbles and stuff. It’s a very chattery sound. And it’s very much alive.
BM: Where are the sacred springs?
CC: It’s right next to the Great Bath but you don’t see it. There is no public access to it really. You might pass by it through a set of Roman arches that come from the museum entrance into the Great Bath. And that’s the only aspect as a visitor where you will actually smell it and see it. In other words, you might miss it. And the spring has very very tall Victorian architecture surrounding it on all sides, so it’s very contained. So it’s very exciting actually having access to this space first thing in the morning and doing work there. And we did this on a couple of occasions. This is the spot where people would have thrown curse tablets and approached the goddess and all this stuff. And so there it is, and what you see is a natural water source with this very lively, rippling and rising bubbling surface, hot gases coming to the surface, and this place has an amazing appearance. So we did a bit of filming there and recording. Most of the hydrophone recordings came from there but we also recorded some of the running water streams. There is a culvert stream that goes from the spring to the Great Bath, which is fairly gentle, but it has a different nature and different sound to it. And then we did some recordings at what’s called the waterfall, which is a very, very rapid channel which comes from the sacred spring into a stream underneath the Roman Bath complex, and channels the water much more quickly to other areas of the building.
I came away with recordings, both below the water and above the water. And that was my view of it. I’m also using a whole bunch of recordings from outside the building, and different atmospheres. Then it feels like a process of almost containing those things, you know, have them sort of bottled up somehow with little labels on, and it’s picking and choosing, how to react, and how to explore this recorded world.
Using the recordings within the work
CC: So we have recordings played back at the very beginning of the performance, which are sourced from a modern borehole which has been driven deeper into the reservoir that was, I believe, put there to overcome contamination problems they had at the Roman Baths back in the 1980s. So we did a bunch of recordings there too. And what you’re actually hearing is a mechanical device, which is whirring away and diverting spring water upwards to another outlet. So that’s a very different sound source. And the whole beginning of that piece lands on layers of that, of that particular sound, which is continuous, an everlasting sound. I prepared some bass clarinet multi-phonics into that which I moved around and pitched so that they would make sense both to the pre-recorded aspect and to how it would then be played out live with a score and an ensemble of musicians.
BM: And then you’re using the IKO to project those sounds into the space.
Going Forward
CC: So, yeah, I’d like to look at more options of how that is then projected into the space. I think what I’m beginning to understand is that there could be more of that aspect which could influence the process of putting the work together itself in some shape or form in a different way?
BM: So if you had the IKO from the beginning, and you were composing for it from the beginning, that would have an impact. This is what we’re learning. And I’ve had this discussion, with my colleagues that I’m so glad we collaborated on this project with you, because majority of the stuff we’ve done, has been fixed media, you know, it’s a piece, replaying pieces back on the IKO in different spaces. And we learn so much about it when we take it into a different space, using it in a different situation and really realising the potential of it as an instrument. Yes, but in order for that to work, the composer needs to spend time with it.
CC: I mean, exactly that. As you would want to have a close relationship with it, the same as would have with a musical instrument. I mean, it’s the same really.
BM: Yeah, that’s 100% right. And I’m not saying that because it didn’t work. It absolutely did work. But going forward and learning from these wonderful experiences, like the fact that I got to hang out with you guys and go to this event. It has made me think about my creative practice and how I might use the IKO going forward. And also how I might share my knowledge of the IKO with other people, and how I might try and engage other people with it. This is so important for me.
Conclusion
CC: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Should we have a conclusion?
BM: Yes. It is so important to reflect, because this project is huge. You know, you compose music, you compose the electro acoustic part. There’s a lot of different elements. And then you perform it in a space that you haven’t even had the opportunity to rehearse in. But it’s also exciting, because you’re putting yourself in a position where it’s like, well, the space will take control over this piece. And, I can only have so much control over that.
CC: Yeah, I mean, that’s fine. I’m kind of very used to that. Throwing oneself into stuff. Sometimes you just have to, to get the work done and actually, if that’s an aspect of the work itself, then yeah, it makes it all the more interesting when you introduce new technologies and new processes. I think it’s all about challenging and adjusting our sense of perspective and realising there will always be new ways of hearing the world around us.