Moving loudspeakers cause amplitude and frequency modulation and place the sound real in the room. The moving loudspeaker is perceived as a point source of sound, making it clearly audible, localizable and visible. The research project is now investigating the possibilities of how a loudspeaker can move in space in order to establish variable sound spaces in interaction with musicians. Technical solutions are being developed as well as a control language with which composers can control the loudspeaker according to musical and compositional needs.
Moving loudspeakers have been used in numerous electroacoustic and installation works since the 1960s. The movement of a sound source causes amplitude and frequency modulation. The moving loudspeaker is perceived as a point source of sound, making it clearly audible, localizable and visible, and allowing it to become the focal point of a sound-spatial staging. The research project now investigates the possibilities of how a loudspeaker can move freely in space in order to establish variable and moving sound spaces in interaction with musicians. These sound spaces should be able to be changed in their form by the composers during a performance or the loudspeakers form themselves independently on the basis of certain parameters and predetermined decision-making possibilities.
The mobile loudspeakers gain a much greater dramaturgical significance through the movement on stage in the sense of the performance and bring a different kind of expressive power to the performance. In this way, the electronic instruments take on a new position in relation to the acoustic instruments.
The mobile loudspeakers become actors on the stage and in the hall, bringing in additional interactions between the audience, the performers and the spatiality.
In addition to the technical development of the mobile loudspeaker, the project also envisions the development of a control language that composers* can use to control the loudspeaker according to musical and compositional needs.
The loudspeaker will move independently and freely in space without being anchored to a position. In the first version we will limit ourselves to the horizontal plane, the inclusion of height can be done in a further step.
The loudspeakers will be remote controlled to move freely in the space in a controlled way, the audio signal will be transmitted by radio; The project is intended for the production of music where the sounds of acoustic instruments (piano trio) will be electronically processed in real time, and new unheard of sound relationships between spatial representations of the sound, acoustic and electronic sounds and psychoacoustic effects from the moving sound sources will be realized. An important feature that distinguishes our project is the fact that it was conceived by a collective of composers to encourage the production of new compositions both for the collective composers and for other external composers. The technology is at the service of the music and is developed based on the needs and requirements that arise from the compositional work.
The aim of the project is to build one or two free-moving loudspeakers, to develop a concept of operation that allows the necessary control commands to be integrated into a score as additional parameters, and to put the system into practice and test it in artistic practice in a first research concert with the Absolut Trio. In the artistic application we want to develop a means by which the traditional fixed sound spaces can be supplemented or replaced by a variable model. In an audience survey, listeners will be asked about their impressions and sensations, which can be used to evaluate whether the composers' sound-spatial ideas can be conveyed and whether the system is able to solve compositional intentions concerning the goals in the field of acoustic, psychoacoustic and neuroacoustic effects and the corresponding problems concerning sound-spatial design and reproduction in concert (for example: Sweetspot, seat-dependent sound image, problem of phantom sound source formation). The observations include and investigate the psycho-acoustic features that transcend and extend the known perceptual process of the ordinary musical performances through the mobile sound system