The Waiting Room Condition explores the sonic and phenomenological dimensions of in-between spaces through the concept of a sound installation using Wave Field Synthesis. Waiting is approached not only conceptually but as a subjective, embodied state oscillating between hope and anxiety, stillness and movement – and sound is chosen as the medium of inquiry because auditive perception, often overshadowed by the visual, operates at the boundary where self and space meet.
Conceptually, the thesis develops around the waiting room as an archetypal threshold space and defines The Waiting Room Condition as a state of being in which multiple autonomous realities and fugal in-betweens coexist within the same space-time continuum. Within this framework, Wave Field Synthesis is approached as a perceptual and phenomenological medium rather than a representational tool: its spatialized sound rendering across the listening area enables listeners to physically experience these coexisting sonic realities.
The compositional process itself unfolded as a continuous negotiation between artistic intention and the technical properties of Wave Field Synthesis, surfacing frictions – from sound material contradicting the intended condition to space-specific calibration challenges. The resulting insights, particularly around sound localization and the distinction between event-based and noise-based material, extend beyond technicalities of WFS-based sound design practice into the realm of sonic perception.
Finally "The Waiting Room Condition" becomes bodily inhabitable as a fifteen-minute seamless sound installation for up to six listeners within a 5×5 metre room-in-a-room WFS array. As such it invites listeners into a space of lingering, listening and deeper attention – a condition in which spatial, temporal and personal boundaries dissolve, and the listener becomes an additional presence within an omnipresent now.