TONSPUR 81: Natalia Domínguez Rangel: L I S T E N

Opening: Sun, July 21, 17:00

L I S T E N provides a “window” onto the acoustic transformations in the TONSPUR spatial environment from the late 19th century until today. (By coincidence, my eye was drawn to the year 1876, when what is now Hall E was built for the Empress Elisabeth to ride and train her horses in, and also the year that Gustav Mahler's Piano Quartet in A minor from his Viennese period of study was premiered at the house of the physician Theodor Billroth in Vienna on July 10.)

In this installation I focus on the acoustic signatures created by the TONSPUR_passage as a sound space: texture, structure, shape and all relationships between these properties, as well as the acoustic qualities articulated through the space itself.
These characteristics extend outward to an acoustic horizon defined by the maximum distance between the listener and the sound source at which the sonic event can still be heard.
Like an auditory canal, this horizon encompasses all events that connect people, nature, machines and so forth.

I try to be as accurate as possible: when distributing the sound material in the sound space, I take into account the relative directions in which the eight fixed loudspeakers project my sounds: North, towards the Volkstheater; South, towards the main courtyard of the Museumsquartier; West, aiming at the Architekturzentrum Wien; East, over to Museumsplatz.
It is a meditative reflection on critical listening aimed primarily at the perception of deeper layers of acoustic soundscapes.

I worked primarily with my own field recordings made at dawn during my residency at the Museumsquartier in July 2019, as well as archive material from the Österreichische Mediathek — musical quotations (see below) — and created a sound design that mimics the soundscape of the original, earlier environment.

Natalia Domínguez Rangel

VX-06169 (2003.08.19), Österreichische Mediathek
Piano Quartet (1876.07.10), Gustav Mahler
Landscapes Soundings (May 1990), Bill Fontana