Somló Dávid Transdisciplinary Approaches of Spatiality in Performance 2024 Phd in Practice Dissertation (2025)

«Beyond Sound and Listening: Urban Sound Installations and Perception» En The Art of Immersive Soundscapes. Harley, J., Minevich, P. y Waterman, E., eds. Regina, Sask.: Canadian Plains Research Centre Press, 2013, pp. 25-36. ISBN: 978-0-88977-258-8

In different ways, works of art conceived for specific places lead us to consider the audience’s presence, or in a wider sense, the presence of the individual, within the space of the work. For this reason, in this chapter I analyse sound installations in urban environments using a historical and multidisciplinary approach, and focusing on their reception by the “city-citizen” (a term that recognizes the reciprocal influence of the dynamic space of the city and its urban inhabitants). When site-specific artworks include sound as a material, they also incorporate or reinforce ideas of temporality, simultaneity and dynamism and these same qualities are inherent to the modern city. Drawing on 1960s research by urban planner Kevin Lynch, I will discuss the impact of urban sound installations by Max Neuhaus, Bernard Leitner, Bill Fontana and Bruce Nauman. I will argue that all these artists create works that, by immersing the citizen in sound, change and enrich his or her perception of the city.

«Spatiality and Public Art. Thoughts on Sound and Urban Space» Tacet. De l’espace sonore. Vol.3 (2014) pp.186-227. Le Presses du Réel. ISBN: 978-2-84066-717-9 EAN: 9782840667179

The paper takes up a problem of definition that is often debated nowadays in the field of Sound Art and moves it to the field of Public Sound Art: Which is the role of Public Sound Art in contemporary art? Are we enriching the field by validating this expression to denote a group of works created with sound in the public space? The paper addresses these questions at the same time it focuses the attention in the spatiality, a concept used by Edward Soja to describe the socially-­‐produced spaces, that sound creation tackles in the public space. The paper also presents a review of the exhibition Augmented Spatiality that was based on these topics and took place in August 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Towards the Spatial: Music, Art, and the Audiovisual Environment

Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music, 2013

The audiovisual history charted in chapter two is here revoiced in terms of spatial expansion. It is argued that video technology did not initiate a new form of creative engagement with its performance spaces, but rather represented the peak of a spatial expansion that had been gathering pace throughout the twentieth century. As musicians explored their spatial parameters and artists included time in their work, attention was drawn to traditional viewing and listening procedures. Drawing on the theories of László Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion, Christopher Small and Brian O’Doherty, this chapter compares the conventions of gallery exhibition and display, viewing procedures and audience behaviour with the customs and aesthetics of listening in the traditional concert hall. Performance and installation art, aleatoric music and communal composition are used to propose a theory of spatialised creativity, audience activation and performativity.

Associating Places: Strategies for Live, Site Specific, Sound Art Performance

2015

Claims for originality in this thesis lie in bringing together many different disciplines in art, music, sound studies and performance. The methodology, contextually indebted to the dialogues of site specific art, performance, and sound improvisation, has emerged as a multi-disciplinary one, informed in part by the study of those artists from the 1960s onwards who actively sought to resist the gallery system. The practice has driven the thesis in developing and continuously testing the requirement to respond uniquely to chosen sites. By using relevant references, instruments, and sonified materials, a compulsion to convey something of the particularity of the site’s associations through sound, is performed on site. In the course of considering the wider implications of a site through both the sound performances and the critical writing, I propose that there are essentially three aspects to identify when working with sound on site. I define these as: the actual the activated the asso...

Music, Space and Theatre: Site-specific approaches to multichannel spatialisation

Organised Sound, 2010

"Approaches to the multichannel spatialisation of electroacoustic music are described here with reference to musical case studies which focus upon the expressive functions of space and the theatricality of sound diffusion in an acousmatic context. A site-specific approach to spatialisation is proposed to enhance theatrical aspects of musical performance. Case studies include proposals for novel layouts of the diffusion system within the performance space and compositional techniques that are designed to re-evaluate our understanding of individual listening spaces."

Approaches to the multichannel spatialisation of electroacoustic music are described here with reference to musical case studies which focus upon the expressive functions of space and the theatricality of sound diffusion in an acousmatic context. A site-specific approach to spatialisation is proposed to enhance theatrical aspects of musical performance. Case studies include proposals for novel layouts of the diffusion system within the performance space and compositional techniques that are designed to re-evaluate our understanding of individual listening spaces.

Spatial Encounters: Spectatorship in Immersive Performances

2014

Towards a Spatial Consciousness: What Can An Analysis Of 'Site, Place and Space' Mean to Applied Theatre, Its Participants and Practitioners

This piece of research, in ally with site-specific art theory, is a rethought of the relation between ‘site’, ‘place’ and ‘space’ and applied theatre. It approaches these concepts from three perspectives using Sally Mackey’s applied place practices as the thread: a) performance-related activities as place-making tools b) sensory perceptions as ways into our conceived space and c) key aspects on community refracted from its location and the ethics of community-based art work. This dissertation embraces the idea that spatial practices are worth being more consciously attended to in applied theatre praxis.

PERFORMANCE SPACES AND SPATIAL PERFORMATIVITY Theatre has left the building

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance , 2023

The opening decades of this new millennium are haunted by spectacular events associated with political upheaval, conflict, contamination, climate change, pandemics and the plight of those seeking refuge from such threats. How do these extended moments in nature and civilisation impact environments housing cultural events, which, as performative spacing, are themselves events and integral drivers of experience? No longer safe nor sound, architecture’s inveterate association with continuity, coherence and autonomy has submitted to the exigencies of time, action and movement, revealing an impossible task to provide secure containment for inherently uncontainable bodies. This chapter therefore reverse-engineers the cautionary tale of The Three Little Pigs, which privileges the value of building one’s house out of stable bricks, rather than rickety sticks or even more volatile straw. It exposes significant shifts for the environment housing theatre: from enduring standalone monuments of the 19th century; to more experimental sites of the 20th century; to ephemeral and transitory locations of the early 21st century, in which a deliberate homelessness reinforces the community itself as house. Like Elvis, ‘theatre has left the building’, suggesting a death of sorts to enduring forms of theatre architecture. This makes way for more dynamic spatialities seen in seminal contemporary European venues that proffer alternatives to the persistent cookie-cutter models of proscenium stage and black box studio.

Aural Spatiality and Sonic Materiality: Attending to the Space of Sound in Performances by Ivo Dimchev and Alma Söderberg

Contemporary Theatre Review, 2018

How might performance enable us to become attentive to the space sound produces? In this article, by acknowledging the shared environment created by aural relations, I focus on the potential of the performative space to immerse and fold the audience into a particular aural dynamism, investigating the impact and materiality of the sonorous on spectating bodies. The topic of sound and listening in theatre and performance studies has largely been confined to its role as a design element. There is, however, growing concern for the role of sound outside of its common confirmatory relation heralded by much-cited theatre scholars, such as Hans-Thies Lehmann and Erika Fischer-Lichte, who have begun to outline the importance of sound to theatrical endeavours. Here, I concentrate on the performances of Ivo Dimchev and Alma Söderberg to consider sound’s contribution as a material force and thereby examine how listening and aural attention might hold, alter, or shape the performative space.