The sound piece presents two 10-minute compositions for the Anechoic and Reverberant Chambers at the Acoustic Engineer Laboratory of La Salle University in Barcelona. These compositions were showcased during the Quantum Sound Symposium 2023.

"Fields of Noise" explores the concept of background noise as a living entity, existing in two contrasting conditions: the anechoic room with minimal reflections and reverb, and the reverberant room with a diffuse acoustic field and long reverberation. The background noise from each room was captured using measurement equipment and subsequently enhanced using audio software. This process allows for the amplification of not only the room's existing sounds, but also the static electricity produced by the audio cables, microphones, and interface.

Throughout the creative process, we delved into the distinct acoustic characteristics of each room, employing both conventional and unconventional techniques. These included frequency sweeps, bursting balloons, sound activation through voice and trumpet, as well as a gradual feedback process of noise recording.

Each composition serves as an immersive experience, providing an introduction to the unique noise and sound environment of each space. By utilizing the human voice as a resonant medium for both acoustics and meaning, a series of texts are projected into the space. These texts include quotes from Michel Serres, Pauline Oliveros, Arata Isozaki & Taka Limura, as well as reinterpretations of excerpts from the Tao Te Ching, alongside personal reflections on sound and space.


Reverberant Chamber Text:

Please choose a place in the room where you feel comfortable or walk around and experience diverse points of listening, you may want to add sounds to the existing reverb with your body, feel free to do it.

Please focus your attention to the listening experience

You are now entering a diffuse acoustic field
A place without resonant frequencies, without standing waves
A place where sounds disperse like one flow without waves
Alive and wet

Diffuse Sound Field is the region in a room where the sound pressure level is uniform
In a diffuse sound field, the sound pressure and the particle velocity are not in phase so the net sound intensity is zero and the sound doesn't appear to have a single source.

Sound field which in a given region has statistically uniform energy density, for which the directions of propagation at any point are randomly distributed.

Listen to the background noise of the room amplified through electronic means
The room tone

“Background noise is the ground of our perception, absolutely uninterrupted, it is our perennial sustenance, the element of the software of all our logic. It is the residue and cesspool of our messages… It is to the logos what matter used to be to form… Background noise may well be the ground of our being. It may be that our being is not at rest… The background noise never ceases; it is limitless, continuous, unending, unchanging. It has itself no background, no contradictory...” Michel Serres

Listen to the sweep of frequencies of the chamber, filtered several times by the acoustic of the room through a process called convolution reverb

The third space is the superposition, that happens inside our minds, of the experienced acoustic space and the represented auralized space projected through the speakers
The third space only exists inside of us, and it’s specific to each listening experience


Anechoic Chamber Text:

Please choose a place to sit down, where you feel comfortable
You may notice some disorientation
This is normal because we don’t have any acoustic point of reference, rather than the sounds produced by the other participants
We will shut down the lights to enhance our listening
Please focus your attention to the listening experience

You are now entering a free acoustic field
A place without reverberations
without reflections
death and dry

Listen to the background noise of the room amplified through electronic means
The room tone

“The acoustic space is the place where space and time merge when presented in the form of sound” Pauline Oliveros

Look a it but you cannot see it
His name is no-form
Listen to it but you cannot hear it
His name is inaudible
grab it but you cannot catch it
His name is disembodied

background noise continuously flows
until it returns to the realm beyond things
We call it the form without form
the sound without sounds
the noise is the root of the silence

the background noise never makes a sound
but never leaves a sound unmade
All the sounds under the sky have been born from the corporeal
The corporeal have been born from the incorporeal

the great sound is silent
The quietest sound surpasses the loudest one
Only Nothingness penetrates where there is no space

“Perceive the blankness
Listen to the voice of the
silence
Imagine the void filled

Perceive not the objects
but the distance
between them
not the sounds
but the pauses
they leave unfilled

Breathe
Swallow this space
Let it swallow you
Become one with it” Arata Isozaki y Taka Limura