[02] Andres Bosshard: DVRK-Space

Andres Bosshard was born in 1955 and currently lives in Zurich, but spends a large amount of his time in Cologne and Vienna. He started out as a painter and action artist in the 1970s, but during this time he began to increasingly focus on experimental musical theater. He has begun to realize audio installations, has created many radio projects (frequently in collaboration with Austria's Kunstradio), develops his own electronic musical instruments, and is increasingly devoting himself to musical improvisations using electroacoustic instruments and real-time electronic audio processing.

When, prior to recording this program, I asked him to briefly explain his understanding of the concept of "audio architecture," he said the following:

I don't try to use the media so that the space is reflected in it, but so that it can be experienced. Just as we can use stones to outline a space and then enter it, we can do the same with sounds: to delineate, within the open external space, an audio space containing an outside and an inside. People can then hear the sounds from outside, but can also step inside.

And that is something very different in relation to, for instance, 5.1 audio equipment located in a dark room - there, we are sitting inside a space but we forget about the outside space.

Sound architecture simply deals with sound more fundamentally, because in my opinion... the media perception of sound is very illusory. And simply...that "internal imagination," that is one thing - here I am really thinking of the city, streets, squares. The 5.1 multi-channel monitoring system is just an exception; it works only at an ideal listening point. But if I had access to a large number of speakers, I would probably do what for instance trees can do: they have ten thousand leaves... and I also want to have ten thousand speakers and to make sounds as beautiful as those made by trees...

I have to admit that the title of the premiere composition, "DVRK-Space", left me confused for some time. Finally, Andres explained it to me when we talked on the telephone:Přiznám se, že DVRK-Space jako název premiérové kompozice mi dlouho vrtal hlavou. Teprve Andres mi jej při našem telefonickém rozhovoru vysvětlil:

It means "DVOŔÁK space" - the name is an abbreviation of Dvořák's name, a kind of attempt at leaving only a skeleton of fantasy and sound and to hear it in a completely new way, a completely new interpretation of the musical composition. I always imagine that every composition is always sounding somewhere, flying through the ether, and we can delve into it with the help of radiophonic equipment - from below, from above, from the sides, head on. If we perceive a composition in this way, then maybe we can navigate our way through it... - like in a database of sorts...