Resono is a sound design project which is taking place in a series of select locations around Scotland. It is based around the concept of playing the echoes and reverberations of a building or space as if it were an instrument.
Traditionally reverberation has mostly been used to amplify sound and music to a large audience, for instance in cathedrals and amphitheatres. However, for Resono the intention is to objectify and present the phenomena of reverberation to the audience in a tangible way.
Many of the locations we've chosen for the project have reverberation times in excess of 20–30 seconds which allow us to effectively paint and layer music in the air by using the natural reverb in the spaces to stretch sounds over time. Most of the sound you're likely to hear in the music is actually resonating in the air around you and reflecting from the walls of the space rather than coming directly from the loudspeakers. The sound from the loudspeakers is effectively ‘exciting’ the buildings into making music.
To do this we analysed the acoustics of each space to then create a digital simulation of the space in a controlled studio environment elsewhere. This allowed us to work and experiment with the individual characteristics of each location. We carefully design sounds that would resonate the air inside the structures into making music. The theory is that the music and sounds we've created with the simulation would then have the same effect when amplified into the real structures. The simulations allow us to get a very close and predictable feel for how each space reacts to sound but is incomparable to the experience of really being in the space with the air resonating around you.
In Cupar Grain Silo, Sam Annand has harnessed the extraordinary acoustics of the disused silo to tap into this sense of joy and amazement that reverberation can bring.
We all love reverberation. As kids, we play in it, yelling in forests and caves, surreptitiously dropping objects in huge churches, mouths wide open at the lingering smears of sound which come back to us.
The Resono project, taking place in carefully sought out venues throughout Scotland, exploits this sense of playing within sound by creating 'sound art' designed specifically for these reverberant spaces.
The effect of swimming in sound, whether in a cathedral or a disused sugar silo, promises to amaze audiences, recalling childhood experimentation and allowing new understandings of how sound behaves in space.
Prof. Peter Stollery, FRSAProfessor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music, The School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen
