What if we let the machine create our
sound environment? It can be assumed with high probability that it
will start with seeking patterns understood as a specific score for
its creation – algorithms intended to imitate random, sometimes only
seemingly, sound phenomena, whether natural or being part of the
anthroposphere. Following this path and analyzing the sounds and/or
recorded audio, one may be tempted to treat it as such a score – in
which two birds communicating with each other from the opposite sides
of a forest road are responsible for the melody, and an engine of a
tractor working somewhere in the depths of the forest can be treated
as the rhythmic basis. It is not about creating artificial field
recordings in the strict sense – but rather a new, immersive sound
reality with all the errors of perception and translation of the
sound environment within the languages of man and machine. Like an
imperfect audio construct from one of the first versions of “The
Matrix”, unacceptable to the human mind as real, but
constituting a new sonic entity – perhaps even music, but rather
simply a sort of artificial soundscape – “heard” and
understood by the machine. In reference to the idea of Stanisław
Lem’s phantomatics, it will therefore constitute an imperfect
phantomatic phenomenon, only an experiment on the long way to the
goal: creating an ideal – in this case sound-generating – Phantomat.
The project entitled “Fantomatyka”
[“Phantomatics”] by Piotr Dąbrowski came to be as an
attempt to create a specific sound environment – unrealistic, but
immersive, sometimes musical and harmonically pleasant, but often
unbearably noisy. The tool for its creation was a modular system – a
relatively complex instrument consisting of many elements playing
different roles within the project. All devices used in the
recordings communicate with each other, so they influence each other
as well on a micro and macro scale using control voltages – this way
they create a very superficial, but still an imitation of the
dependencies that often occur in our real sound environment.
“Immersion” – is the key
word for the project. Although closed within the framework of
classical stereophony, it is possible to implement, even in a
conventional sense – actually, this is only how the idea of
phantomatics can be treated today, due to the still limited
technology. After all, we listen to most field recordings in stereo –
and this is often enough to successfully experience the recorded
place. At the same time, the project can obviously be a great base
for further experiments with spatial sound and audience participation
– in the future, post-pandemic reality.
CD premiere and online event promoting
the project: July 2021.
Publisher: Nobiscum Foundation thanks to funding received from the City of Płock.