06

photo: rik de boe/lier 2006 as part of "heilige geest 3"

for centurys, western music has been determined by the grid of the circle of fifths, establishing a virtual tonal space of 12 equidistant pitches.

by an offline-process of spectral filtering, these 12 pitches are extracted from recordings of music. the resulting 12-track file contains one pitch per track, but spread over the full orchestral range.

this file is played back through an array of 12 loudspeakers, arranged in the order of the circle of fifths. the virtual space of tonal order is thus projected into the real space of loudspeakers.

depending on the postion of the listener, he hears either the original piece (= equal distance to all speakers) or, to the other extreme, only one pitch (= ear close to only one speaker). between those two extremes lies a world of subtle to gross shifts in the perception of otherwise well known music.

the installation was first shown as part of the "3 HEILIGE GEEST (WEEKEND) (30/9/2006-1/10/2006) at the voorkamer in lier / belgium