Hynes Convention Center, Boston
     18-22 November, 1996
     MULTIMEDIA `96
     The Fourth ACM International Multimedia Conference

     ------------------------------------------------------------------

                  "... as if one was walking inside a film"

      Whenever I am flying, such as just now when coming to Boston, I
     feel torn between two worlds of experience: on the one hand, there
     is the more or less convincing supply of films and audio material,
     on the other hand, the view from the window. If I watch the films,
     I immerse myself in a world of fiction. In a sense, I am doubly in
     flight: In the airplane and in the realm of the story being told.
     In the best possible case, the realm of the story being told
     produces such a strong slipstream that it makes me forget my being
     up in the air, I am then completely immersed in the fictitious
     space of the film. If, on the other hand, I look out of the
     window, I discover a pictorial world of river courses, cities,
     agrarian structures, which reach me from the realistically
     existing space. While looking, I construct for myself an axis for
     relating to the actual region flown over. My imagination is now
     connected to the network of reality, it rushes across the surface
     of the planet there below. But the earth is far away and looking
     down on it is connected with physical efforts and thus my
     attention fades and soon I am beginning to doze amidst the soft
     shaking and jolting of the flight.

     I have been asking myself how it would be possible to strengthen
     this view down to the distant earth, how, so to speak, the earth
     could be brought closer to my imagination, and I remembered that
     in two instances already sound served as a glue to bind distances
     together: in opera and in film - without sound, the stage and the
     film image quickly disappear and the slipstream into the story
     lessens. I therefore suggested to SWISSAIR to design a sound
     program for specific flight routes. The sound program was to be
     exactly related to the areas flown over and should thereby form a
     connection to the ground: hence the title of this project:
     "Stories are Landing". For several reasons, the project could not
     be carried out.

     One of the reasons was that the entertainment program is identical
     for several flight routes and that therefore the passenger would
     for example have looked down on Berlin while out of the headset
     our story-pilot would have raved about the beautiful canals of
     Amsterdam. Enticing as well and maybe poetic, but not exactly what
     I had in mind.

     The airplane anecdote shows two fundamentally opposed
     possibilities of storytelling: one, where the listener/spectator
     is led inside the story in order to be increasingly surrounded by
     the fictitious objects, buildings, events and finally is totally
     immersed in this artificial world; and the other, where the
     recipient through his or her imagination opens up to the to the
     world about while the story develops from the objects and events
     of the world actually covered and travelled.

     In the cinema as well as in the traditional book, we find
     ourselves in the category of "inside stories", "cocoon-stories". I
     am interested in the other category: stories whose threads lead
     outwards into the world presently surrounding me: situational
     stories.

     I listen to what a place, a zone, a terrain has to tell and then I
     try to develop various forms to pass on what I heard to a wider
     audience. These may be traditional installations (fragments of the
     way home/ cable soul) but also actions (city dance, situative
     images, Loccum), performances (plugged-unplugged, news hour) or
     lectures (small implantology, echotope, synchronization and
     coordination).

     The principle of having a story of a place told becomes especially
     clear when taking a walk. While walking, we cover the exterior
     space and thereby get into various unexpected zones which each
     have something to tell. Such as the sounds and noises typical for
     the individual place - but how to draw a potential audience's
     attention to it?

     In the beginning, I tried it with the "city dancers" for several
     years - later, by demonstrating to the audience the typical
     sound-atmosphere of a place in that same place artificially (via
     headphones) and in a condensed way (having processed the original
     sounds in the studio). The first and programmatic composition for
     walks - as in retrospect I call these installations of original
     sounds to be experienced while walking - I developed in 1991 for a
     symposium on the topic of "space" organized by the Goethe-Institut
     in Bombay. What did the space there tell me and how did I pass it
     on?

     The first task was to define the terrain where I wanted to work.
     Then, I listened closely on countless walks and recorded
     everything that was to be heard. Thus successively a precise
     stocktaking of the sounds and noises was made. Every walk was
     noted on a transparency map so that by superimposing the maps it
     soon became manifest which acoustic atmospheres dominated where.
     Into this field of sounds cartographically made visible I then
     drew a route which was to become the connecting thread for the
     composition. I now followed this route in the grounds outside and
     this exactly at the same speed I later wanted to walk with the
     audience. On top of the thereby gained time-structure (A to B: 4
     sec's/ B to C: 21 sec's etc.), I was able to impose my original
     sounds and make a montage of them in a condensed way so they later
     reached the stroller exactly at the time he or she entered the
     corresponding zone of the route. After completion of the studio
     phase, synchronous sound copies were produced in order to put them
     - in several walkmen - at the disposal of groups of visitors.
     Together with me, they walked over the grounds with the artificial
     sound in their ears which mixed with sounds of the present
     situation. That much regarding the production.

     When I am now going to show some slides and play some sounds, we
     will find ourselves in a totally inadequate situation because what
     is most decisive is missing: the place for which the sounds have
     been processed and which through its real sounds and its program
     of pictures makes up the other, more important half of the work.
     But all the same:

       (Insert dias and sound example - not available with this paper)

     I would like to talk now about what may happen to the perception
     of the recipient on such a walk: We are crossing a parking lot. In
     the optical field, a car appears from the left and gets into a
     parking space immediately on our right. We hear the corresponding
     acoustic information: a slow crescendo from the left via the
     middle to the right. From the headset, however, the noise of the
     engine sounds from the right to the left. Since it is louder than
     the real noise penetrating from the outside via the semi-permeable
     headphones, our brain has to process two contradicting
     information. This situation causes a high degree of alertness
     which I like very much.

     It is about novel experiences for our brain since in everyday
     situations the objects we see have their own sound so that image
     and sound evolve together in time and space. With the
     "Sound-Tracks to Reality", I let the two worlds slightly drift
     apart and rejoice in the situatively new combinations emerging on
     every walk. In one instance, the two worlds coincide: the pigeons
     really fly off at that very moment when they flap their wings on
     the tape. Then again, the strollers have to add everything in
     their imagination, such as when the fishing boat engines chug only
     in their ears and the sea is completely empty.

     That several sensory impressions have to be processed at the same
     time in the visitors is, after all, nothing new to the organism.
     As multi-sensory beings we are permanently busy centrally
     processing the most varied information from the sensory channels
     and interpreting them as a total situation. As an example, let us
     think of Italian cooking: Mama's sense of smell dwells in the
     realm of the sugo (tomato sauce), her hearing is geared to the
     news on the radio, her touch tests the well-being of the baby and
     her eyes feast on the world of the love-scene on the TV. screen.

     The "Sound-Tracks" make use of this multi-sensuousness by keeping
     the optical channel free for the viewing of the material-concrete
     environment while playing to the ear an artificial soundtrack
     which although it has been produced from the environment yet is
     not identical with the momentary sounds of what is seen. This
     creates a specific artificiality which penetrates the
     material-concrete environment and in the end makes this itself
     appear artificial to a certain degree. In order to do this, the
     connection between the soundtrack and the environment has to be so
     close that the listener/strollers may let their attention wander
     again and again between the outside space and the composition in
     order to let the game between the two worlds play in their
     perception. The one world has been artificially condensed from the
     past (in the pre-produced sound-track), the other is the world
     situatively emerging right at the time of the walk.

     The "work", if we can still use this term for such an ephemeral
     art form, is defined anew with every walk since the interaction
     between the two realms is unpredictable. Reality does not play
     along with the same intensity every time. Sometimes it is so far
     away from the soundtrack that the thread linking the worlds
     breaks. In this case, the typical changing alertness cannot be
     built up in the strollers. They are either only outside with the
     objects or only inside the composition and then the work in its
     overall effect cannot come about. Only if fiction and reality
     merge can that specific fascinating alertness be created which one
     of the strollers has described as: "It felt as if one was walking
     inside a film". I am particularly fond of this formulation not
     only because it builds a bridge to Cyber Space and the New Media
     but especially because it appears to restore to reality the
     affection and poetry which threatened to be banned into the ghetto
     of art.

            Supported by PRO HELVETIA Arts Council of Switzerland