A23
Audiovisual Composition, Fixed Media
2.0 Stereo Audio, Video
Duration: 7’22“
World premiere:
Online-Streaming-Concert of the IEM Graz
(Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustic)
January 27, 2021
A23 is the identification number for a city motorway in Vienna. With an average of 170,000 vehicles per day, it is the busiest road in Austria. It symbolizes the opening up of public space, creates connections and impressively shapes the landscape and cityscape. It is a road that never rests, regardless of the time of day, night or season. As a structurally static element, it functions as a prerequisite for constant flow and movement. Statics and dynamics merge into one.
Piece info
For the video, the camera was positioned statically above the highway and the movement on the highway was filmed over a period of several minutes. Exactly this perspective remains unchanged throughout the entire piece.
The change takes place by means of overlays with different playback speeds, including forward-backward, as well as color, contrast, and opacity transitions.
The piece begins with the moving cars on the highway at dusk. By means of the techniques described, a progression gradually takes place from this concrete image into the abstract. Several layers are treated and layered differently in time.
Furthermore, there is an intensification and compression of the structure also in terms of color.
The sonic action
The source material for the sonic events of the piece is the original sound recording, which was transformed using time-stretching techniques and FFT filters.
I have shaped the sound in such a way that it is rich in harmonic partials at the beginning, increases in spectral complexity in the course of the piece and almost goes into noise. Various partial tone ranges are then cut out of this again using FFT filtering.
The passing of the cars is thematized by increasing and decreasing volume, which can be seen as the pulse of the highway and thus also of the piece.