Staircase (2013)

2-channel vertical piece, 11’02”.

The staircase of the three story building of the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz features a special two loudspeaker installation: One speaker is located at the ground floor, pointing upwards, the other is suspended from the very top, pointing downwards. At selected occasions, concerts are held here, and the audience is permitted to explore this particular vertical sound, walking up and down the stairs.

For the 2013 edition of the concert series, I created this piece. It was swiftly drafted, mostly relying on a selection of existing sounds from my archieve. The beginning of the piece prominently features a recording from the transmission belt of the historical blacksmith’s shop in Suhl, Germany. It is an exploratory piece that specifically deals with the two separated channels, the communication between bottom and top.

Staircase (excerpt; left channel is top, right channel is bottom)