Relly Tarlo / Jacoba Bedaux "Sonomatric Environments"

July 12: performance; installation: through July 20 ‘The ‘Siamese twin space’ in De Appel formed the point of departure for Sonomatric Environments. The opening in the dividing-wall makes the space ‘Siamese’. Visually identical installations are placed in both spaces with vertical elements which reach from the floor to the ceiling. Each element consists of four speaker units at a relative distance of eighty centimetres. In each space, there are four rows with eight elements per row. At the beginning of the partition-wall, a colossal artery of leads splits into veins and branches out to nothing. The theme of the sound composition which has been created for this space is formed by levels and lines of sound that move in horizontal and vertical directions thus also employing the fact that the space is divided in two. Hence, the opening of the dividing wall also acquires a function. In different places there are separate moving and changing sources of sound which surround the visitor. The music is acoustic and is transmitted by computer. Sonomatric Environment refers to the space’s natural situation but is equally disorientating because the sound moves through the visitor and there is sound in places where one expects none or a different kind of sound. Walls of sound will keep appearing at different places in the space. They will then change and disappear again. In this moving structure, the visitor will be surrounded by sound corridors, as if in a labyrinth.’ (‘Sonomatric Environments. Relly Tarlo and Jacoba Bedaux’, Newsletter De Appel, 1 (1986) 3.)