ABSTRACT ¦ ART + SCIENCE ¦ MODEL / METHODS ¦ AN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN ¦ MEDIA-SYSTEMIC ART ¦ COMMUNICATION OF SPACES ¦ COMMUNICATION SPACE AND INTERACTION SPACE ¦ THE CUE ¦ NOTES ¦
C O M M U N I C A T I O N   O F   S P A C E S 13



For the cue of *Liquid Space* as a model conducting tests upon concepts and conceptions of space, we are attempting to convey the auditory conditions that most closely correspond functionally and psychologically to these concepts into an operational structure.

We are capable of perceiving physical space primarily by means of visual/tactile facilities. In a series of visual fields which come about as a result of movement, we interpret invariables as that which is produced by change of spatial position, variables as that which is determined by time. 14 Space, which is usually located in front of us and which we describe mathematically in an artistic, three-dimensional orthogonal system, is thus generated for us by the interplay of speed-time-distance. The perception of physical space in auditory phenomena must be differentiated from this. The relatively slow propagation speed of sound as a carrier of information on the state of a sound source (oscillator), along with the specification of its state, also depict the factors of transmission - that is, also the surrounding space and its position in it. During the transmission of the sound (the propagation of sound in the air), the tonal quality provides - by means of the process of refraction particularly in its sensitive upper spectral segments - information about the space in which it is transmitted.

We perceive auditory space independently, as it were, of our own movements - the movement of the sound we are capable of perceiving "replaces" this, so to speak - and as omnipresent round about us ("egocentric" perception). This is in contrast to visual space which is continually independent of our movement and takes place in a moment merely as something in front of us. The space behind us is closely connected with time; it is associated with that which is in the past. Visual space is investigated by means of temporally separate changes of fixation, whereas acoustic space is always, at every moment, completely specified.

In our perception, netspace behaves similarly to auditory space. The increase in the speed of information transmission beyond that which can be comprehended by human beings allows the speed-time-distance structure in our perceptive facilities to become a psychological factor, the here and now. The mechanistic paradigm breaks down in our perceptive facilities. Netspace is omnipresent beyond our direct physical movement; in our consciousness, it does not lie before us but rather in us.

Auditory space and netspace are spaces in which events take place; they are characterized by information transmission which can be experienced and which indicates that space. The experience of space arises by means of the comprehensibility of the information transmission events that define it. That which is perceived auditorily is that psychological interface which could permit the transgression into the experience of any in and of itself comprehensible magnitude.

FURTHER

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