![\"3Q6A8911\"](\"http:\/\/immersivelab.zhdk.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/3Q6A89111-e1438443933330.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn this piece, the circular space is seen as a cyclical movement space that is filled with acoustic and visual pulse-trains of differing intervals and life spans, which are triggered by the user\u2019s touch. The combination and interaction by several users generates a complex web of overlaid visual and acoustical \u2018voices\u2019, which potentially merge in perception into groups or masses. Visually the delineation of time is emphasized with persistence of the impulses as marks that slowly fade, like memory, and depending on the density of the active voices, create a textured layered space.<\/p>\n
The main motivation for this piece is a curiosity about perception of temporal, spatial and sonic densities. The piece serves as an investigation into how our perception is capable of separating visual and acoustic streams and how sensory overloading has the effect of forming groups or combined objects or gestalts that exist in perception. The spatial specificity of the cylindrical space provides the ideal frame to encircle the viewer and listener. Another topic of interest is the social interaction by several visitors, in particular in relation to such a reduced sonic and graphical space. The stark or abstract quality poses a challenge to perception and potentially generates a resonating experience.<\/p>\n
The title refers to two concepts. The first comes from Ligeti\u2019s polyrhythmic grids evolving into organical phrases and harmonic \u2018gestalts\u2019 that he explored in a piece entitled \u201cClocks and Clouds\u201d\u2018 from 1972-73 for chamber orchestra and women\u2019s chorus. He said: \u201cI liked Popper\u2019s title and it awakened in me musical associations of a kind of form in which rhythmically and harmonically precise shapes gradually change into diffuse sound textures and vice-versa, whereby then, the musical happening consists primarily of processes of the dissolution of the \u2018clocks\u2019 to \u2018clouds\u2019 and the condensation and materialization of \u2018clouds\u2019 to \u2018clocks\u2019.\u201d Time and memory are central aspects inspiring the piece: \u201cI should like to refer to the soft, limp watches of Dali\u2019s painting (The Persistence of Memory, 1931), which had associative value in the composition of this piece\u2026\u201d [1]<\/a> The second concept is based on Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s \u201csmooth space and the striated space\u201d (l\u2019espace lisse et l\u2019espace stri\u00e9): \u201cIn the simplest terms \u2026 in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space one counts in order to occupy \u2026 make palpable or perceptible the difference between non-metric and metric multiplicities, directional and dimensional spaces.\u201d [3]<\/a> p. 476 But \u201cthe two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, traversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space.\u201d [3]<\/a> p. 474 \u201ca striated space \u2026 is necessarily delimited, closed at least one side [, it ] implies a closed space (circular or cylindrical figures are themselves closed).\u201d A smooth space, on the other hand as \u201can aggregate of intrication of this kind is in no way homogeneous: it is nevertheless smooth, and contrasts point by point with the space of fabric.\u201d [3]<\/a> p. 475<\/p>\n
\nLigeti pulled the title from Karl Popper\u2019s notion: \u201call clouds are clocks, even the most cloudy of clouds.\u201d Popper\u2019s metaphor describes the two ends of the spectrum of predictability in (social) science: Clouds represent the disorderly and irregular, and clocks represent the predictable and rational. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n