{Old Tannery, Anna-Neumannstraße 20, Murau}
This strong and prominent place is located in the center of town though it is a hiding place, an empty spot on the map. Inside resonate the sounds of the city, they penetrate into it, reverberate, filtered through its different materials and passages and disappear again. Like so many empty buildings in the inner city the old tannery is like the body of a strange instrument. For the building compositions the building has been divided into three acoustic zones.
1 Cellar
2 Living Area
3 Workshop
Each of these spaces has its own distinct sound properties due to its original use and construction. On the premises of the tannery, a new sound installation with 32 loudspeakers is being created that draws on these very specific atmospheres and acoustic landscapes, intensifying them. As if the sounds and noises were to vanish into the walls and emerge from them, the installation merges with the spaces. Visitors wander through the building, the sounds behind or in front of them. One cannot say whether it is the viewer who accompanies and drives the sounds in their movement through the building, or the reverse The visitor now becomes part of the composition—producing sounds that become part of the soundscape, or influencing, both visually and acoustically, how other visitors experience the space.
Composition: Gerriet K. Sharma
Documentation: Nico Bergmann
Project Management: Saskia Reither
Premiere: June 22, 2012
Commissioned by the REGIONALE 12, the festival of contemporary art and culture Austria.