Sound Design for The Closest Farthest Away plays with wave field synthesis and holophonic reproduction of aural landscapes from Havana. A multi-channel surround speaker installation system spatializes soundscapes preserving characteristics such as distance and direction. An immersive 3-D sonic environment gives the audience's ears the illusion of being "somewhere else." You could simultaneously hear a group of children playing stickball a block away, two woman talking 30 feet to your left, a kid practicing Chopin in the house behind you, a man fixing his car right in front of you, and the wind blowing over your head. Room tones recorded in Cuban buildings are projected into the theater so that you can "hear the room" that the characters are in.
Foreign acoustical properties are superimposed onto the natural architecture of the theater separating acoustics from architecture to alter the sensorial qualities of the space. Multi-band convolution reverbs combined with other effects acoustically reconstruct locations throughout Cuba within the theater. The live stage actors are amplified to blend with the Cuban video characters. As Amante travels through interior and exterior spaces throughout Havana (onstage), his voice echoes down city streets, underground tunnels, or inside a city bus depending on where he is. The audience finds themselves simultaneously in two places at once, Cuba and the US, of different size and perhaps different psychological effect. |