thesis : preface

‘how shape influences sound‘

Gemma Luz Bosch
Master Thesis
ArtScience Interfaculty

Royal Academy of Art
and Royal Conservatoire
The Hague
2024

Hi dear reader and listener,

You are starting to read my ArtScience master thesis.
I would like to invite you to also listen to my thesis.
We will start opening your ears to have the right concentration to continue reading and listening.
We will start with a listening meditation.

Read the next paragraph, close your eyes and listen,
taking your time to switch from focus to focus:

Focus on the sounds outside of the building
Focus on the sounds inside the building but not in the room where you are
Focus on the sound inside the room where you are
Focus on the sounds you are making
Focus on the sounds in your body
Focus on the sounds
Focus on the
Focus on
Focus¹

1. Meditation inspired by a listening exercise that we often did during my bachelor Musician 3.0, guided by Tet Koffeman, called sound circles.

Through my thesis I invite you to follow, understand and experience the experiments I have done this year around the topic ‘How shape influences sound’. I’m sharing with you a selection of my fascinations around this topic.

I invite you to be curious, to sometimes close your computer, to listen to the surrenders, to listen to how the walls, or trees, or mountains influence the sound you are experiencing.²
Imagine seeing the sound waves in space. From their origin, bouncing with the borders of the medium air and finally arriving to your ears. Through little experiments I invite you to expand you own way of listening.

2. Pali Meursault “Spectres II, Resonances”, 57 – 62 Echoes Return

For me, creating a work always begins with sound research. To perceive sound, you need a source that vibrates (moves) the air and someone who can perceive those vibrations: “Sound is movement”. As an artist I communicate with sound waves, with movement. I want to shape that movement.

Before studying ArtScience I did the Musician 3.0 bachelor at the Utrecht’s Conservatoire at HKU (Hogeschool van de Kunsten Utrecht). I started there as a pianist and composer and during the bachelor I dived into prepared pianos, improvisation and started to make my own instruments and installations.

In 2019 I started with a clay meditation. Making everyday something little with clay, smaller than my own hand, without listening to music, without answering emails, without looking at my phone. Just this little moment, everyday focusing, making something with my own hands. At some point I thought ‘this could make sound’. And since then I could not stop exploring the sound possibilities of clay and ceramics. Surprised by the endless possible sound textures that this natural material can produce I made different installations and instruments.

The physical aspect of sharing my work is very important to me; the vibrations of the sound made by the instruments/installations enter directly into the ears of the audience. Often the performances and installations take place outside, inspired by and made at/with the specific location. The sounds we (clay, water, air, musicians, mechanisms) create aren’t the center of attention. They are an excuse to open your ears to all sounds around you, to the ongoing soundscape and to experience everything you hear as part of the communal composition.³ Also, sometimes the sounds function as an amplification of a movement or energy that is already there (wind, gravity, water of a river…).

3. John Cage “Silence: Lectures and Writings”

Why?

To invite people to perceive the world around them from a different perspective
To make themselves feel the importance of water that is in us and around us
To enter into an intimate relationship with clay, water and air
To connect with the place where you are
To shift the focus to the surroundings
To surrender to everything there is
To be in, on and with the world
To stimulate the senses
To slow down
To breath
To be still

To open your ears
because listening is crucial to relate and connect with each other
and not only with humans, also with other living and non-living beings.

Enjoy!
All the best,
Gemma

introduction