MEDIATHEK

The work of Christoph De Boeck concerns installations or performances in which acoustic energy is divided over spaces and objects. The meaning of the work is defined as much by this distribution of energy as it is by the composition or sound content itself. Spatial organisation renders sound tactile and even corporeal. Still it will always remain a spectral body, like a ghost. In contemporary media production sound usually is a manifestation of rearranged code. For many of the projects of De Boeck this tension between sound as data and sound as a physical wave is one of the main issues. As a member of the deepblue collective he creates very specific audio dramaturgies for performances made in collaboration with choreographers Heine R. Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki. The concept for closer, a performance for an audience inside an immersive scenography - implies an auditive isolation of the individual spectators by means of wireless headphones. The loudspeakers only play the subbass components of the sound design, which means one can dive into the environment by putting on the headphones. The sounds that penetrate listener's heads are typical. De Boeck aka Audiostore transforms field recordings or synthetic fragments into microscopic audio organisms. With Yves De Mey/Eavesdropper he turns the concert hall of Concertgebouw in Bruges (Belgium) into a huge resonating body for the music production time code matter by releasing sound dynamics in the empty seating hall, stretching out as a black hole behind the backs of the stage-seated audience. The principle of resonance is used in other projects as well. For an operation table in a CREW/Eric Joris performance De Boeck designs bass waves which through interference produce a vibration that shifts from head to feet. In 2007 he creates a circle of metal mansize sheets which enclose audience and musicians. The installation reacts to the presence and proximity of visitors. For the evening concert performance Audiostore and Eavesdropper write a score for 12 steel plates. Still within the scope of spatialisation Christoph De Boeck also investigates the idea of an audio network. In Heine Avdals Some Notes Are voices and sounds move over from the theatre PA to the building intercom and through objects and furniture. Chairs dance to sound waves, get personal and converse with one another. For a dinner/performance (The Banquet) by Patricia Portela he designs an audio network between dinner tables which can be operated from behind a grand piano. He is also responsible for sound design and dramaturgy in Patricia Portela performances, most notably for WasteBand and Flatland. (Quelle: Website)