Perceptual Geographies
Update: Found a podcast with MA from the 2005 Ars Electronica
Maryanne Amacher in Conversation with Frank J. Oteri:
Frank J. Oteri: Some of the words you’ve used to describe your work are: architecture, choreography, and neurobiology. You’re really using sound architecturally. That’s sort of a different construction. Music historically and culturally seems to exist as a social behavior that occurs over time. What my ears are hearing seems more like a sonic architecture occurring in space rather than developing over time.
Maryanne Amacher: I actually do think of it more as an aural architecture. I think of it quite literally in terms of architecture itself. When I’m able to have the opportunity to make a large installation, I learn the acoustics of the place, and I can work in more than one room: I may have 6, I may have 4, I may have 7 rooms, or the entire structure. All of that began not because I had a fixed notion. Really it began because I hated loudspeakers. I was working in electronic media, so it was quite a contradictory thing. I was always interested in the spatial aspects of sound. I discovered that maybe if I put the speaker in there [points to the kitchen]—the way that you heard it from another room became much more rewarding. I could make a virtual meta-space, so you wouldn’t get the sense of these [gestures to a nearby loudspeaker] boxes.