Ulrich Eller
«In the Circle of Drums»

40 snare drums mounted on their original stands are extended in a circle in the middle of the room. All the drums are the same model, and each is equipped with a loudspeaker. The spatial intervals between the objects are chosen to allow visitors to pass comfortably between them. When one enters the array, a basic tone varying in volume and duration is distributed among all 40 drums. The acoustic assignment is carried out by a computer-supported program operating in accordance with a predetermined score, activating sometimes only one object, sometimes a group of objects, and sometimes all of them at the same time. Chance and silence are compositional components just as much as are the repeating, rhythmic patterns and the recognizable acoustic movements throughout the array. Jumps in tonality are produced through the varied tuning of the drumheads, whereby the initial impulse, varying in duration and characteristics, serves purely physically only to render each drum's own resonance audible for a short moment, before it reacts with its typical snaredrum sound. Entering the circle of drums, the listener finds himself in a constantly changing, spatialized motion of sounds produced by individual and collective acoustic shifts in activity.
The calm, centered circular form of the array thus produces a completely different translation of sound, a virulent, unpredictable listening process that takes hold of the entire interior and strongly moves the listener to walk through the field, since a different listening site offers a different spatial-auditive impression.

Ulrich Eller