An immersive infrasonic concert installation for a circle of 24.

The MAIsCape project is brought to light for the first time in a circle, in the open field at the gates of the city – independent, in nature, but connected by a shared experience. The seating sculpture allows an unobstructed view of the landscape and pure access to the full spectrum of electroacoustic compositions.

 

A specially designed control and amplifier network feeds not only 24 studio headphones but also the 24 cantilever chairs with their unique impact sound seating surface to provide a simultaneously collective and solipsistic sound experience of the highest quality: maximum fidelity in every seat, while providing total silence for the surroundings.

 

The first phase of the MAIsCape project will feature the s_on 1 seating sculpture, which is derived from the iconic swinging tubular steel cantilever chairs of the 1920s. MAIsCape is artistically conceived as a compositional environment as well as a mobile and self-sufficient structure by Jan-Peter E. R. Sonntag and technically built with his developer studio N-solab. (MAIs- Cape – M: mobile – A: autonomous – I: immersive – S: sustainable – C: col- laborative -sound-scape-system). The system can serve as an advanced format proposition for a collaborative performance practice to connect acoustic, radio, electronic or AI-based sound productions of musical interaction.

 

The s_on 1 by Sonntag is an infrasound-transmitting cantilever seat sculpture, defining a sitting posture in which the sitter steadily balances himself with a straight spine and wide chest. Made of hightensile steel tubing bent into 34 curved segments using the latest manufacturing techniques, the sculpture sways in freeform over three points on the floor, protruding widely under an inclined seat surface that is actively excited by electromagnetic energy.

 

With the MAIsScape project, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag returns to the roots of his early mostly site-specific and temporary installations - spatial works with fields of standing pressure waves and monochromatic light, at the centre of which is the perception of the recipients themselves. Based on his research in the field of psychoacoustics and cognitive science, Sonntag first realised the psychoacoustic sound and spatial perception illusion of an endlessly rising air volume on an IRCAM workstation in 1993 for the staircase of the Ministry of Science and Culture in Hanover. The research and development of special states of perception such as the realisation of instruments and technical interfaces has since been a constitutive component of Sonntag's works, which at the same time also focus on the interrelation between body techniques and artificial technologies.

 

In 2015, Sonntag had his first retrospective Rauschen at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart and in 2017 he designed Rundfunk Æterna - a radio opera on behalf of documenta 14.