Raddir Rýmis: Exploring spatial texture in sonic composition

Abstract

Raddir Rýmis dives into cultural architectural Icelandic spaces and explores how their physical characteristics can shape music, both in terms of composition and performance. It examines how spatial texture might be sonically explored through voice and composition.Raddir Rýmis (Voices in/of the Ether) explores physical and emotional spatial textures in sonic composition. Using artistic practice-as-research, the Iceland-based composer blends together the sonic spaces of an anechoic chamber, a cathedral, a farm, a lighthouse, and the Nordic House, resulting in a polylocational sonic dimension. As an immersive quadraphonic sound installation exploring sonic and spatial dynamics, Raddir Rýmis extends an invitation for the audience to participate in and explore these assembled ethers through the composer’s ears.Raddir Rýmis provides space for the audience to explore their connection and heritage to the sites specifically and perhaps travel through time and place. The audience has the opportunity to explore the composition through the lens of place-making. Innovative polylocational layering plus the layer of cultural heritage builds a space and a place for new audiences. Raddir Rýmis is a polylocational ancestral invocation.