SURROUND SOUND CONCERTS
In a darkened room or theater, Block works with a laptop and mixing desk, diffusing composed sounds live through multiple speakers surrounding the audience. Each concert is presented in the tradition of Cinéma Pour Les Oreilles--an immersive, non narrative or abstract soundtrack with no cinematic images.
Compositions can be presented and diffused in various multichannel configurations, customized to fit anywhere from 4 to 64 speaker arrays.
Block prepares for each concert for hours on site, changing each composition, sometimes drastically, to suit the room and occasion.
Compositions presented in live multichannel/multispeaker format include:
Breach (2022)
Breach, presented in 8 channels, contains field recordings from various locations within the Laguna San Ignacio (San Ignacio lagoon) in the Baja, Mexico. Additionally, Block includes synthesized audio material in response to the field recordings.
This composition places the listener in the lagoon from multiple points of view-underwater, on the shore, and inside of imaginary seascapes.
The combination of field recordings and textures creates a subjective aural space rather than an objective representation of a location. The sound collage is a framework through we which we might imagine the experience of a listening whale. As we imagine ourselves swimming, feeding and breathing we are often interrupted by the presence of anthropogenic noises.
San Ignacio is the winter home to eastern Pacific gray whales (whose exhalation breaths at the surface water may be heard in some of the recordings). The lagoon is an UNESCO protected, pristine location for the whales to breed and feed. There are boats present in the waters, which have been captured in these recordings. presenting a loud din of noise underwater which covers the natural sounds.
October, 1984 (2021)
The multichannel version of her 2021 release (Longform Editions).
Dissolution B (2017)
A multichannel version of the B side of Dissolution (Glistening Examples)