Sound Oasis into the third dimension

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY

Cal State Long Beach’s Sound Oasis is an American first—the premiere of a futuristic outdoor sound installation that drew probably a million people during its 10-day stay in the heart of Mexico City—and participating artist Martyn Ware is someone whose discography is full of firsts. Ware, co-founder of early post-punk band Human League and later co-founder of Heaven 17, is also now the co-founder—an energetic person, Martyn Ware—of the Illustrious Company with Erasure’s Vince Clarke, where he again finds himself pushing pioneer spirit back into pop. And a primary part of Illustrious’ agenda is experimentation with three-dimensional sound—the creation of a fully furnished audio environment that goes an order beyond stereo or even binaural toward something almost holographic. It’s something almost no one else in the world is doing, Ware says: “If you were blind, it would replace your reality.” (“It’s like free drugs for your ears,” he says later, cheerfully adding, “Don’t use that for a headline.”)

He’ll be presenting probably the world’s first 3-D DJ set (if this reporter brings by some Can MP3s early, he’ll try to play them, he says) on Sound Oasis’ opening night, launching another internationally significant sound-art event (just weeks after Soundwalk) that puts what he once called the “world’s largest 3-D sound field” in the university’s upper quad.

The original Sound Oasis last year was a temporary takeover of Mexico City’s landmark Palacio de las Bella Artes plaza by Sound Oasis project director Francisca Rivero-Lake, who says now that she wanted to melt the urban sound environment into a symphony, and “to understand the city as harmony and not cacophony.” She invited a dozen sound artists from all over the world—from Japan’s standard-setter Merzbow to Illustrious to Los Angeles’ Ultra-Red—to compose pieces for a three-dimensional speaker array that would cover the colossal plaza at the Palacio, scheduling a 24-hour-a-day rotation for 10 days and creating a ghostly new world in front of the famous deco opera house. (“It’s a kind of ghostly activity,” adds Ware.)

Chris Watson’s “El Tren Fantasma” might have been the most literal—a 3-D recording of the last passenger train to Veracruz—but other artists put together phantom protest marches (“People were looking around for it,” says Ware) and transplanted mariachi concerts and meditative reflections on radioastronomy and more, drawing listeners to the plaza even late at night because they wanted to hear a particular piece: “It totally amazed me that many people stood right next to the speakers listening for literally hours,” says Rivero-Lake now. “I never saw that inside a museum or gallery!” Ware remembers one visitor on a bicycle, just riding around in circles inside the field—one of that estimated million people who passed through the Palacio plaza during Sound Oasis. At its best, says Rivero-Lake, Sound Oasis demonstrated how to “turn urban noise into city music.”

Ware’s connection with Cal State Long Beach’s University Art Museum Director Chris Scoates brought Sound Oasis to Long Beach for its American premiere—the sound-field of the Palacio tweaked and recreated (to last for 10 days, with 11 of the 12 original artists) to fit CSULB’s upper quad. While the schedule is slightly trimmer (pieces will run only half the day, instead of all day and all night) the transformative spirit persists, says Ware: “If people walk into public space and feel the energies or are engaged in any way with the work we do, then job done!” says Ware. “I have a real basic theory—I want people to come to the things we do and say to their friends later, ‘Ah, you had to be there—sorry, mate!’”

SOUND OASIS OPENING WITH DJ SET BY MARTYN WARE AT THE CSULB QUAD CAL STATE UNIVERSITY LONG BEACH | 562.985.5761 | SAT 6PM | FREE | SOUNDOASIS.COM.MX

Tags: cal state long beach, marty ware, merzbow, sound oasis