Stavenhofer Latency Architecture is a shared resource for facilitating heightened audibility. Instead of 'giving voice' to any imagined community or public, SLA amplifies the street in its asynchronous, heterogenous, and polyphonic complexity.
At 3 PM on Saturday, September 23rd, residents of Im Stavenhof opened their windows and pushed play on whatever audio playback equipment was already in their homes. The audio material was a playlist of tracks that the residents themselves selected. The artists sequenced, manipulated and orchestrated these lists (according to the score shown below), assigning distinct versions to different source locations along the street. The resident participants' playback was roughly synchronized by matching the time displayed on the video (here, for example) with the current clock time.
For the three hours until 6 PM, anyone passing through Im Stavenhof could hear the output of SLA, both cacaphonic and surprisingly consonant at times, bleeding with the sounds of Saturday afternoon foot traffic and reflected densely from the five-story brick buildings along the curving cobblestone street.
Visitors and residents of Im Stavenhof during the event
A score indicating tracks to be played over the three hours, color-coded by transformations performed on the tracks
Audio excerpts from different moments and locations during the event:
Stavenhofer Latency Architecture was produced by freies rheinland e.V. (Georg Deitzler) and co-sponsored by CityLeaks Festival.
