Maryanne Amacher: The Star Room; a truely remarkable performance

Maryanne Amacher (February 25, 1938 October 22, 2009) was an installation artists from the United States as well as a composer.  She was interesting in perceiving art with regards to three- dimensional works designed to transform the perception of a space.  Her major pieces have almost exclusively been spatially specific, often using many loudspeakers to create what she called "structure borne sound", which is a differentiation with "airborne sound", the paradox intentional. From using several kinds of diffuse sound sources (either not in the space or speakers facing at the walls or floors), she illustrated psychoacoustics (human perception of sound) using sound shapes in relation to “precense” or the fact of existence.
Amacher's greatest earliest works the sonic telepresence series, "City Links" 1-22 (1967- ); the architecturally staged "Music for Sounds Joined Rooms" (1980- ) and the "Mini-Sound Series" (1985- ), new avant garde media of rooms that used architecture to influence the projection and perspection of sounds.

She additionally succeeded in musical achievement of otoacoustic emission, in which the ears themselves act as sound generating devices. Amacher composed several "ear dances" designed to create "third" tones coming from the listener's ears. The subtitle of her first Tzadik Records album Sound Characters (Making the Third Ear) references these "ear tones".

Over her lifetime, she received several major commissions and awards for her work mostly in the United States and Europe with occasional work in Asia and Central and South America. In 1998, she received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2005, she was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica (the Golden Nica) in the "Digital Musics" category for her project "TEO! A sonic sculpture". At the time of her death, she had been working two years on a 40 channel piece commissioned by The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY which was performed this evening of October 3, 2010 by her fellow colleagues Sergei Tcherepnin and Micah Silver.  In this piece, her colleagues spent six weeks solely trying to figure out arrangements of speaker for the speakers and doors for optimal projection and perception of the musical track.  At least 30 loudspeakers placed in different rooms were used for this piece.  The “Star Room”, as Maryanne called it during the course of the project, was placed into use for the project.  In the orchestra theater, the “Star Room” placed underneath the audience of the theater contained vented tunnels which ran to underneath the audience seats, allowing for ideal movement of air to illustrate her wanted perception for the audience of sound in zero gravity. 

While the piece seemed to carry with some predictability with rises and falls in pitch and volume, the predictability allowed for appreciation of the Maryanne’s use of psychoacoustics to allow for optimal perception and projection of the music.  Two electronic tracks were placed in a thirty minute period of time.  The first set of musical peaks were analogous to chimes.  The suspense of the chimes would build over time which then led to loud vibrations in the music that started to occur.  The vibrations I first perceived to be imitation of thunder because of the noise and difference in pressure when the noise built within the room.  Later on, the artists Tcherepnin and Silver mentioned how Maryanne wanted to use wings on the side of the piece.  This would have fit into the piece very well as the piece possessed qualities of dynamism with consistent raising of pitch and volume. The piece then build up with power in its volume to a peak then slowly declined.  The peaks and declines became more frequent and occurred with slightly more speed each time with the music’s progression.  The building and declining of the music has resemblance to a storm approaching then passing.  Between the perception of sounds of a storm with the thunder and plane noises, I believe that Maryanne Amacher was trying to depict the flight of a bird in this piece.  This would make sense in theory to her perception of noise at zero gravity since the bird could be flying high above the earth’s surface where sound is depicted differently.    She demonstrated its flight and the noises associate with it wonderfully for the 30 minute piece making complete use of psychoacoustics.  She mainly used the position of the speakers and doors to influence human perception of the sounds, however, with use of the “Star Room” which allowed for the passing instead of containment of air in the orchestra area.  This allowed for the room’s ability to project noise at a great degree in addition to speaker use.

To conclude, the piece composed by Maryanne Amacher today performed by Sergei Tcherepnin and Micah Silver demonstrated Maryanne Amacher’s phenomenal ability in demonstration of psychoacoustics and use of architecture in influence of noise.  So much was brought into consideration to optimize the perception of such a dynamic piece.  The artists even considered the perception of noise being changed as the audience would sit in the auditorium during the performance.  This piece possessed qualities of dynamism as the music was in ‘constant motion’ with significant rise and decline.  The piece also possessed qualities of surrealism as Maryanne’s dreams of hearing the noises of zero gravity which seem so unperceivable came to life as her inspiration.  It made her work stand out as she used architecture to structure sound perception, which was quite avant garde for her time.