SOUNDSCAPE; TIBERIUS GROTTO
Archaeoacoustics II The Archaeology of Sound, 2015 Conference Proceedings Istanbul. L.Eneix (Ed),OTSF Foundation, 2016 pp. 81-92
Visual Narration in Sonic Ambience: A Case Study Based on Tiberius Grotto
Esthir Lemi
ABSTRACT
Having as a focal point Tiberius’ cave at Sperlonga, this presentation endeavours to explore the term immersion broadly used for artificial acoustic environments and propose a representative structure on demonstrating the venue based on fictive soundscape material. The grotto, which was annexed to the emperor’s villa and used as a dining room, was adorned with groups of sculptures representing scenes from the Odyssey. As the groups of sculptures were placed into the water, the theme of immersion may guide us to a representational model similar to the forms that myth, musical composition and memory use. Ulysses’ adventures seem to function perfectly in this adaptive compositional model. Given the existential implications of his adventures and wanderings across the sea, the aquatic natural of Tiberius grotto, similar to that of an artificial environment, submerged by the sound of water, inviting the visitor to a fictional journey with a symbolical and philosophical value, taking the everyday experience a step further. Prehistoric Caves, Plato’s theory, Simonides technique and the theory of liminality are, among others inherited knowledge from the past that serves new technology and the way we structure our future in composition by simply adding music samples in the right place in order to trigger the ability of correspondence - communication - participation. For the case-study a sonic creation based on inherited knowledge of the artistic formations is represented by a soundspace rendering of the cave realised by “Next” sonic augmented reality player of sonicPlanet TM.
Keywords : immersion, soundscape, myth
Immersion and Technology
The word immersion first appeared at the beginning of the 17th century, an epoch of various interesting changes in perception, as the one of the “light microscope” has brought (first used with natural light). In all likelihood, the change in perception as regards the discovery of “distant” worlds, created the need for change in the way we comprehend and envision our surroundings. Romanyshyn describes how this new instrument, among others, brought about changes into human perception. He describes “the single eye” up from this point was capable of detecting a new distance that has been created. Romanyshyn reads the Cartesian “I think therfore I am”, the philosophical proof of existence that signified a foundational motto describing the western thinking, as the articulation of the “distance from the body which the geometry of linear perspective vision has created 1”. Similar to the microscope, the telescope gives us the opportunity to detect the world outside and imagine the parallel possibilities with the actual self-living and knowing that the self belongs to 3 different orbits or more. 150 years later, electric light was broadly used and compound microscopes were created, similar to the ones of four-lens that are broadly used today, widely known as “immersion lenses” that provide 100x magnification 2.
Immersion spread to vocabulary, while stemming from the Latin word “immerse” that means “to plunge into, a place under a liquid, to involve deeply and to embed”. The term defines among others, according to the analog rule of naming, the state of being immersed. Therefore, we have tactical, strategic, narrative, sensory-motoric, cognitive, emotional, spatial immersion and so on. As a term it is broadly used in contemporary art for describing installations that use human computer interaction in order to achieve this embedded feeling of complete participation, absorption and therefore embodiment. Most contemporary Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (known as C.A.V.Es) research human perception and the term of immersion over the past 30 years worldwide 3 in many labs. Immersion as a term is broadly used for artificial acoustic environments, mostly because sound has the power to captivate and absorb us within its inner “clock-tick” music needs time and space to develop. Adorno refers to the self-evidence of the temporality of music, as its “temporal relationships” 4 synchronise the viewer/listener to what it will be called here: a participant. This is the best way for this project to allow viewers/ listeners to use all and “trust” all senses, experience the grotto and becoming through the experiential process from spectators to participants. In addition, artistic process has built the very first “instruments/tools” to cultivate perception. This prehistoric caves manifest such functionality 5, and C.A.V.Es’ perception with Plato’s allegory of the Cave 6. Tiberius’ cave at Sperlonga was constructed in the absence of all the above theoretical background but while describing the place, contemporary research in transdisciplinarity between art and science can offer a flexible model in artistic participation for any user.
The Tiberius Cave
Tiberius’ palatial Roman villa in Sperlonga, a town spreading from the hills to the coast of the Campania region in Italy, was discovered in September 1957 while the coastal road between Rome and Naples was under construction. Since 1957 we have got parts of the whole puzzle and the reconstruction is still on-going. The artistic construction was based on the ergonomy of the physical construction of the grotto, which was inspiring with its central circular basin and two inner recesses attached to it via a series of pools and channels, as well as the “island” serving as a triclinium, a Roman dining room. This triclinium could only be reached on foot, not by boat. This triclinium functions as the platonic cave formation point (the sculptures seem like living human beings in action) where reality and imagination juxtaposes at will. The threshold of the entrance and the preparation of food and wine also serve as a gradual point from light to darkness to a liminal stage of dis-orientation. Liminality follows architectural rules based on “thresholds”. Peter Handke 7 describes the necessity of thresholds in a way that somebody can perceive and comprehend the necessity of this ritual: when we change, change into perception occurs. In the history of art this technique is common since the decorated pre-historic cave’s long dark corridors lead us to places decorated by humans. These corridors function as the in-between- the outside (light) world to our interiors inside (artificial light). Similarly, at Tiberius cave, water, darkness and the sheltering ceiling of the cave help the process of the participants to get successfully (thus fully) immersed.
On the discussion that Tiberius cave might appear “unrealistic to modern eyes” 8 I must say that as a total artwork of its time re-approached today, it looks more like the terrain where the contemporary viewers/listeners could “train their imagination” in order to appreciate “the extraordinary” that new technology and art will offer in the near future. In this effect, re-reading Ann Kuttner’s survey I may propose this venue as a case-study for future construction of immersive environments: “Sperlonga exemplifies how any Roman water garden offered motion through cycles of immersion and emergence as a means of cleansing both inner and outer exhaustion” 9 (which leads to catharsis). In order to reach balance we manifest a process form one stage to a threshold, therefore liminal, therefore significant for re-defining reality nowadays that we have all tools to make the “sublime” part of daily entertainment, and ordinary life.
Using Simonides Technique in Order to Navigate in an Amphitheatrical Mode
The idea of this project is to transform a three dimensional (Representation of grotto) into a four dimensional using the thread of a soundscape that respectively gives us the aspect of time. Tiberius’ grotto functions as a prototype of a polyvalent/multisensory model. The focus of attention is based on the writings of Tactius and Suetonius according to which in 26AD an earthquake took place and the ceiling fell in during dinner. Dostoevsky gives essence to this primitive fear in the famous dialogue of his “Possessive” where he compares anxiety about death with a hanging stone. Tiberius was saved by one of his servants who lay over his body. Therefore the dinner party hosted by the emperor Tiberius at his villa near Terracina came to an abrupt end after the collapse of the dining venue. There is evidence that the surviving grotto at Sperlonga continued to be used for the following four or five centuries. However, the incident remains the peak of its fame.
Returning to the core-thesis of creative thinking as a manifestation of life and in-tune of the collective unconscious, the Simonides technique is connected to a similar event the re-created events through memory 10. The endeavour here is to describe the placement of the four principal sculptural groups that have been identified using Simonides technique known as “method of loci” 11, and then translate this information into an additional Leitmotiv 12. Conticello and Andreae 13, who published the groups in 1974, have fairly conclusively determined the respective positions of each group of sculptures:
In the centre of the pool the scene shifted to Ulysses’ wanderings, with his ship Skylla attacking Ulysses’ ship in the centre of the cave, on a marble podium placed in the middle of a circular pool. It was once thought that the ship formed part of another group, although it is now generally accepted that the sculpture combines two separate episodes. Scylla’s attack and the shipwreck caused by the storm sent by Zeus 14.
To the left, at the front of the cave, was a version of the “Pasquino group” in which a helmeted warrior carries the naked corpse of a companion, variously identified as Menelaus carrying Patroclus, Ajax with Achilles. Ulysses’ bearing Ajax or most recently by Anne Weis, Aeneas carrying Lausus 15.
To the right there was a representation of his dolus against Diomedes 16.
The Polyphemus group.
Some considerable thought was given to the dramatic and illusionistic arrangement of the grotto which was set within this cave-within-a-cave placement of the Polyphemus group, recalling the Cyclop’s own macabre home, according to the roman tradition of the antrum Cyclopis, perhaps descending from a Hellenistic Rhodian model 17. The setting of the sculptures confesses a “virtual reality” concerning Sperlonga with a set of sculptures whose presence elevates an epic fantasy without any precise interpretation possible. For with their results and inscription the processes of viewing the Sperlonga sculptures seem to have been transformed in a number of various interesting ways, therefore immersive: It is misleading to impose any single unifying literary scheme upon these sculptures and still more to reduce the analysis of their depiction to a discussion of some originally intended programme.
Each statue-group was also positioned in the cave in a location appropriate to where the action depicted originally occurred: the two scenes on the plain before Troy on the flat incurving rim of the basin at the front, the Scylla group in the centre of the pool and the blinding of Polyphemus in the gloom of the small cavern at the rear. Participants can experience all this at will by following a floor map with their fingers. Each point represents a place where some (if not all) four group sculptures are visual. The proposal here is to substitute the visual with the “experiential” (therefore more sonic than visual) 18.
Revealing Lost Information Through Artistic Process
An archeological environment offers us information from a survived past, and it is mainly artistic works that could be considered as hard discs of abstract information. Apparently the whole natural world seems to follow the second law of thermodynamics thus creating increasing entropy. Memory fades away, in the same way as buildings perish and get demolished and the natural environment constantly change. Defining the natural condition of matter as that of chaos, means that all worldly objects have a tendency to fall apart. However, living beings are the exception to the rule since they are systems which are comprised of well-organised matter that constantly matter that constantly strives to create order from chaotic order. Rudolf Arnheim has been a pioneer in connecting creative thinking with order and nowadays most neuroscientists revisit Gestalt Theory and Arnheim’s concept 19.
As an artist I am familiar with the idea of the process against the chaotic tendency that dwells information from outside the system. For artists the work of processing information is the very energy that keeps an organised system active. When we cultivate our skills of perception, this enables us to create order from chaotic order in a similar fashion as above and bring images in mind that usually become functional when they seem to “get organised on their own”. A good example of this representation is H. Matisse’s reply to Gaston Diehl on the question of counting the dimension of space which he represents with his painting. The painter replies that space has the dimension of his imagination.