The Tower of Broken Mirrors emerged from our collective hallucinations in an unusual space: an abandoned nuclear plant in Satsop (Washington State, USA), and its monumental CT3 cooling tower and the reactor building.

Both spaces are characterized by unique acoustic properties, the most striking being a maze of acoustic shadows and myriads of echoes and delays inside the cooling tower. As we experienced the distortion of audible reality of the space directly through our bodies, the shared confusion became a driving force for our interactions.

These shared yet individualized distortions of reality turned into a true, visceral, amplified experience that could not be achieved outside of that physical space and under a different set of conditions.

Besides the direct interactions with the physical spaces, we were also responding to some pre-composed, electronic sound material, which was played-back with a small 360-degree speaker. The physical space became a body of an extended virtual instrument.

The sound material was simultaneously recorded with Soundfield St-350 and CoreSound TetraMic microphones, which already in this initial phase resulted in the creation of two different sound images. Later the recorded material was further processed by Ewa Trębacz, and enriched by adding consecutive electronic layers, creating an illusory continuum between various snapshots of the captured and manipulated sonic time-space.

While the majority of delay-like effects come directly from the space, the effect was further amplified by asynchronous processing of various sections of the soundfield by introducing small variations into processing parameters, bringing to mind the infinity mirror illusion.

Performances and Events

October 25, 2023          SOUND FESTIVAL 2023: ENCOUNTERS. Curated by SERG - Sound Emporium Research Group. Kings Pavilion, University of Aberdeen - Scotland. Full program...

THE TOWER OF BROKEN MIRRORS

Josiah Boothby, French horn

Leanna Keith, flutes

Ewa Trębacz, violin & electronics
 

The original, 30. min version of The Tower of Broken Mirrors, was commissioned by NONSEQUITUR, Seattle, and released on SoundCloud within their Wayward in Limbo series.

ODYSSEY TWO PSeME Collection Polish Society of Electroacoustic Music OPUS SERIES - REQUIEM RECORDS opus-series.com CD1 - Track 1 Ewa Trębacz - The Tower of Broken Mirrors  (2021, remix 2023)

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Ewa Trębacz: Composing in a Pandemic