This effacement of the boundary distinction between fantasy and reality occurs when something is experienced as real which up to that point was conceived as imagined (Bronfen 1992: 113)

The abstraction of reality by the mediating stages so far has transformed the source characteristics into a soundscape fashioned in the image of death. The ruptures present in the realism of acoustic materials has been annihilated, perverted, and assimilated into a deathscape autonomous from the realism inherent at the birth of the composition. This section is concerned with the overall final stage of mediation; mixing [figure.03], it is emphasised in the last two minutes in particular. The parameters of this frame of reality are mutable; the final stage when the piece embodies the aetherial quality of spatialisation by spatial control of the sonic domain of the deathscape, completing decontextualisation and birthing full simulacrum. In this manner the components assembled are dispersed through space in the DAW[1] and in the imagination, creating an immersive environment that bequeaths mutations to its copies, as with the panning used in this section.

In this sense, the aetherial qualities afforded by spatialisation evoke these fragments in an otherworldly simulacrum[2]. In occupying the whole spectrum of auditory dimension, it represents reality and the natural soundscape therefore betraying the listeners’ perception and masking the original incarnation. It takes it beyond this to another sphere.

This can be conceived as the afterlife of source referents, totally annihilated and destroyed, these images are completely removed from the elements they originally represented, displaying not a reflection or memory, or the subsumation into deathscape, [a collection of assimilated memories augmented from the realism of source characteristics, representing memorial schema of the death object and a frame of the totality of the lost object], but as a detached representation of a frame of a memory of a lost object. In this sense, the aether is a conclusion of the decontextualisation of realism in a soundscape fashioned in death’s image. It is in this vein that I aimed to provide some resolution on the part of the sonic material to weave an immersive end that is comforting in its totality [see figure.03]. As Bronfen explains, ‘representations of death in art are so pleasing, it seems, because they occur in a realm clearly delineated as not life, or not real’ (Bronfen 1992: x). In this way, utilising artefacts endowed with a weight in contextualisation with death, and then negating those properties, afford this final stage a suspension of reality, while the mediation of studio technology applied during its processing lends aetherial qualities to the overall dimension of the deathscape. The theoretical linkage and succession of processing stages are exemplified here as the cluster of memories that now stands in for the death objects are mutated by spatialisation. This represents a frame that we accept as reality itself, at the end of the time continuum embedded with memories of the death object.

The form of this stage is parallel with full simulacrum, as the movement of [13_Fireplace_Ambience_Gate] gives birth to additional replications of itself and are subsequently panned extremely wide to evoke an enfolding quality in its articulation to [14_Windchime_Stretch_Texture]. As the perceived sound event is born from both these sources it represents a melding of ruptures invoked by [13_Fireplace_Ambience_Gate] by placing it in the context of [14_Windchime_Stretch_Texture]. The negation of memorial schema can generate this hyperreal dimension on its reception. This is to signal the cadence of the assimilation stage and procession to full simularcrum. The expansion of the auditory dimension of the composition can induce the hyperreal, as Baudrillard describes; ‘it is a hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere’ (Baudrillard 1994: 2).

This concept resonated with me and I considered its implications for the mixing mechanisms applied to the deathscape transformation. Spatialisation was utilised in a non-traditional manner [not placing sound sources where they would usually be in the real-world], in this way reconstructing the granular integrity with the process of zigzagging [see figure.02] then contextualising through an impulse response of the chimney. Its usage here is primarily to represent the concept of an afterlife, as the sonic materials manipulated and contextualised within the ‘One Room’ [see recording excerpt] are now released, allowing the textures to rise up through the IR and take flight into hyperspace, radiating with their final transformation. It is through the concept of a membrane [see Structuring the Soundscape in Death’s Image] that this stage was drawn; by diffusing the movement of assimilated sound events through dimension a sense of resolution is made apparent. [16_Clock_Chime_Zigzag] inherits the extension of the density of [15_Clock_Chime_Pitch_IR] as we arrive in space after considering the augmentation of time. The temporality intrinsic to the amalgamation of [15_Clock_Chime_Pitch_IR] shapes space, marking distance and dimension. The simulacra of the chimes sound a past and present, while the resonance invoked by the stretching of micro ‘scenes’ in a sound event ring with the duration of their death and rebirth, in a site delineated from life and reality. The panoramic positioning is reinforced by the granular zigzagging of [13_Fireplace_Ambience_Gate] by underpinning textures forming from the collusion of sources in [14_Windchime_Stretch_Texture], creating shadow territories through manipulating frequencies.

In the processing of artefacts by evoking types of spaces and creating places through processing and spatial positioning, musical agents ‘create virtual-cum-real cultural spaces audible in musical design’ (Greene 2004: 14). It is through this blurring of artefacts that the mediating technology draws together both space and time in creation of a memorial fog, and instead of resulting in a claustrophobic weave, we can accept it exists in its present stage after enduring processes to transform and release, as by its very nature, it permutates and disappears. It is through the negation of order in an assemblage of annihilation that a chaotic, mechanised dimension draws prismatic simulacrum in aether.

[1] Digital audio workstation, for example; Logic Pro, Pro Tools.

[2]As a multiplicity of images of death that lack the substance of the original; a theoretically informed deathscape. It lacks an internal resemblance.