Daniel Figgis

CITY HALL took place on February 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2013 at the Rotunda, City Hall, Dame Street, Dublin 2 – conceived and produced by Daniel Figgis.

So the audience composes the piece?
“Yes, we’re equal partners.”

“Walk this way, then, into City Hall, a sonic experience created by contemporary composer and cultural curator Daniel Figgis, a man who is acclaimed internationally…”

“City Hall, which takes place over three days in the rotunda of Dublin’s City Hall, one of the city’s most architecturally admired buildings, is devised around recorded material, the arrangements of which are determined by the movement of audience members as they make their way through the space.”

The Irish Times – Turning the public into composers at Dublin’s City Hall

Can you describe the actual process of what’s going to happen with CITY HALL?

“CITY HALL is an entirely interactive work in the real sense of the term; the audience trigger and ultimately thus design all of the sound patterns that they are hearing. The composition and density, or otherwise, of sound is entirely down to the group will and not to mine. What you hear is the Sound of Surrender. I will make no intervention whatsoever in the “construction” of the piece. I am supplying the building blocks and no more. Perhaps, in that we will simply be listening, I and the crew constitute the audience! The shape and form of the composition will be determined by the audience and the pathways they choose as they move through this unique acoustic space and the piece will reveal itself in real time over three days.

Reverse engineering and educated guesswork saw me through the initial off-site compositional process, insofar as it can really be considered, in any recognized sense, as a compositional process. This is where the “building blocks” come in. And I’m not even the site manager. There is no site manager. CITY HALL changes over the course of the three performances as new building blocks are introduced each day, incorporating previous musical events that have occurred on-site. In this way Day 3 should differ greatly from Day 2 and 2 from 1.

Audience participation is utterly central to this event. I simply stand back and presumably enjoy how it plays out when I take my hand off the tiller. Rest assured that this is not an ambient music in the sense that I suspect we’ve all grown rather tired of. I know that I have. CITY HALL is an adventure in acousmatics.”

Daniel Figgis interview – Totally Dublin magazine

FULL INTERVIEW