// Klangatoll \\    _{Sound Atoll}

Klangatoll 1996

The (natural) history of a certain stretch of land is condensed into an acoustic portrait, an acoustic montage of voices, sounds and resonances. This solar powered sound installation is enclosed by an earthen wall that nestles into the landscape like a little rampart.

Sound Atoll introduces a historical approach into the project series Kulturlandschaft Paasdorf (Cultural Landscape Paasdorf) by condensing the history of this stretch of land into an acoustic portrait. Landscape also stands for environment, crafts and trades, civilization. Our proverbial loss of nature is addressed by the insertion of a counter world into the surrounding scenery, a world that was developed by means of methodical and historical lines of thought. The outer shell remains static while the body of sound flows and moves. The earthen construction is designed with deliberate constraint; it humbly nestles into the landscape like a little rampart that shelters what is happening inside from outside view. Inside, things get lively: what we hear is a virtual natural history of the landscape, an acoustic montage of voices, sounds and resonances, of animals that populate the area now or others that were native to the region long agen/project/klangatollo, of water (Primordial Ocean) or of church bells. The sound system itself is solar powered and a timer is set to play a ten minute fragment of the sound composition after being triggered by a motion sensor. Sound, the artists state, follows certain patterns in nature, patterns that are unlikeen/project/klangatoll any machine made sound sequences, but that develop and, again and again, renew themselves out of their environments. In analogy, the Sound Atoll’s sound modules are structured by the technology that controls them. What emerges is not a static sound sequence, but a sound sculpture that is rearranged and formed in new ways again and again.

Susanne Neuburger

Klangatoll 2023

Juliane Feldhoffer: Reconstruction 2023

The artistically designed surroundings around Paasdorf have become widely known. Between 1994 and 2000, a cultural landscape unique in Lower Austria was created here with five works of art, which inscribe themselves in the landscape in very different ways. The cultural landscape was created as a project by KOERNOE together with the Lower Austrian agricultural district authority, the municipality of Mistelbach and the village of Paasdorf. It comprises five works of art and a landscape project in the hills around Paasdorf. Eva Ahfus, Maria Hahnenkamp, PRINZGAU/podgorschek, Andrea Sodomka/Martin Breindl and Ingeborg Strobl took the location, agriculture and history of the village as a starting point to pick out characteristic features of landscape and culture and develop their works from them.

A quarter of a century after its construction, the most complex and equally fragile project of the cultural landscape, the Klangatoll (Sound Atoll) by Sodomka und Breindl, was extensively restored and renewed in 2022. The earthen wall, built in 1996, houses a very special acoustic world inside it that ingeniously links nature and sound: "extinct" as well as current everyday and natural sounds form a constantly changing acoustic pattern. The roar of the primeval sea and animal sounds from times long past combine with the present soundscape of flora, fauna and man. The result is an "acoustic portrait of this region", as curator Susanne Neuburger called it, which preserves sounds that have long since faded away in the surrounding everyday life, such as the hammering of a scythe.

The atoll, which was added to a natural earth quarry and lost its shape over the years, was given back its original appearance as part of the restoration work. The planting concept, which in 1998 was realised by the landscape architect Elisabeth Wrbka, was also renewed. For here, too, a change was taken into account: in the past 24 years, partly in the course of climate change, new plant species have become native to the landscape, which have now been integrated and since last year have slowly grown into the atoll along with the ancestral fauna. The solar system and sound technology responsible for the sound were also in need of overhaul. A modern photovoltaic system ensures that the installation is energy self-sufficient and energy efficient. A new sound system produces a much more differentiated sound than before and enables an energy-saving and nature-friendly night shutdown.

But also the heart of the installation, the sound material, has been renewed and gently expanded into the 21st century to create an artistic sound experience oriented towards the current environment. This means that some sounds that have become extinct in the last two decades, as well as sounds that again did not exist in 1997, have been newly incorporated into the sonic pattern.

Juliane Feldhoffer