The Ephemeral Architecture of Stockhausen’s Pole fu ¨r 2 MICHAEL FOWLER Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT University, 77 Barnett Street, Kensington, Victoria, 3031, Australia E-mail: michael.fowler@rmit.edu.au Stockhausen’s graphically notated Pole fu ¨r 2 was created for the multi-channel diffusion system in the spherical auditorium at the German pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair in 1970. The work is remarkable for the way in which spatiality is explored through new developments in graphic notation – both for three-dimensional and sound projection, and to indicate musical imitation and transformation of short-wave radio signals. These two notational systems unite through the synchronous unfolding of time in Pole, and similarly through the spatial structure of auditorium’s architecture that housed over 50 loudspeakers in 6 layers. By using the sound projection score as the basis for the construction of a NURBS (non-uniform rational B-spline) model, each of the player’s sound projection geometries within the auditorium can be transmediated, thus allowing for a visual representation of the spatial design of the work. Examining the topology of the models produced from the work’s six sections further allows for emergent architectonic characteristics of volume, manifold and envelope to be tracked, thus pointing to Stockhausen’s characterisation of design space. The strong connection of the work to the auditorium’s spherical structure also points to the nature of the composer’s sound design as one predicated on the ability of patterns of sound projection to articulate tangible space, and therefore produce ephemeral aural architectures. 1. THE 1970 GERMAN PAVILION AND AUDITORIUM AT OSAKA Stockhausen’s involvement at the World’s Fair in Osaka in 1970 was one of both co-designer and artistic director of performances at the auditorium of the German pavilion. The striking, partially submerged blue spherical auditorium was designed in collaboration with architect Fritz Bornemann, acoustician Fritz Winckel and engineer Max Mengeringhausen (figure 1). The physical structure of the geodesic dome was con- structed from a steel truss ‘space’ frame, and the elec- troacoustic infrastructure located within included over 50 loudspeakers located above and below the audience, as well as a lattice of light sources (designed by artist Otto Piene) all controlled from a single command desk. Stockhausen had worked with Bornemann firstly at the 1968 Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt to develop the idea of the auditorium’s capabilities, as well as to resolve the greater architectural programme of the site (Bornemann 1970: 1,492). The theme developed by the German planning group for the pavilion, Ga ¨rten der Musik, was somewhat manifest in Bornemann’s initial ideas for the architecture: I wanted to create no building at all. I would of rather have had radar-frozen air, but we are not yet capable of that, so I tried the next best thing y People suggested that we could save a lot of money by setting up our location like a football field with a cheap fencing made from hardboard at each end, at the place where the goals would have been. Visitors would enter at one end, receive audio- visual helmets, and float across the other end, they would be relieved of the helmets and leave with the idea that the German pavilion was the most unbelievable thing in the world. (Pieter van Wesemael 2001: 600) In Bornemann’s final design the pavilion became a series of five underground circular spaces with the only discernible topological feature sitting above ground being the striking blue dome of the auditor- ium. In a firm reaction against the architectonic gesture that permeated many of the other pavilion designs, and the superficial sensation Bornemann considered evident in the ephemeral megastructures of the Expo, the site’s architectural programme sought to create an off-Expo experience through both an exploration of the garden as a contemplative ephemeral device for reflection, and a literal immersion/ emersion into the advancements of contemporary German electroacoustic music. That the auditorium’s impact above ground was striking and immediate was suitably mirrored inside, where, under Stockhausen’s stipulations the interior would house enough loudspeakers to create a immersive sound field that relied on utilising rings of loudspeakers that extended well above and below the seated position of the audience. Loudspeaker layers could be controlled via a spherical sensor or a rota- tion mill at the control desk, and allowed any geo- metric combination of loudspeaker groups (i.e. as circles, spirals or through diagonals) to be utilised (for example as circular, spiral or diagonal trajec- tories). The resulting capabilities of the system pro- duced an immersive audiovisual experience where dramatic movements of sound and light literally produced sonorous explosions in space that antici- pate the later Klangbomben of Oktophonie (1990/91). Organised Sound 15(3): 185–197 & Cambridge University Press, 2010. doi:10.1017/S1355771810000269