In a live radio performance, the U.S. artist August Black and the Austrian composer Rupert Huber embarked on a cross-border search for sounds in Reality Triangle / Wirklichkeitsdreieck. Via the in-development software platform, Mezcal that allows high-quality and low-latency streaming, three realities form a triangle live on air on Kunstradio.

With August Black contributing from Boulder, Colorado and Rupert Huber playing live from the Hörspielstudio of the Funkhaus in Vienna, Black transmitted “Sons Concrètes” of his “real” environment in defined situations while Huber created an acoustic environment that conceptually, sonically and musically correlated with Black’s transmissions. Connecting into this triangle as the third element were Anna Friz (Santa Cruz, CA), Jen Kutler (Ithaca, NY), Betsey Biggs (Stamford, CT) and Tom Sherman (Halifax, Nova Scotia) who joined every 10 minutes with spoken word, environmental sounds, or other sonic deliverables.

This reality triangle can be considered a global tele-acoustic check-in of our distanced lives during the coronavirus period. While we have always lived together at a distance, with my reality here and theirs there, the current form of distancing that has emerged in the wake of the pandemic is new. It is a distance that is no longer framed by proximity, but perhaps by familiarity, simultaneity, and resonance. It is a distance that is flat as a screen, turned on in an instant, sometimes tiring, sometimes life-giving, but undeniably part of our daily routine.