Crushed Now // Distributed Presence

In "Distributed Presence", the third concert of “Crushed Now — After Turing // Beyond Presence,” Reinhold Friedl (inside piano) from the Zeitkratzer Ensemble, Francesco Palmieri (guitar), and Gerriet Krishna Sharma (3-9-3 3D-audio loudspeaker) explore the concept of instrumentality as space.

Friedl performs on the Neo-Bechstein (on loan from David Balzer), an exceedingly rare, pioneering electro-acoustic piano from the early 1930s. As one of the world's first electronic instruments, only a few working models exist today. It radically replaced the traditional wooden soundboard with electromagnetic pickups, allowing the strings to be amplified through a loudspeaker and giving it a unique acoustic profile.

Friedl's performance interfaces with Sharma’s 3-9-3 3D-audio loudspeaker instrument and live-electronics. The system uses beamforming to project phantom sound sources directly onto the room's reflective surfaces.

Complementing this setup, Palmieri showcases S.T.OOGE, his custom-developed tetrahedral loudspeaker prototype utilising outward-radiating, spherical Ambisonics. Instead of merely projecting sound, it recreates the directionally complex, physical radiation field of the guitar—restoring the corporeal connection between the performer's gestures, the architectural space, and the audience.

Ultimately, the performance becomes a compositional spatial practice where presence is continuously reshaped as a dynamic (im)balance between human and machine. Instrumentality transforms into a social practice that reconfigures concert culture, generating collective modes of listening. The audience is invited to observe, experience, and take a position.