Liminal Echoes

Liminal Echoes began with a year-long recording practice in six decommissioned stations along Vienna’s former Stadtbahn network — spaces that retain the acoustic signature of decades of transit without the bodies that once filled them. Tiled concourses, vaulted ceilings, and the particular resonance of emptied ticket halls became the raw material for a spatial composition performed nightly in the former Favoriten terminus building.

The work uses a custom 24-channel speaker array arranged to trace the original platform geometry of each recorded station. Visitors enter a darkened space and are guided through a sequence of acoustic environments — a crowded rush hour reconstructed from individual recordings, a winter platform at 2am, the sharp echo of a single footstep in a chamber that once amplified thousands. The composition loops with slight variations, so no two visits are identical.

Liminal Echoes was commissioned by the Wiener Festwochen and supported by the Austrian Federal Chancellery. The work ran for six weeks in February–March 2024 and was accompanied by a published score and field recording archive, available through the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna.