Sound Spaces are not just spaces in which sound can be heard. Rather, it is sound itself that creates the space and its special qualities. Therefore the experience of hearing not only enables us to experience the space around us, they can also make it possible to experience physical space as an “inner” space. Bernhard Leitner’s work leads us to a quality of sound (as space) that remains concealed within stimulus streams. It shows the potentials of sensual experience that we are barely conscious of because they are either lost or have remained unknown as possibilities.
The highest efficiency ever obtained with no hearable distortion using no feedback at all in any stage with relative low power amplifiers (4 x 50 watts) and no crossover on the speakers. In Italy all the houses are made in bricks and not in wood as normally made in other countries so it is easier to do and sometimes cheaper. But out of this the very big problem is the compression chamber of the horn. The pressures here are very high and the compression chamber itself will resonate and the same is for the back volume of the sub woofers. Here you can read more on the woofer project…
Incubate is the annual celebration of independent culture. Expect a diverse view on indie culture as a whole, including music, contemporary dance, film and visual arts. We bring more than 200 cutting edge artists in an intimate context to an international audience. Black metal next to free jazz. Street art next to academic dance.
Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist who focuses on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox recording tools, including accelerometers, hydrophones and home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments : a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself. (original text+photo from Kirkegaard website)
Dieter Vandoren (°1981, Belgium) is a media artist, developer and performer. His work balances on the edge of creative arts and scientific research and development. It combines audiovisual elements with electronic and software engineering in architectural settings, often real-time generative and interactive.
The Echo Chamber plunges the visitor in a sonic tornado of echo, feedback and resonance. The installation’s 4-channel audio system picks up the visitors’ sounds, modulates them and plays them back through the 4 speakers in the corners of the room. The output feeds back into the system with wild echo effects as a result. Projected real-time graphics visualize the audio output from the 4 corners of the room.
The piece of text derives from Xenakis original 1971 published book about Formalized Music.
“Everyone has observed the sonic phenomena of a political crowd of dozens or hundreds of thousands of people. The human river shouts a slogan in a uniform rhythm. Then another slogan springs from the head of the demonstration; spreads towards the tail, replacing the first. A wave of transition thus passes form the head to the tail. The clamor fills the city, and the inhibiting force of voice and rhythm reaches a climax. It is an event of great power and beauty in its ferocity. Then the impact between the demonstrators and the enemy occurs. the perfect rhythm of the last slogan breaks up in a huge cluster of chaotic shouts, which also spreads to the tail. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political or moral context, are the same as those of the cicadas of the rain. They are the laws of the passage from complete order to total disorder in a continuous manner. Here we touch on one of the great problems that have haunted human intelligence since antiquity: continuos or discontinuous transformation. The sophisms of movement or of definition especially of the latter, are solved by statistical definition. One may produce continuity with either continuos or discontinuous elements. Passages from a discontinuous state to a continuous state are controllable with the aid of probability theory…”
Independent architectural journal (bilingual Dutch/English), published by NAi Publishers by order of the OASE Foundation. This month they have a special about Sound and Architecture, you should order this one from their site!
“Within the architectural environment, every constructed space is an acoustic proposition. Yet, what does it mean to ‘hear space’? Sound can be described in terms of rhythms, pitches and timbral qualities; it can also be expressed in terms of distances, directions and locations. How is architecture affected when its site of influence is considered in terms of ‘frequencies’, ‘durations’ and ‘tunings’?”
A very drastic moment in your life, you don’t know what happened and how it will effect your future. Without realizing, choices are being made for you. Choices made by other people that will have effect on your life. This installation project is a symbol to that momentand gives you an experience on how it feels to stand in the center of ignorance.
Two objects, both consisting out of a television, video recorder and speakers, are placed in between the grid of the corridor following its structure. The screens show the eyes of two people, a man on the right side and a woman on the left side. On certain moments the objects produce the sound of a voice saying; ‘come to me’. People who pass the installation don’t always notice it and are overwhelmed by its confronting action.
Hans Peter Kuhn is a sound artist and composer. In 1975 he started his professionell career at the Schaubuehne am Halleschen Ufer in Berlin (now Schaubuehne am Lehniner Platz). There he worked as a sound engineer on the productions of Peter Stein, Klaus-Michael Grueber, Luc Bondy and others (e.g. “Shakespeare’s Memory”, “As You Like It”, “Winterreise”, “Die Wupper”). After Kuhn left the Schaubuehne in 1979 he concentrated more and more on his own artistic work and created since then a huge body of work. He mainly created sound- and light installations, radioplays, composed film music (most recent “Der Letzte Kurier” by Adolf Winkelmann, WDR), and music and environments for theatre and - since 1989 - also for dance. In 1985 he founded - in collaboration with others - Berlin’s first private radio station which later became RADIO 100 where he had a weekly show on new music called “Die Audionauten” (The Audionauts) which was run in the final years by Niko Tenten. The most prestigious award was the “Golden Lion” of the Venice Biennale 1993 that was given to Robert Wilson and Kuhn for the installation “Memory/Loss”. Original text from Hans Peter Kuhn website.
” We look around and almost everything we see, except for light reflections and shadows, corresponds exactly to the place being looked at. Listening does not have the same sense of spatial correspondences as visual perception. With visual perception, we look directly at what is being seen, in listening we orient ourselves to where the sound is, not necessarily to where it is coming from. In visual perception, there is usually simultaneity between the viewer and the object of perception. With sound there is often a time lag, since we can often hear a sound source before or after we see it. In aural perception, we sometimes do not see what we are actually hearing. Because sound is experienced in a 360 degree way, we hear overlapping residues of many sounds at any given moment. If we were trained to turn mentally towards everything we hear, we would achieve a sense of spatial correspondence comparable to visual perception. Since as a culture we are not trained to bring this mental orientation to sound, the time lag between what we see and what we hear and the resulting disparities between our senses of visual and aural spatial correspondences have contributed greatly to our present cultural blind(deaf) spot - the concept of noise.”
This low-budget retro-futurist fable from Argentina has a been made as a homage to silent cinema and contains lots of sepia cinematography, scratchy visuals and references to both Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Georges Méliès’s Le Voyage dans la Lune. It’s about a society rendered speechless by the brainwashing television signals pumped out by a sinister mogul called Mr TV. He wants to destroy the city’s inhabitants’ abilities to make words, a plan that necessitates kidnapping the Voice, a singer who has retained the ability to speak.
Center for research & development of instruments & tools for performers in the electronic performance arts. Laboratory, workshop, international meeting place, artist hotel, production office, live electroacoustic music, DJ’s, VJ’s, theater and installation makers, video artists and nomad studio. You can discover the instruments they developed here.
Altiverb 6 is a convolution reverb plug-in for Mac OS X and Windows XP. It uses top quality samples of real spaces to create reverb, ranging from Sydney Opera House to the cockpit of a Jumbo Jet. You can listen to a documentary (in Dutch) on space and reverb by Botte Jellema (Radio 6 - ‘De Avonden’) here.
On August 7, 1974, a 24-year-old French high-wire artist named Philippe Petit committed one of the most astonishing performance stunts of the late 20th century: he strung a thin cable in between the two towers of the World Trade Center and not only walked across, from one building to another, but did a nerve-wracking series of knee-bends and acrobatic movements on the cable, some 1,350 feet above the ground, before turning himself in. This occurred to the consternation and chagrin of Port Authority policemen, who immediately arrested Petit for the act — prompting many to dub Petit’s stunt “the artistic crime of the century.” This documentary, by James Marsh (GB), will be shown at the International Documentary Festival in Leuven (B)
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756–1827) was a German physicist and musician. His important works include research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. For this some call him the “Father of Acoustics”. One of Chladni’s most well known achievements was inventing a technique to show the various modes of vibration in a mechanical surface. Chladni repeated the pioneering experiments of Robert Hooke of Oxford University. On July 8, 1680, Hooke had been able to see the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. Hooke ran a bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge. (Wikipedia).
Marclay’s work explores connections between sound, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramaphone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collage, Marclay is, in the words of critic Thom Jurek, perhaps the “unwitting inventor of turntablism.” His own use of turntables and records, beginning in the mid-1970s, was developed independently of but roughly parallel to hip hop’s use of the instrument. (wikipedia)
“What are you my colleague architects and engineers doing? How do you use your super power given to you by the universe? Why do you remain routine draftsmen, cocktail sippers, coffee gulpers and making routine love? Wake up, there’s a new world to be created within our world.” (citation Frederick Kiesler).
Frederick Kiesler’s call to all architects and designers to challenge the forces of the “routine” was a principle that Kiesler spent a lifetime crafting. A conviction that he would continuously articulate through commissioned and non commissioned architectural projects, sculptures, paintings, poetry and countless manifestoes. A lifetime that was spent researching, developing and building one core concept. A concept that was not inline with the current International Style modernist whose formal language and ideas were interested in extensive infinite gridded space. For Kiesler rather, it was a pursuit of intensive and endless space based on continuous curvilinear vectors. Original text by Matthew Krissel (University of Pennsylvania 2003) for download here.
Yuri Landman is a Dutch experimental luthier and musicologist who has made several experimental electric string instruments for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Blonde Redhead. He wrote an essay on the 3rd Bridge Helix that sets out a research from experimental punk to ancient Chinese music & the universal physical laws of consonance. You can download the original text here, or look at some examples of his guitars here.
Het ontwerp van het ‘KlankLab Eindhoven’ verondersteld een nieuwe manier van omgang met de architectonische en stedenbouwkundige ruimten. Binnen de ontwerpmethodiek wordt de akoestische kwaliteit van beide onderdelen centraal gesteld. Typologisch begeeft het gebouw zich op het grensvlak van het laboratorium (onderzoek), het podium (expressie), de tentoonstellingsruimte (participatie) en het archief (conserveren). Het betreft een specifiek publiek verzamelgebouw en huisvest twaalf kamers waarin twaalf archetypische akoestische condities ondergebracht zijn (bijvoorbeeld galm, echo, flutter, focus, enz). Het KlankLab richt zich op de akoestisch georiënteerde muziek, wat een reactie van de gebruiker en toeschouwer op de natuurlijke frequenties van de ruimten verondersteld. In het KlankLab wordt het analoge aspect binnen de muziek benadrukt, de natuurlijke frequenties van de architectonische ruimten worden aangesproken. Muzikanten en componisten worden uitgedaagd om hun bestaande oeuvre op geheel andere wijze ten gehore te brengen of nieuwe specifieke, op de akoestische condities gebaseerde, composities te schrijven. Studenten worden uitgenodigd om in de diverse ruimten onderzoek en metingen te verrichten.
Het KlankLab krijgt een adres aan de toekomstige groene loper op TU campus waardoor er cultureel programma wordt toegevoegd aan het onderwijs programma. In de lijn van het nieuwe campus 2020 model, waarin de TU Eindhoven 24 uur per dag 7 dagen per week open wil zijn, is deze toevoeging interessant omdat zowel TU als KlankLab elkaars gebruikers kunnen delen. Het zou een unieke situatie in het onderwijsmodel van een universiteit opleveren, waardoor de TU Eindhoven zich nog verder onderscheidt van andere universiteiten in binnen en buitenland. Het bestaande akoestisch laboratorium wat momenteel aanwezig op de TU campus krijgt daarbij een nieuwe plaats in het gebouw.
Het KlankLab genereert op maaiveld een publiek plein (reflectiearm, anechoïsch) waarbinnen passanten en studenten zich in een geluidsarme omgeving kunnen terugtrekken om te studeren en/ of te bezinnen. Een klankdood moment (leegte) binnen de stad dient zich aan. Boven het plein is een specifieke akoestische bibliotheek opgenomen, en vanuit het plein zijn de diverse ‘ondergrondse’ laboratoriumkamers bereikbaar. Helemaal onderaan in het gebouw zal het Nederlands Akoestisch Archief een plaats krijgen.
Door het ‘KlankLab’ in Eindhoven te plaatsen wordt de historische relatie (Philips en Apollohuis) tussen het geluid en de stad op een logische wijze voortgezet. Het ‘KlankLab’ werkt als bemiddelaar tussen kunst, onderzoek, onderwijs en het bedrijfsleven. Er wordt actief gecommuniceerd met de buitenwereld middels publicaties, cd- opnamen en de ontwikkeling van een internetplatform. Het laboratorium zal het internationale netwerk van artiesten en bezoekers aan zich binden door een uniek aanbod van akoestische ruimten en professionele voorzieningen aan te bieden. Het ‘KlankLab’ nodigt bij dezen iedereen hierbij uit om te participeren.
* De anechoïsche of klankdode vide heeft wanden, vloeren en een plafond die het geluid maximaal absorberen en dus geen enkel geluid reflecteren. Een ideale dode kamer absorbeert alle geluidsfrequenties, zodat in de kamer alleen de lopende golven vanaf een eventuele geluidsbron kunnen blijven bestaan.
In the painted caves, the density of pictures in a location of a cave is proportional to the quality of the resonance of this location: the pictures are found mostly in resonant areas. It can be shown that this is not merely by chance, and we can therefore gain some understanding on how the Palaeolithic people utilized resonance. The sounds needed to test the resonance are vocal, simple but closely related to the ‘answer’ of the cave in order to make it sound the best. Because of the resonance, the whole body is implicated, sometimes in a subtle way.
The approach is essentially physical; in this respect, we may say that the sounds and the whole situation are primitive. It is indeed a very strong experience to hear in almost complete darkness the cave answer to a sound produced just in front or just under a picture of an animal, a bison or a mammoth. Since both the body and the cave vibrate we can speak of an earth or mineral meaning of sound, but also, because of the relationship with the pictures, of an animal meaning of sound: we are thus naturally introduced to very deep elements of sound meaning. And a reflection on possible meanings which sound and music could have for the Palaeolithic tribes who adorned these caves with pictures is without doubt a very interesting subject.
Original text Iegor Reznikoff – On Primitive Elements Of Musical Meaning (original article)
“Most people would probably say that architecture does not produce sound, it cannot be heard.
But neither does it radiate light yet it can be seen. We see the light it reflects and thereby gain an impression of form and material. In the same way we hear the sounds it reflects and they, too, give us an impression of form and material”
For me this is the perfect quote to describe this movie clip from “The Third Man”…..an extensive pursuit through the Vienna sewers sets out the ultimate acoustic experience. (wait till 4:38)
Before the advent of the aeroplane, acoustic location was applied to determining the presence and position of ships in fog. Acoustic location was used from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of aircraft by picking up the noise of the engines. It was rendered obsolete before and during WW2 by the introduction of radar, which was far more effective. Horns give both acoustic gain and directionality; the increased inter-horn spacing compared with human ears increases the observer’s ability to localise the direction of a sound. (dself.dsl.pipex.com)
‘Kamer 306′ is een documentaire van 70 minuten over de ‘Nederlandse Elektronische Muziek uit het Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium 1956-1960′, zoals de ondertitel van de DVD luidt. Kamer 306 vertelt het fascinerende verhaal over de geboorte van de electronische popmuziek, die eind jaren vijftig in Eindhoven door een groep van wetenschappers, technici, componisten en creatievelingen gestalte werd gegeven. Zonder dat ze het wisten, schreven ze geschiedenis.
Philips was ideaal gepositioneerd. Ze beschikten over de kennis en de technici om allerhande nieuwe en exotische apparatuur (geluidsbronnen) te ontwerpen. Bovendien had Philips tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog een geluidsdrager voor die rare nieuwe ‘muziek’ uitgevonden - de spoelenrecorder. En in het Natlab, gevestigd in Kamer 306 op het Strijp terrein, het hoofdkantoor van Philips te Eindhoven, konden de technici in alle vrijheid en naar hartelust experimenteren. Met een nieuw muzikaal universum als resultaat.
Naast interviews met direct betrokkenen laat de documentaire ook prachtig archiefmateriaal zien en is er uiteraard ook electronische muziek uit het Natlab te horen. Lamers en De Bont, en hun bedrijf Loftmatic, hebben ruim een jaar besteed aan de productie van Kamer 306 en het resultaat, de DVD documentaire, is via hun website loftmatic.com te bestellen. (djbroadcast.nl)
My two main passions in life, architecture and music, are combined in one graduation project. What can architecture and music mean for each other? How can we use the visual aspects of sound to come to new ways of thinking about architecture? Normally designers use the acoustic experience on a very functional level. I see them as starting points and try to use them to discover new ways of thinking about architecture. Within ‘architectune’, I develop multiple ways on thinking about space and its characteristics through installations, publications, lectures and other experiments. To create visual (mental) images through auditive intervention and thereby come to new ways of thinking about architecture.
Part 1. Soundshape | deals with the limitations and content that every space consists of, such as a wall, ceiling and floor. These elements, referred to as ‘mass’, define the space within a bigger space (for instance a bigger building). From this you can tell that you need mass to experience nothing. Space is nothing, as long as there is mass to confront it with. Visitors enter the very dark room and find themselves confronted with a noise build from 150-recorded architectural terms. Four infrared sensors divide the room into nine ‘virtual’ smaller squared forms. Computer software links eight of these squares to the noise and one to a ‘silent mode’. When walking slowly, you pass several infrared lines shifting the silent part through the room. At a certain moment, you and the silent part find each other in the same square and all sound is blocked. A total silence, no visual input, the perfect space. When you start walking again the noise also starts and the ‘space’ is gone. Note that the computer software makes sure that a silence is never in the same square after each other. The contrast between mass and emptiness of space through sound becomes understandable.
Part 2. Acousticlibrary | sound is a product of human activity. Everybody leaves his or her traces when moving or acting in a room. However, architecture cannot hold these sounds, they are gone, lost forever. This installation records every sound produced within the room and plays it back using two analogue tape decks (one records, one plays). All sound recorded again, played again, recorded again and so on. After a while, depending on human activity, the recording becomes noise and fills the room with it. A transformation between functional and non-functional space, coming from a change in spatial characteristics. After about one hour, the space is filled with sound and not functional anymore. Therefore, you with your activity make a functional space into a non-functional space. You change the
character; the space is only a container. However, the space is also getting smaller. All the noise pressed against your body makes it feel like it is smaller. When there is no sound, your body and muscles feel strange.
Part 3. Activecity | every city is as a patchwork made from different functions. Every function has it is own sound. Therefore, you can say that a city is as a sound composition determined by function. Function is primarily. Sound secondarily. In this installation, I have changed these two and made sound primarily. Therefore, visitors can compose their own cities and feelings. It is an interesting installation because you can test a city before actually building it. Sound problems in cities are an actual problem. Testing what it feels like living next to an airport. I have placed nine elements on a grid, referring to the ‘city grid’. Each element consists of one speaker, CD player and amplifier. On the back wall, there are 120 cd-recordings of functional areas. The visitor can insert his own samples and create his personal city. The complete installation placed within a black cube made out of cloth finds itself within a white room. When you enter this room, you only hear that there is something going on. You have to break through the black wall to enter the real installation. This creates an extra depth within the spatial experience.
This text is written by Gavin Bryars and is posted on gavinbryars.com…..I was asked to suggest a project for the Chateau d’Oiron by Jean-Hubert Martin when we were both jurors at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. I visited the chateau with him, and later with my sound designer Chris Ekers, and proposed the idea of a “Listening Room”: an installation that takes the form of an acoustic map of the chateau. Specific music was written – or in two cases existing music was used – in order to establish the architectural acoustic of each space that was chosen. The music was not designed to be interesting itself but rather to animate the spaces in which the music was played. In all cases the rooms were selected primarily because of the character of their acoustic, though other factors were taken into account such as historical status, or the nature of the artworks already installed. The recordings were made with a Calrec soundfield microphone programmed for the recordings to be replayed through an ambisonic sound system. For this eight loudspeakers are located at quite precise points within the listening room so that the listener hears in 360º the natural acoustic of each source room. The listening room has comfortable armchairs and was planned to be similar to the interior of an English “gentleman’s club”. This room, originally room 014, is, therefore, both a map of the space and a space in itself. Subsequent to the installation, the room was moved to 021 – the former kitchen and the source of track 6.
Four of the spaces that were chosen effectively define the whole architectural layout of the chateau in 3 dimensions. The 55 meter long Galerie des peintures (room 114) runs the whole length of one side of the courtyard. The Salle de bal (room 101) covers the entire width of the main central building. The Cage du grand escalier goes up the full height of the central building. The Salle Haute – Tour des Ondes (room 116) is the whole circle of on of the towers that give the chateau its external character. I used three musicians - my closest colleagues from my ensemble (Roger Heaton and Dave Smith) plus myself (sound engineer Chris Ekers plays on one track too). There were also meetings with the village ‘fanfare’ about their possible involvement. However, it was clear from attending one of its regular rehearsals that it would be unlikely that the whole fanfare could learn new pieces in time for the project. So instead I decided to take something from their existing repertoire for two spaces, and add three of their players to my ensemble for two other rooms.
From June 14-17 the recordings were made in Oiron. They had to be made between midnight and 5 AM due to the presence of uncontrollable external sounds outside these times (workmen renovating the stonework during the day; birdsong up to sunset and from dawn; frogs in the moat from sunset to midnight). A routine was established of having dinner with those artists working there at that time some of whom, Georg Ettl, Charles Ross and his assistant Natalie Moore, would come to listen as we recorded through the night. One other listener who followed us from room to room one night was a bat, whom we christened “Barry” - and who we realised was probably quite ill or disorientated given that it was attracted to such low frequencies…Gavin Bryars
“Air Architecture and Air Conditioning of Space,” one of seven texts newly translated for the book, describes in depth Klein’s paradoxical vision of a return to a state of nature through technology:
“For the past ten years I have been dreaming, as much a waking dream as possible, of a sort of return to Eden! Eden: This biblical myth is no longer a myth for me. I have always wanted to think of it in a positive, constructive, cold, and realistic was…. The world of science fiction was smiling at me in its stupid, foolish way with solutions such as solar mirrors, for example, or heating rivers in winter, creating artificial gulf streams that cross seas and oceans, changing the direction of great winds from hot countries, directing them toward cold countries and vice versa…. Of course, with all the progress made by science, this is no longer a utopia today. Technique, however, could in fact realize such things!… To find nature and live once again on the surface of the whole of the earth without needing a roof or a wall. To live in nature with a great and permanent comfort.
Air, fire, water: These are the building materials in Klein’s eternal springtime of leisure. In spite of the dreaminess of such a Bachelard-influenced description, Klein took the constructability of his vision very seriously. Indeed, it is perhaps this aspect that distinguishes air architecture from other ’60s utopian projects, such as Constant’s New Babylon, Archigram’s Walking City, and Buckminster Fuller’s glass dome over Manhattan. From his very first architectural exercises–a collaboration with the architect Werner Ruhnau for a series of murals at the Gelsenkirchen opera house (1958-59)–Klein began not with sketches and models but rather by performing a series of laboratory experiments with curtains of air and plumes of fire, the very technologies that would be required to realize the vision. In the short film Air Roof Test from 1961 (shown as a loop in the MAK show), Klein aims a spigot releasing compressed air at a faucet of running water, pushing the water sideways. After a few moments regarding the water’s apparent defiance of gravity, he turns to the camera with a look of satisfaction, as if to say, “It can be done.” The experiment demonstrates that a horizontal air curtain can be effectively used as a roof.
‘Afasia 1′ is an art installation by Arcangelo Sassolino. This is a nitrogen-powered sculpture that shoots empty beer bottles against a wall at 600km/hr inside a metal cage. Arcangelo Sassolino (Vicenza, 1967), studied at the School of Visual Art in New York (1990-1995) where he also began his career programming games for Casio (1992-95). He uses minimal forms to build sculptures and installations from industrial materials like concrete, steel and natural gas.
The first images from my final project at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design. The project consists out of number of archetypical acoustical spaces in which artists are triggered to interact with the natural frequencies of the room. It sets out a new strategy to create a different type of art platform based on acoustics. If you are interested you can always contact me, I will then give more information about the project. Or you can download more images here.
The second stage in my graduation project sets out a theoretical and analytical research into acoustics and it’s spatial parameters. The goal of this phase was to define the archetypical acoustic spaces I wanted to create within the building. This series of acoustical conditions will challenge the performer to interact with the natural frequencies of the space. He must find out new concepts of dealing with the natural acoustics of architecture. You can get a copy of this research here.
I Am Sitting in a Room (1970) is one of composer Alvin Lucier’s best known works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. The recited text describes this process in action—it begins “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice,” and the rationale, concluding, “I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have,” referring to his own stuttering. (wikipedia).
“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.”
This first post sets out the beginning of my graduation project. The text (for now only in Dutch) seeks out historical and social aspects that provide a foundation for the way I believe architecture should interact with people. It provides arguments and sets out the future ambition of the project. If you want I can send an English summary of the text, please contact me if you are interested. The Dutch version you can download here
