I have discussed “associative synesthesia” in regards as a cognitive tool for structuring the arrangement and reception of sensory information. In my recent example of the “musical chair” detail that I am working on, I explained how the experience of a sound is the point of departure upon a trajectory of cross modal connectivity, even though only a sound has been perceived. The announcement of a presence has been made in the reception of a sound, and upon that reception, cross-sensory connections are divulged from the memory as familiarities are attempted to be juxtaposed around the instance of the sound. The attributes of heaviness and lightness are associated with lower and higher pitches, respectively. Due to this, the solidarity of a sound as only a sound is intact only in the instance of immediate experience, for afterwards, it is internalized and networked within memory. This of course occurs with the other senses as well. My interest in primarily aligning myself with sound comes from the connection to music, and how in music there is an oscillation between focusing on what is being perceived in the moment, and comprehending and apprehending what has been perceived. I am interested in the figure/ground relationship of sound, and how the figure in the space interacts with it. The recent chair idea exemplifies some of my architectural interests in sound by producing different pitches and intensities, determined by string tension, varying by the weight of the occupant. Here, with the reception of sound, there is a notion of weight (tactility) as well as occupation (sight). This is similar to the cross modal connections that Richard Wagner and Olivier Messiaen tried to convey in many of their compositions through the dimensionality of sound (pitch, duration, intensity, color [qualitative feel of instrument]).
My interest in sound’s transition to music is in the experience of the tangibility of tone’s consistency. Musical tones can be grasped and recognized, their intervallic relationships can be understood, I am interested in developing relationships of both tones and sounds in space as to create an incidental composition from programmatic adjacencies, in the time of music, as a figure in the space created by its performers.
The relationships that make the program a place for music are between the performers, the instruments, and the score. The fourth piece is the listeners, who can transition to performers themselves.
The score
Instrument Factory
The performers:
Wind, Water, People, Birds
The instruments:
Reverberating bodies (the hangars amplifying sound within them as the body of a saxophone does for the vibrations of the wooden reed)
Bodies in motion (the cattails swaying in the wind, as the strings of a cello vibrate when the bow passes across them)
Bodies of contact (the percussiveness of the corrugated metal hangars)
These three pieces will be manifested as follows in the next two weeks:
The finalization of the palimpsest in site analysis, with a more concentrated scope of program and what is useful for it and what is not (dan, you previously mentioned what is obvious but nevertheless must be noted: that music will not simply be found in the site. With a better understanding of what I am doing programmatically, I can edit what I find in the site to map into the palimpsest forces that I am looking to utilize within an architectural construct, instead of looking from the outsides as recognizing totality in “composition”. Basically, in my previous ideas of how to map the palimpsest, I was not thinking of sound spatially enough.
I have been doing research about the different steps in the life of the creation of musical instruments. This of course includes learning about factories and their layouts, which is giving me an idea of what is required for the production of the instruments. Right now, I am leaning towards making it a factory for instruments from the violin family (violin, viola, cello), but this will change as I read more about what is required for making the different instruments within the four families (woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion).
Additional material studies by means of the instrument chair detail. This is a means of investigating the acoustical qualities of different materials, which I have been reading about but am now looking to manifest. The produced sounds will be recorded and documented along with other recordings I have made at the site as a score of instruments and performers.
Title soon to come. Tomorrow is my last day to present my project in design before the review, so I’ll post it sometime afterwards.
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