Sound is an integral part of the way we understand the space surrounding us. Size, quality, timbre, texture and the atmosphere of a space can all be inferred by the way in which we experience sound. Based on ideas from the Suffolk island of Orford Ness, Ric Lipson’s acoustic theatre ‘Hear Here” has been developed over a preoccupation with the acoustic qualities of circular spaces and ambient sonic landscapes. His work features in ‘Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands‘.

Ric Lipson‘s Hear Here concerns itself with sound and the body aiming to generate a physical construct that, while taking physics, music and architecture into account, sets out to explore how space can be understood through sound. If architecture is the manipulation of space, then the built form is a way of capturing the ambient. At the core of this question is the way space is experienced as a function of the sounds found both within and around the space, and the sounds that result from occupancy of the space.

The building is the final movement in the score of this experiential journey concerning itself with sound and the body. By giving concepts physical form, the experience can be explored. It is a tourable, demountable structure. By exploring concepts of resonance, reflection, absorption, forced and natural, the work creates a ‘sonic geography’ framed within a physical construct that invites you to explore, listen, improvise and experience.

Comprising a monocoque, aluminium, open cone wrapped within a closed, tensioned, plywood structure, the two spaces act in combination to echo the form of the ear. The outer ear is the space in-between the wooden and aluminium skin, and it has a soft acoustic. Sounds reflect around the walls in a whispering gallery-type nature. The audience follow the sounds around the dark outer corridor and are ‘cleansed’ of what John Cage would describe as the “chaos of the everyday sounds”. The journey around the structure leads the audience into the inner drum. The aluminium cone is open to the world. It is bright and metallic, both in form and acoustic.

This ‘Acoustic Theatre’ combines the world of manufacture, with the ephemeral nature of the ambient. The structure becomes a frame for the sound to exist. The audience are invited to enter and listen. The inner metal skin acts as an instrument, listening to the outer world and playing it back through a set of speakers. These sounds reflect and reverberate around the space. Essentially the pavilion is an ear capturing sounds from its immediate environment. Its geometries can intensify, resonate and distort these found sounds and act as a passive instrument, playing sounds of the city based on the occupier’s position within the structure.

At Crown Point high above Burnley town UK the ‘Singing-Ringing Tree’ – a unique musical sculpture in the form of a tree appears to bend against the endless winds that pass over the hills. Designed by award-winning architects Tonkin-Liu. The wind produces a low and mellow hum through pipes which are tuned so that they do not disturb the wildlife.

It was designed as one of four large-scale sculptures commissioned, designed and constructed over a six year period in the North West of England.

It involved the construction of series of 21st-century landmarks, or Panopticons (structures providing a comprehensive view), across East Lancashire, England, as symbols of the renaissance of the area. An interesting article by the independent newspaper can be found here.

Declan Shaw’s of Interactive Installation, Bird Soundscapes incorporate a dynamic three dimensional acoustic environment of birdsong which perform accelerated diurnal cycles. Individual ‘birds’ occupy positions in space, which move about in birdlike patterns and also reacting to the movement of the inhabitants. This is accompanied by a coloured light cycle which denotes the times of day.

In this manner the listener may hear an accumulating dawn chorus of bird personalities while her environment is filled with an intensifying morning blue light. She may go on the hear crows and blackbirds interacting in a red evening dusk. Shaws work was developed within the Bartlett School of Architectures Anechoic Chamber hence the menacing image of the spikey walls but the intention is that the constructed environment would be placed within an existing negative waiting space, such as a hospital ward or waiting room, with a view to encouraging positive waiting behaviour in its occupants.

As well as the installation Declan produced a series of college images depicting this changing acoustic environments intended effects in the hospital patients experience of these spaces.

Declan describes how “the context of this project is the construction of a space for waiting and for exploiting the possibilities of waiting. While drawing distinctions between waiting situations as pleasure/play and waiting as punishment/pain, I fixed on the notion of reverie as a crucial condition for the encouragement of the positive possibilities of waiting, which include: rest, renewal, inspired creativity and a sense of satisfaction and wellbeing.” Declans doesn’t have a website but his work and work of many other students from Unit 14 at the Bartlett can be found here

Korean artist, Choe U Ram, creates massive, precision engineered sculptures with an eerie organic feel. He uses cut and polished metals, machinery and electronics to create kinetic sculptures inspired by sea creatures and plant life.

Exploring the boundaries of archeological discovery and developmental morphology, Choe’s explanations and Latin titles for these creations follow the linguistic traditions of scientific nomenclature.

Telling stories using gestural transformation and the tracing of imagined evolutionary stages, these pieces take on the silhouette of actual life forms, as intricate automata express a refined delicacy and weightlessness.

Unexpected and fantastical, Choe’s kinetic simulations cyclically breathe with movement that recalls aquatic propulsion, flight and ritualistic courtship displays.

About once every couple of months one of my students sends me a video of ART+COM‘s mechatronic installation, made up of 714 metal balls for the BMW museum. ART+COM describe it as “a spatial translation of a design process. Seemingly weightless and guided solely by the power of the mind, the sculpture moves through a cycle of free abstractions and typical BMW vehicle forms.”

I just came accross the work of Joe Gilbertsons formally similar kinetic installation and thought I’d place the two side by side. While one is majestic in its use of precision motors and software systems, there is something equally majestic in Gilbertson’s use of simple motors and cranks.

Exploded Axonometric of his most recent electro-acoustic system

Architect Richard Roberts electro-acoustic systems have been developed to explore the sonic properties of environments, and reveal the way in which sound and space co-habit one another. The system uses speakers and panels of resonating metal and gains its input and mode of operation through the cyclical feedback of sound waves from the environment in which it is placed. It is extremely reactive and capable of changing in real-time to anything that alters the acoustic properties of the environment that it exists within.

Richard using one of his electro-acoustic systems to explore the sonic properties of Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth

Through this work Richard describes how he “discovered that sound is an effective method with which one can explore first and second order cybernetic principles, and that any observer is an integral and inescapable part of their own acoustic space.” Richard explorative works are refined through iterative processes involving prototypes, experimental models, digital animations and drawings. His work is currently being presented at the Pask Present exhibition being held in Vienna from 26th March to 4th April 2008.

My recent work has been influenced a great deal by the work of Cybernetican Gordon Pask (1928-1996)  from his interactive installations to his work with Architects Cedric Price, John Fazer and Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte. Its always interesting to see how Pask’s work continues to inspire a range of contemporary art work so I was inteersted to find out from Network Performance about Roots (2005-06) by Roman Kirschner. Roots is a world with a fluid atmosphere in a glass tank. Dark crystals grow trying to make connections. Constellations develop. They generate sound. And after some time they dissolve into clouds.The installation is based on the model of a chemical computers devloped by Pask.

Electricity is pulsed through the whole Sculpture. It is the key to the constant transformation. Growth changes the flow of the current. The modified flow changes the growth. Software and Hardware leave the next step to the material. The voltages at each wire are put through a resonance filter and thus transformed into sound. The 4/4 pulse results in a sublime rhythm. Movie of Roots (QT 10,73MB) This piece will be presented as part of Nature [of Man] exhibition.

I was introduced to the work of Eric Schuldenfrei recently by Eyebeam Resident Jennifer Broutin. Schuldenfrei’s work focuses on the evolving relationship between animation, architecture, and art and has a diverse portfolio of projects that I couldn’t hope to all cover. Instead I will just cover one of his video pieces ‘Reciprocity‘ because of my own personal interest in reciprocal environments which I explored with my installation ‘Reciprocal Space‘. To look at more of Eric’s work visit his portfolio website.

Eric describes how “Theories of reciprocity… are used to describe relationships, mutually beneficial actions, situations of give and take, influence, correspondence, cause and effects within social structures. In reciprocity a relationship forms between those who operate and develop surveillance systems and those under surveillance.”

“Automatic digital collection systems and linked databases create highly contested spaces, raising questions of both security and privacy. Control is no longer conceived through building sections, plans, or perspectives, instead it is envisioned as a spatial construct in real-time, fully automated systems happening ubiquitously.”

The SplineGraft project sets up a reactive environment in which sound dampening panels are continuously reshaped by a network of actuating devices, triggered by user movement. The panels are grafted into an existing environment, supported by structural racks allowing a range of different configurations. The SplineGraft can be set in different overall shapes independent of its behavior. The different parts are grafted onto each other; the profiled polyurethane panels are articulated by the configuration of the structural racks. The texture of this primary form is reshaped in real time by the control system integrated in the structural racks; a continuous form finding process with emergent patterning effects. In return, the spline ridges of the panels disperse these transformations horizontally.

 
Structure

The supporting structural racks are assembled from cnc-milled clear acrylic units, each integrating the actuating mechanisms, milled tracks for cabling and etched nickel brass conduits for inter-unit connectivity. The angle between each structural component can be set in five different positions, allowing the rack to be set at a convex or concave configuration, while maintaining conductive links between each part. Each rack of five units is controlled by a micro controller, steering the integrated actuators in the form of dual shape memory alloy wires. The central intelligence of each rack communicates with neighboring racks through radio.

SplineGraft behavior

The behaviour of the SplineGraft is controlled by a genetic algorithm; a computer program that simulates and compresses the geologically slow processes of natural selection to nanoseconds of computational time, in order to evolve solutions to specific problems. The Spline Graft algorithm is in this way trying to emit patterns of movement which stimulate occupation of the space it has been grafted in to. The matching of sensor readings and motor reactions in an apparently intentional way by the Spline Graft, transforms architecture into a cybernetic agent involved in the making and production of space.

SplineGraft materials

CNC-milled acrylic structural components with integrated wiring, machined polyurethane foam, etched nickel brass conductors, IR Movement Sensor, custom made PCB Cards, AVR Atmega8 Microcontrollers, Radio Modules, diverse electronic components, Flexinol® shape memory alloy actuators with protective Teflon tubes. SplineGraft was developed by Krets partners Pablo Miranda and Jonas Runberger. A full list of credits are available on the project website.

My thanks to Chris aka Pixelsumo for the tip.

The NoRA structure designed by students of Architecture & Design, Aalborg University, was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale as an interactive architecture exploring how advanced architectural computing and sensor technology could attach the individual perception of place to temporary structures acting as agents for urban experiences. Architectural entities often closing up communication with the urban environment were questioned in a media architecture where the ‘capsules’ of urbanism contains a particular quality.

Excellent Paper that supports the Nora project and explores the ideas of Performative Urban Environments by Ole B. Jensen & Bo Stjerne Thomsen

Video of the making of Nora

In this way the moveable structure of NoRA embedded the potential for ‘in-between’ spaces to become new meaningful places and hence new types of ‘public domains’. This thinking leans on Performative Environments as a notion of what a building does instead of what it is, opening up for an urban architecture to be dynamic, open and facilitating self-organising, communicative environments for an organized complexity between flows of local interactions and network behaviour.

The design concept for NoRA was initiated through fluid dynamics software absorbing site characteristics as cultural movements, light and shadow into the organic mass. As a build structure NoRA was transported to the Island of San Servolo in Venice and programmed to release its variable sound and light scheme according to the movements of people around the building as well as a acting as a medium and stage setting for the users of the program facilities to project into the urban environment.

See Website

Here’s a full list all those involved, and my thanks to Bo for informing me of the project.