Tag: architecture

Camille Norment – Plexus

A video of the artist Camille Norment in conversation with musician, author, and curator David Toop about Camille Norment: Plexus, her exhibition at Dia Chelsea in 2022. Toop has long engaged with Norment’s practice. He contributed to the Camille Norment: Rapture (2015), and is a contributor to Plexus’s accompanying publication from Dia….Continue Reading Camille Norment – Plexus

Visualizations of Reverberation – Toward the Circle

“Toward the Circle” is silent short film created by Zackery Belangerduring a research residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. It presents a sequence of enclosures, each with a simulated burst of sound energy, that hints at an important relationship between sound and architecture….Continue Reading Visualizations of Reverberation – Toward the Circle

99% Invisible – 236- Reverb

Through a combination of passive and active acoustics, architects and acousticians can control the sounds of spaces to fit any kind of need. With sound-proofing and selective-amplification, we can add reverb or take it away. We can make churches sound like clubs and clubs sound like opera houses. This degree of acoustic control, however, is…Continue Reading 99% Invisible – 236- Reverb

Julian Treasure: Why architects need to use their ears

Because of poor acoustics, students in classrooms miss 50 percent of what their teachers say and patients in hospitals have trouble sleeping because they continually feel stressed. Julian Treasure sounds a call to action for designers to pay attention to the “invisible architecture” of sound. This video is a good accompaniment to many other posts…Continue Reading Julian Treasure: Why architects need to use their ears

NASA – Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility

Technician examines one of the high frequency horns in the Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility at NASA Glenn Research Center’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. How loud is 166 decibels? It’s about as loud as the thrust of 20 jet engines or a rock concert with 36,000 speakers. It’s also the level of noise some…Continue Reading NASA – Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility

Cities Unlocked, Sound-Based System for Guiding Blind People Through Cities

On a typical day, Jennifer Bottom makes her way around London with her guide dog in tow. Sometimes, “I just wander about, ask people and get directions,” she says. “But if you’re not comfortable with that or you don’t have a lot of free time, it can be quite frustrating and scary.” Enter Cities Unlocked, a…Continue Reading Cities Unlocked, Sound-Based System for Guiding Blind People Through Cities

Korinsky – Volum in the Berliner Dom

from Everyday Listening: Korinsky is a Berlin-based art collective using technologies and the knowledge about human hearing processes to create sound installations that play with the contrast of visual and acoustic impressions. The thrilling and quite intimidating architecture of the cathedral church is the central space of the soundinstallation „Volum“ at the Berliner Dom. The…Continue Reading Korinsky – Volum in the Berliner Dom

Alvin Lucier – I am Sitting in a Room (1981)

The first recording of I am sitting in a room was made at the Electronic Music Studio at Brandeis University in 1969. This recording, from October 29 and 31, 1980, was created in the living room of Lucier’s home in Middletown, Connecticut. It consists of thirty-two generations of the composer’s speech and was made expressly for…Continue Reading Alvin Lucier – I am Sitting in a Room (1981)

Dream House – La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela

When walking down Church Street in Tribeca, keep an eye out for a black door with a cryptic white sign that reads THE DREAM HOUSE. Although this is not your typical dream house with a 4-door garage, it guarantees to be a one-of-a-kind experience, with its completely absorbing, constantly fluctuating soundwaves accompanied by neon pink…Continue Reading Dream House – La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela

Janette Sadik-Khan – Honk, Honk, Aaah

Janette Sadik-Khan, the former Commissioner of Transportation under Mayor Bloomburg, was instrumental in creating pedestrian plazas throughout the city. Besides becoming places where one might stop and rest or eat lunch, they have an impact on the movement of traffic — and therefore, NOISE. here’s how an article from New York Magazine (available online) describes…Continue Reading Janette Sadik-Khan – Honk, Honk, Aaah

Stillspotting – Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta – To a Great City

http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org https://snohetta.com/project/31-stillspotting-guggenheim While the vitality and stimulation of the urban environment can be pleasant, those living in or visiting densely populated areas, such as New York, can have wildly different experiences. The ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; the struggle for mental and physical space; and the anxious need for constant communication in person…Continue Reading Stillspotting – Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta – To a Great City

Reverberation and Echo – Echo Bridge, Massachusetts

Built in the 1870s, this forty-metre wide arch spans the Charles River. There are steps down to a specially built platform so visitors can test out the sound effect. In September 1948 Arthur Taber Jones wrote to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, detailing a small study. ‘A handlcapp [sic] is returned in…Continue Reading Reverberation and Echo – Echo Bridge, Massachusetts

Cities and Memory – Mapping the real and imagined sounds of the world

Cities and Memory is a sound project that attempts to record both the present reality of a place, but also its imagined, alternative counterpart – remixing the world, one sound at at time. Every faithful field recording document here is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time…Continue Reading Cities and Memory – Mapping the real and imagined sounds of the world

Liminal – The Organ of Corti

Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that recycles noise from the environment. It does not make any sound of its own, but rather it attempts to draw our attention to the sounds already present by framing them in a new way. Named after the organ of hearing in the inner ear, it uses the acoustic technology of sonic crystals to accentuate and attenuate frequencies within the broad range of sound present in road traffic or falling water. By recycling surplus sounds from our environment, we hope to challenge expectations of what might constitute a piece of music by adding nothing to the existing soundscape but rather offering new ways of listening to what is already there. This instrument is a device that, for us, rematerializes our experience of sound, inviting us to “listen to ourselves listen”….Continue Reading Liminal – The Organ of Corti

99% Invisible – Sound and Feel

Chris Downey explains it like this, “Beethoven continued to write music, even some of his best music, after he lost his hearing…What’s more preposterous, composing music you can’t hear, or designing architecture you can’t see?” Chris Downey had been an architect for 20 years before he lost his sight. It would be understandable to think…Continue Reading 99% Invisible – Sound and Feel

Stephen Vitiello – Sounds Building In The Fading Light

Recorded during a 5 month period on the 91st floor of The World Trade Center. Inexpensive contact microphones were fixed to the windows and routed into a mixing board, tweaked by equalization and a Sherman Filter Bank. Additional experiments were done at night with an amplified photocell placed into the eye of a telescope. http://www.stephenvitiello.com/…Continue Reading Stephen Vitiello – Sounds Building In The Fading Light

Jacob Kirkegaard – 4 rooms: Gymnasium

It’s been said that many make sacrifices for their music, but, in the recording of 4 Rooms, Jacob Kirkegaard went above and beyond. Almost 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster, Kirkegaard traveled into the villages surrounding Chernobyl, places largely uninhabited and still teeming with radiation, an unheard and unseen but never forgotten result of Reactor 4’s fateful meltdown in April 1986….Continue Reading Jacob Kirkegaard – 4 rooms: Gymnasium