Project for Venice XII International Architectural Biennale : People meet in Architecture. An interactive installation to analyse and combine the aural and the visual
STATEMENT : PEOPLE MEET IN ARCHITECTURE Venice XII International Architectural Biennale
PROJECT: EMOTIONAL SPACE
An interactive installation to analyse and combine the aural and the visual
Architecture as a whole, with its substance, external forms and texture, is a sound waiting to be heard and a very small gesture can release it. (Alain Gunst)
Keywords: perception-based cityscape / interactivity / laughter as a transmission
REALISATION – WORK PRINCIPLE
The project involves an exhibition space with sensor triggered lighting. We will use cylindrical interactive forms or towers, (which represent the towns of Estonia).
Each tower will be equipped with touch-sensitive surfaces. Hugging or touching a tower will activate a dialogue, the sound of laughter. Vocal and sub-vocal laughter, different in timbre, rhythm, mood. If the towers are touched simultaneously this will create a polyphonic mix of sounds that uniquely recreates itself in each unit of time.
The interiors of the towers will be small interactive laboratories completed in cooperation between architects and artists, which are associated with features characteristic of the perception of space in each town
PROBLEM
It can be argued that the modern city has lost much of its ability to function as a space for communication.
Since we are oriented towards the visual, we tend to ignore data received from other senses such as hearing, touch and smell.
Architectural space can be perceived in various ways, each of which provides a new channel for communicating with city residents.
We are interested in the combined effect of auditory and visual perception on the subconscious, the resulting preferences and opportunities for their application in the the contemporary arts domain.
The invisible city space does not open up to us in any other way, but through the auditory process, knowledge and analyses. Therefore, we propose a research project aimed at identifying a new criteria of cityscape.
CONCEPT
The project will consist of touch-sensitive towers that represent the historical and contemporary urban space of Estonians. How do Estonians live with towers? How can we use towers to create a common communication space for city dwellers?
We will observe the emergence and regulation of emotions related to towers. We will monitor their ability to make us respond to their presence and position ourselves in the cityscape. It will therefore become a personal task to create a new communication model of cityscape by means of movements and activities.
SOLUTIONS
COMMUNICATION TOWERS
The tower as an architectural element originates from the mediaeval city. In Estonia the idea of axis mundi is embodied in the shape of the tower. Thus the meaning of the mythological world tree is implicated in the tower. Since the 20th century the tower has very rapidly found new use in the cityscape. Having often experienced the tower as a prison or a watchtower, modern Estonians have had an opportunity to shut themselves away in their own ivory towers. So the invitation – “come out of your tower” – is really an invitation to join in normal social life, to reach out and to learn a new language of communication in the cityscape. In so doing, one issue to consider is why the tower has emerged at the forefront of the modern city and what socio-semiotic message it conveys in the framework of the ‘city text’.
PLACE – SPACE – A MEETING SPACE
Different urban spaces in Estonia, a relatively small country by European standards, are extremely dependent on a “significant invisible presence“ with sounds, smells and lights that speak, indicate, highlight and establish relations.
What is the space under consideration? What are its relations with the visitors? What actually happens if the ear captures a familiar sound in an urban space? Could laughter function as an lost key, which opens doors to the spatial imagination?
Being open, patens, it opens itself further - by hiding figures, images, movements, lines. It does not open spontaneously. It opens from the moment changes start taking place in it. Therefore, space is not preceded by such forms as depth. Speaking of figures, it is not a fixed basis or content, but rather a huge field that binds and transforms figures in a never-ending alteration through them.
ABSTRACT LAUGHTER – a transmission that shapes the dialogue
The cry of a newborn, whispers of lovers, screams of sufferers, groans of ecstasy or the last gasp of the dying, there is always a voice present – fast, moving, invisible. A smoothly rolling voice image somersaults now and then on its way. We would like to study one such tumble in our research: what is laughter and how does it relate to the cityscape?
The meaning of laughter depends on its musicality, tonality, tinge and timbre in rhythmic movements. We could presume that laughter slides off the tongue and flows into the ear. It is a piece of the body that flows, a piece that is looking for a place to fasten itself to - perpetuum mobile - because it ignores immobility.
The psychological nature of laughter has been studied before - Kant, Descartes, Hobbes, Schoppenhauer et al. The phono-aesthetic character of laughter has not yet been completely explained by philosophers, so it is floating and vibrating as a useful readymade, which we have freedom to discuss. From the acoustic point of view there is still much undiscovered and unanalysed in laughter. What is the sound solely characteristic of laughter? Is it vocal or sub-vocal? What is its relationship with a meeting space? What is the tonality that changes the mode of the space?
.
Project for Venice XII International Architectural Biennale : People meet in Architecture. An interactive installation to analyse and combine the aural and the visual
STATEMENT : PEOPLE MEET IN ARCHITECTURE Venice XII International Architectural Biennale
PROJECT: EMOTIONAL SPACE
An interactive installation to analyse and combine the aural and the visual
Architecture as a whole, with its substance, external forms and texture, is a sound waiting to be heard and a very small gesture can release it. (Alain Gunst)
Keywords: perception-based cityscape / interactivity / laughter as a transmission
REALISATION – WORK PRINCIPLE
The project involves an exhibition space with sensor triggered lighting. We will use cylindrical interactive forms or towers, (which represent the towns of Estonia).
Each tower will be equipped with touch-sensitive surfaces. Hugging or touching a tower will activate a dialogue, the sound of laughter. Vocal and sub-vocal laughter, different in timbre, rhythm, mood. If the towers are touched simultaneously this will create a polyphonic mix of sounds that uniquely recreates itself in each unit of time.
The interiors of the towers will be small interactive laboratories completed in cooperation between architects and artists, which are associated with features characteristic of the perception of space in each town
PROBLEM
It can be argued that the modern city has lost much of its ability to function as a space for communication.
Since we are oriented towards the visual, we tend to ignore data received from other senses such as hearing, touch and smell.
Architectural space can be perceived in various ways, each of which provides a new channel for communicating with city residents.
We are interested in the combined effect of auditory and visual perception on the subconscious, the resulting preferences and opportunities for their application in the the contemporary arts domain.
The invisible city space does not open up to us in any other way, but through the auditory process, knowledge and analyses. Therefore, we propose a research project aimed at identifying a new criteria of cityscape.
CONCEPT
The project will consist of touch-sensitive towers that represent the historical and contemporary urban space of Estonians. How do Estonians live with towers? How can we use towers to create a common communication space for city dwellers?
We will observe the emergence and regulation of emotions related to towers. We will monitor their ability to make us respond to their presence and position ourselves in the cityscape. It will therefore become a personal task to create a new communication model of cityscape by means of movements and activities.
SOLUTIONS
COMMUNICATION TOWERS
The tower as an architectural element originates from the mediaeval city. In Estonia the idea of axis mundi is embodied in the shape of the tower. Thus the meaning of the mythological world tree is implicated in the tower. Since the 20th century the tower has very rapidly found new use in the cityscape. Having often experienced the tower as a prison or a watchtower, modern Estonians have had an opportunity to shut themselves away in their own ivory towers. So the invitation – “come out of your tower” – is really an invitation to join in normal social life, to reach out and to learn a new language of communication in the cityscape. In so doing, one issue to consider is why the tower has emerged at the forefront of the modern city and what socio-semiotic message it conveys in the framework of the ‘city text’.
PLACE – SPACE – A MEETING SPACE
Different urban spaces in Estonia, a relatively small country by European standards, are extremely dependent on a “significant invisible presence“ with sounds, smells and lights that speak, indicate, highlight and establish relations.
What is the space under consideration? What are its relations with the visitors? What actually happens if the ear captures a familiar sound in an urban space? Could laughter function as an lost key, which opens doors to the spatial imagination?
Being open, patens, it opens itself further - by hiding figures, images, movements, lines. It does not open spontaneously. It opens from the moment changes start taking place in it. Therefore, space is not preceded by such forms as depth. Speaking of figures, it is not a fixed basis or content, but rather a huge field that binds and transforms figures in a never-ending alteration through them.
ABSTRACT LAUGHTER – a transmission that shapes the dialogue
The cry of a newborn, whispers of lovers, screams of sufferers, groans of ecstasy or the last gasp of the dying, there is always a voice present – fast, moving, invisible. A smoothly rolling voice image somersaults now and then on its way. We would like to study one such tumble in our research: what is laughter and how does it relate to the cityscape?
The meaning of laughter depends on its musicality, tonality, tinge and timbre in rhythmic movements. We could presume that laughter slides off the tongue and flows into the ear. It is a piece of the body that flows, a piece that is looking for a place to fasten itself to - perpetuum mobile - because it ignores immobility.
The psychological nature of laughter has been studied before - Kant, Descartes, Hobbes, Schoppenhauer et al. The phono-aesthetic character of laughter has not yet been completely explained by philosophers, so it is floating and vibrating as a useful readymade, which we have freedom to discuss. From the acoustic point of view there is still much undiscovered and unanalysed in laughter. What is the sound solely characteristic of laughter? Is it vocal or sub-vocal? What is its relationship with a meeting space? What is the tonality that changes the mode of the space?
.