Sunday, March 18, 2012

But music is not molten architecture?

SO. Lately in my work I have been confronted with the task of resolving music and architecture.
check this article out, I found it was a very interesting addition to the discussion:

AUDIO ARCHITECTURE

[Note: This post was originally written for Blend – so it reads a bit like an article – though it was not actually published].

The company known as Muzak claims to provide "audio architecture" for its clients.
Audio architecture may sound wonderful; the phrase may conjure up images of cathedrals made from noise – whole buildings connected by bridges of music – but, in the world of Muzak, it means something less exciting. Audio architecture, Muzak writes, is "the integration of music, voice and sound to create experiences designed specifically for your business."
In other words, audio architecture is about making you feel comfortable – so that someone else can sell you things.
The "power" of audio architecture, Muzak's website continues, "lies in its subtlety." These subtle sounds, played incessantly in the background, can "bypass the resistance of the mind and target the receptiveness of the heart." It is thus almost literally subliminal. "When people are made to feel good in, say, a store, they feel good about that store. They like it," Muzak claims. "Audio architecture builds a bridge to loyalty. And loyalty is what keeps brands alive."
If there is a connection between background sounds and customer loyalty, perhaps sound could also inspire a kind of urban loyalty, where the sound of a certain city plays its own subtle role in making that place more inhabitable.
Like Muzak, the city’s sound makes residents "feel good" – which "builds a bridge to [urban] loyalty."

Of course, this would not be the first time someone has suggested that cities have a certain sound, unique to them, or that cities should learn to cultivate their unique sonic qualities.
More than thirty years ago, the World Soundscape Project called for the "tuning" of the world. Cities would be treated as vast musical instruments: certain sounds would be eliminated altogether; others would be promoted or even subtly redesigned. The World Soundscape Project was about sonic improvement, making the world sound better, one city – one building – at a time.
Where the Project went wrong, however, and where it began to act a bit like Muzak, was when it thought it had a kind of sonic monopoly over what sounded good. Industrial noises would be scrubbed from the city, for instance, and a nostalgic calm would be infused in its place. Think church bells, not automobiles.
But where would such sensory cleansing leave those of us who enjoy the sounds of factories...?
In any case, we could still have fun with the World Soundscape Project, designing alternative sonic futures for the cities of the world, by turning, ironically, to the techniques of Muzak itself: Muzak imitates. Rock, jazz, blues, Mozart – even Muzak: anything at all can be absorbed, and replaced, and reproduced, by Muzak.
There could be a Muzak version of the street sounds of Amsterdam – played on a continuous loop in the supermarkets of London. The sounds of yesterday could be replayed today, transformed into Muzak – and Muzak versions of your old phone conversations could be broadcast over the radio... where laughter is replaced with synthesizer trills.
University lectures and Books on Tape could be replaced with Muzak, pushing us toward a post-verbal society.
Or we forget Muzak altogether and we simply swap urban soundtracks, cities imitating cities to sound entirely unlike themselves.
In the elevators of the Empire State Building, you hear the elevators of the Eiffel Tower. The sounds of the Paris Metro are replaced with the sounds of the Beijing subway, complete with squeals from overworked brakes and the metallic thud of sliding doors.
If you don’t like Rome, you can make it sound like Dubai.

In his 1964 novel Nova Express, William Burroughs described a series of elaborate, even hallucinatory, assemblages of tape recorders and microphones that could be carried from city to city.
Borderless, these roving sound installations, with their capacity for instant playback, would blur the line between your own thought processes and the sounds of the city around you. Like Muzak, Burroughs's legion of rogue microphonists could thus "bypass the resistance of the mind," installing a soundtrack where there once had been thought.
A few years ago I read about a sound artist who had been reproducing the exact placement of microphones used to record the live performances of orchestras around the world, only he did so in unexpected places: in the middle of rain forests, or on top of sand dunes, or in towns on the English coast and inside empty warehouses.
Whether or not the story’s even true, recording the everyday noises of, say, Oslo as if Oslo is an ongoing symphony – and then re-playing that symphony through hidden speakers in San Francisco – perhaps even transforming it into Muzak – should certainly be the next artistic step.
It would be a question of acoustic urban design – of true audio architecture.
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I find myself trying to deal with this concept of music and architecture. long has it been established that these two fields are the two mostly related. But then how is architecture, which is like the music of space, directly communicate the musicality of its intentions? I mean if architecture is always music, then how do you make it specially musical?

This school of architecture is one of the most interesting I found. The firm remixed gothic architecture into a contemporary school of music at OU


Catlett Music Center



this picture of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama was very interesting for me. But not for its school but for the skyscraper in the background with its intense musical rhythm. The idea of stacking and layering seems to be important.




in this design for the music school at MIT

it seems that the visuals is the important aspect, that people playing music is what lends the building its musical character. these are incidentally the same people who designed the concert hall in montreal. I find interesting the difference in realization. But that is a discussion for another time.


this is what an accordionist's suggestions which i found interesting, his preferred choice was that of the completely non abstract one.... interesting.

This german music school was one of the more interesting ones as well. I found the use of darkness quite intriguing.


In terms of the potential of music for architecture, I am tired of the little visual 'tics' that seem to be so often reproduced, patterns of materials on the walls to remind us of sheet music seem to be the most common.... this worked out better then the schulic school though that might be because of the scale.

something like this mexican school appeals to me much more. I think the orchestration of materiality and form as a whole and not as a metaphor is more interesting. if architecture is frozen music then maybe I do not need to concern myself with music too specifically, for it is an innate characteristic of the work already? Robert Oshatz did  not architect with the idea of music in mind but I find his works highly lyrical.

Elk Rock Interview with Robert Oshatz: The Natural Beauty and Lyrical Music of ArchitectureMiyasaka House 5 Interview with Robert Oshatz: The Natural Beauty and Lyrical Music of Architecture
there is something there, and in the mexican school below that makes me excited about the possibility of music and architecture.





2 comments:

  1. for some reasons, I can not see the pictures...

    I think in architecture, scale plays an important role, and the constant shifting and changing scales may result in interesting architectural qualities.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I mean some pictures, I see the first two and the german music school

    ReplyDelete