The speculative connections between music and architecture have been on the minds of various
thinkers for centuries. Beyond acoustics, the closest links between architecture and music exist in within the
dimensions which we take so much for granted: time and space- which even in the last century have gone through a radical phenomenological transformation thanks for Quantum Physics in which time is a malleable aspect beholden itself to functions of space. Inasmuch as architecture and music exist within time and space, their respective aesthetic functions are shaped solely by the existence of space and time's common physical denominator, gravity. Without gravity, the ravages of time would be null, and the existence of space would be formless and arbitrary.
Architecture's Relation to Time:
The unease provoked by the interesection of time and architecture is triggered by conflicts that run at deeper levels of modern consciousness. It is not just that time in the form of past history and future duration eats away at the flesh of architecture and suberts its spirit, as the Modernists believed. Critical theory, cognitive science, and metaphysics are fields in which architecture and time are often seen to contradict and undermine each other. In wasys seemingly fundamental t cognitive life, architecture and time are considered antithetical both in the surface hostilities already reviewed and as regions of inherent incompatibility. They appear so antithetical that it can be difficult even to contemplate them in the same conceptual space. THis conflict is embedded in the structure of western thought and linguistic practice but t came into the open only in odern times as the ideology of chronicide.
Only by adopting an expanded definition of the word Architecture, can we overcome the conventional restraints that have kept our culturally inherited conception of Time's relation to Architecture stagnant despite the increasing expansion of our understanding and experience of both. Our current understanding of Architecture is rooted in the renaissance conception of the fine arts, including painting and sculpture which are united by the concept of design. One of the great legacies of the seismic shift in Architectural thinking ushered in by the emergence of Post-Modernity, has been to define architecture as existing beyond the confines of engineering, practicality, modes of visual and spatial aesthetics, and self-contained contextual designation. It's existence and phenomenological importance are rooted in a human need as essential as eating, sleeping, or social cohesion: in effect, it is the embodiment of all aspects of human human survival. The fact that language, music, and architecture are universal expressions of human culture is undeniable. What distinguishes Architecture form these other forms however, is it's linkage to the fine arts. Where language and music are primarily aural expressions that exist independently of a correlative visual syntax such as print or notation, our experience of architecture is just as much aesthetically visual as it is spatial and socially contextualized. Indeed, it is from Architecture that the other fine arts, sculpture and painting, emerged before becoming discrete and autonomous practices in and of themselves. The impact that architecture has had on it's companion expressions of language and music is irrefutable as well. Gregorian and Tibetan chant can be considered a sonified aspect of the architectures which gave rise to their orders, with cathedral acoustics playing the deciding role in the evolution of western liturgical music, which literally echoes in Opera, and the subsequent musics of the Baroque, and classical period. The cathedral literally becomes the source of music. With language as well, what would be the purpose of recording histories, poetry, or literature without a providing a sanctuary from the elements for the fragile material that carry their meaning. The printed word, the structure of music, the existence of painting, sculpture, and social order all emerge from that one discipline that creates space while negating time and allowing it to become a malleable aspect of the human experience.
"From its origins, in its very invention architecture was bound up with and made great demands on the human capacity for rational thought and action. This conversely made architectural thought and practice a deeply rational thing, who's logic aligned necessarily with the all powerful forces and contingencies of the world that architecture categorically needed to accommodate. Thereby, through a long and incompletely understood process of intellectual formation, many primary cognitive concepts came to be closely connected with architecture and expressed through its terms. Embedded in this condition are fundamental dimensions of language and thought, ranging from speech habits to ingrained cognitive structures. This is manifest in everyday life whenever we say that we plan something, build a strcuture in any aspect of our livs, construct an edifice of meaning for knowledge, cover a subject or find a foundation or ground for the structur of an argument and so forth ad infinitum. The innermost logical and operative relationships of computers, systems, and networks are considered to have- to be- an architecture. Such architectural metaphor is commonly spun out further.
One uses metaphors from architecture to articulate our thoughts because the processes of design and construction...relte to basic mental operations and basic psychological needs...the appeal of architecture and of architectural imaery alike is that they meet essential needs, and do so in a way that nothing else can.
Architecture is the primary way that we humans endow the world with spatial order. Music, once understood space, became the second...
(Building in Time, Trachtenberg, pg. 9)
Architecture finds contention with the outer world's temporal experience of time through gravity and the elements, Music finds it's contention with our own inner world of temporal experience through memory.
So the next question which must be posed, given quantum mechanics relations of time to space, can architecture itself BECOME time rather than exist as an object which resists it? If this can be accomplished, what implications, if any, does it have to the arts which it has delivered?
Tho understand how this multilevel conflict is implicated in modern architectural culture, we need first to gather a wider view of what is meant by the word "architecture". Only thus will it be grasped how virulently chronophobia works at a deeper discursive and cultural level. Whenever one uses the term architecture as though it had some self-evident and clearly defined meaning, one could not be further from the truth. Architecture is a polysemic, protean concept. It involves more than built buildings, or designs for them, or theory about designs, or the practice of making them, or the history of all these things
Non-Linearity: Music outside of Time and the Persistence of Memory
In as much as gravity is a critical function of architecture, so too memory is to music. The perceptual faculties that allow us to sequentially and heirarchically make sense of events that happen over time posses a physiological structure of their own that in addition to allowing us to make sense of the present, also allows us to make predictions based on past criteria. Music, can therefore be understood in this context as evolving to satisfy these faculties as they exist physiologically, which has led to much discussion of an idea of a universal music, or principles of music that transcend culture, time, and context. Architecture and Music contrasted in this regard can be said to reflect two distinct yet related experiences and necessities: Architecture reflecting the necessity for shelter and the evolution and sustanence of culture, and Music, the necessity to appease the mechinations of the human mind's capacity to perceive and understand the passage of time and our relation to it. It is no wonder then, that one influences the other. The purpose of this section however, is not to go into detail about how architectures and musics influence each other, but how the discrete psychological experience of music can be compared and contrasted and the psychological experience of architecture, and how our respective macro and micro temporal memories and experiences direct the evolution of these practices.
A series of standing waves which cancel each other out and create a silent space dependent upon the proximity of
people in a room. The location of the person is tracked by a motion sensor or camera, and if any one of them moves
outside of the proper designated space, the structure collapses by producing a horrid noise.
C.)HOW ARCHITECTURE IS RELATED TO TIME
-It takes a great amount of time to build a building and it structurally has to be designed to withstand the ravages
and passing of time
-Architecture is static, which is to say that one's aesthetic experience temporally is dependent upon how one moves
through the structure.
D.)HOW MUSIC IS RELATED TO TIME
-Music is an aesthetic expression of the passage of time and it's structure is totally beholden to our concept of
and experience of time, time determines how formal musical aesthetics are defined.
-Music is kinetic, which is to say that one's aesthetic experience temporally is based on how the music moves through
time and there is only one expression of those connections that can be experience at one time: which is to say
that despite the fact that various note combinations can yeild a variable amount of musical output, since music
traces the passage of time, only a very finite number of expressions can be conceived at one time and indeed, an
entire composition is judged based on these finite expressions.
E.)HOW ARCHITECTURE IS RELATED TO SPACE
-Architecture is the art of framing empty space, which is to say that one's aesthetic experience of space is based
not only on how the architecture itself looks, but also how architecture creates the space being inhabited.
-Architectureconceptually charges space based on scale, aesthetics, and function, one's perception of space is inferred
rather than directly acted upon.
-The emergence of virtual space has made the possibilities of what is architecturally feasible greatly expanded
than it has been in any other period in history. Digital technology has also given birth to liquid architecture
which is functional architecture that is not beholden to the laws of engineering and temporality that normally apply
and the virtual structures themselves are directly maleable and fluid. In this way, digital technology has made
Architecture a static as well as kinetic form.
F.) HOW MUSIC IS RELATED TO SPACE
-Music both frames space conceptually and affects space perceptually and physically. That is to say that music
that would be played in a church is inherently different than that which would be played in a night club.
Given spaces have correspondingly appropriate forms of music. Sound, which IS music, is combined pressure waves
acting in a given environment on physical space and it's propogation is dependent on how an instrument is constructed
to have a given effect on space consistently over time.
-The emergence of digital technology as applied to music and sound has created music from sounds that could otherwise
not be created by a musician using traditional means. Digital technology has made music a static form, which is to
say that the creative act is no longer restricted to performance, but is expanded to listening and becomes more
akin to activities such as drawing and writing. Digital technology has made music both a static and kinetic
activity simultaneously.
G.) WHY COMBINE MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
-Our experiences of music and architecture are inherently separate, yet critically related. In order to experience
a more mind expanding experiential perception of time and space, by combining music and architecture into a new
field aesthetic field, new possibilities present themselves not only for the expression and creation of this new
form, but also to help continue to advance music and architecture separately.
Part 1: WHY EARLY COMPUTER LOGIC?
-the most obvious material thread connecting music with architecture is digital representation of information.
Depending on the interface and how one encodes data, one body of information can be represented as different things.
That is to say, a body of data written in Csound can be conversely represented as architecture in autocad if the
right conditions are applied. Architecture was one of the first disciplines to embrace digital technology, and many
developments in digital technology can trace their routes back to languages and logic that were developed for
architectural application. Being that this is the case, the matrices, graphs, etc. that one encounters lend them
selves to being more heavily depenedent on drawing and pen/paper activities than strictly digital which co-incides
with my own predilicitions toward drawing, painting and writing. The geometric and mathematical
principles involved in representing architecture digitally can be appllied to the geometrical theory of music developed
by Dmitri Tymozcko.
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