I’ve been trying to come up with a way to make music and architecture that same the share the same sets of corressponding data. Where the variable integral elements can obey the constraints of ratios and geometrical frameworks etc that funtion analogously to each other. I recently came across a book at a used bookstore called pamphlet architecture 16 Architecture a s a translation of music. What I have found in this book, as well as in my own musings about architecture and music, is that there are as many intersections between music and architecture, between shaping sound and structuring space as there are forms of music, or types of buildings. There is not one hard and fast translation, which is what I ha ve been wraking my brain over. This dilemma, the dilemma of arbitrary assignment to form plagued me for quite a while, and prevented me from earnestly beginning my pursuit into this endeavor. One chapter from this delightful pamphlet began to change my attitude.
“Let’s say, simply for a point of departure, that there exixts a definable membrane through which meaning can move when translating from one discipline to another. What I mean by membrane is a thin, pliable layer that connects two things and is, in this case, the middle position of music + architecture. The membrane is similar perhaps to the role of a semi-tone or semi-vowel in the study of phonetics, a transitional sound heard during articualtion linking two phonemically contiguios sounds, like the y sound head between the ie and the e of quiet. I am suggesting that something similar occurs, a y-condition in the middle position of music + architecture when translating one to the other.
Louis Kahn once described great architecture as that which starts with the immeasurable, proceeds through the measurable, and retuns to the immeasuralbe. He was describing a process by which the spark of genius in an idea is carried by way of investigation, drawing, na d construction into a finished opiece of architecture. In this case, starting at the immeasurable is beginning to explore the y-condition of music + architecture. Although music+ architecture have different phenomenal presences, the underlying organization of their respective formal sttructures and colloquialism are similar. The aim of this investigation is to explore as a design tool the idea of translation defined as a “rendering of the same ideas in a different language from the original.” This is accomplished by searching for a methodlolgy that may led to a means of expression for the y-conditi9on of music + architecture. The y-conditon explores the two art forms in a comparative way, as far as necessary liomits will allow, and through experimentation discovers that there exists between them a consisten and organic union. A relationship starts in the physical laws of light and optics on the one hand, and sound and hearing on the other. In theeir rudimentary media of expression, such as notes, meters, tones and lines, colors and geometrical forms, the union is carried on by their respective systems of artistic and imaginative compsition, design and execution.
The focus of the y-condition project ws to create and define a methodology. because the exploration in itself was more important than the specifics of any one programm, I chose a program and site that exist only in theory. I searched for a program that by its very6 nature is resosnant with theories of minimal music.
BAS Arquitectos
Using Elizabeth’s essay as a jumping point for my own project, I was able to get a firm foundation upon which to build my first real virtual environment. I envisioned the structure, the space itself as a literal translation of a song I had been working on in ableton live. the placement of the midi notes on a piano roll, their proximity to each other as events and their durations formed the basis for the structure. Since the body of the musical piece is broken into two sections, where the notated primary form repeats itself 4 times, twice of which is done in reverse, I decided that the actual form of the builing itself should be restricted to emulate only the first sequence of notes.
As i was modeling and designing the space I listened to the track over and over again
I had alredy begun a way to compromise the lack of thre dimensionality by determining that the axis of proximity (z) would be characterized by the number of effects and their levels of automation. The literal floors of the space would be represtented by the automation lines corresponding to gain or volume. The building itself is comprised of a shell broken into 6 levels with windows that correspond to the lengths of grouped measures with the architectural form encased within it. Due to the minimal, sparse and acoustically BIG sound of the music, I chose poured concrete as the represntative material to create a very long brutalistic space.
The song was composed with the formal principals of minimalist music in mind, and are aspects which I have gone through minor strain to translate into architecture. Simplicity, repetition, illusiosn/perception, events, phase-shifting, complexity and sudden alterations of density.
Minimal music focuses on repetitive cycles where the basic form is repeated and where smaller units with different rhythms are added like a wheel work.
The music is modular in that the schemas (wheels of repetition) can be redistributed and connected in different ways yeilding multiple outcomes.
The mayan perception of time bodes well to the minimal ethos of composition, with the day as the pulse.
Minimal repetition: Creats a feeling of movement. The Pulse pulls attention away from the details of the form to the overall process. The piece of music is literally the process.-incorporate chaos theory so that the cycles start at the same and gradually fall out of phase creating new space. Construct THAT in maya.
Object-Space relationships: Sudden alterations of density. One modular figure is stretched and contracted over a constant pattern of sound material.
Layered Planes: Creates textures of musical planes by meshing different tempos and rhythmic patterns. Penetrates the inner essence of sound by bringing out the simplicity and complesxity. The various planal layers have points of alignment in accordance with classical harmonic modal tendencies forming dispersed chord progressions with long decays that necessitate a gradual transposition of incidental harmonies generated by the components of the music’s overall modular structure.
Phase-Shifting: Focuses on repetitive cycles where the basic form is repeated and phase shifted. This is a device used where a fixed part repeats the basic pattern throughout the piece while the second parts accelerate to take it out of phase.
(If each percussive event can stand in for a place where a beam would be set [start easy with minimal techno] the downbeat and the snare hit alternate with the downbeat being constant and forming the edge of the outer wall.
Music and architecture both objectively shape, occupy, frame, and activate space while they also functionally contextulize, and semantically define space. This inverse relationship helps us to think aesthetically and formally about the intersections.
oNE OF THGE DEFINING aspects of virtual architecture that separates it from physical architecture is it’s lack of site. The liberation of context determined by location opens up a huge realm of aesthetic possibilities. Virtual architecture is architecture for architecture’s sake. Direct control of sounds and spaces mean that a poetic expressionistic element is inadvertantly and inextricalbly intoroduced to what would other wise be a dry and logically constrained field.
Bifurcated Aural Space: A Definition
Music and architecture intersect in a multitude of ways, and the discrete abstract dimension, the digital domain, in which they intersect, I refer to as Bifurcated Aural Space.
Space in it's totality divided into two dimensions, the physically tangible, and the seemingly intangible, or occupied space and neutral space. But thanks to recent developments in experimental physics and mathematics, it has been revealed that our still cherished perceptions of these spaces are fundamentally flawed, and that their interrelations posses implications to our notions of reality and aesthetic and phenomenological perceptions of culture and artefact that have been hitherto unthinkable. In addition to our overall goal of this project's revelation of such hidden dimensions and criteria, our desire is to create a common language in which virtual architectural objects can be expressed sonically The objects themselves and, their virtual dimensions, material attributes, and the manners in which they occupy space can be simultaneously expressed as musical structure and composition.
For centuries, artists, philosophers, musicians and architects have mused on the possible intersections that exist between music and architecture. Due to the extremely advanced state of computer technology, this has become a quickly expanding field of interest, the implications of which have the potential to advance development in building practices, musicology, acoustics, geometry and computer science.
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