Summary: The text explores the intricate relationship between sound and space, viewing sound as a spatial event, material phenomenon, and auditive experience. It draws parallels between architecture and sound design, emphasizing their shared impact on spatial perception. Concepts such as the invisible architecture of sonically perceived spaces and the creative possibilities of altering narratives through sound are discussed.
Key Concepts:
- Spatial Metaphor:
- Sound is described as an integral part of architectural processes, modifying, positioning, reflecting, or reverberating within built spaces.
- The analogy between music, sound art, sound design, and architecture is explored, emphasizing the significance of the sonic dimension in spatial evaluation.
- Sound Design as Architectural Process:
- Sound design is likened to an architectural process, influencing acoustics and delving into perceptual, intellectual, narrative, emotional, and aesthetic dimensions.
- The sound designer is compared to an interior designer, shaping both the acoustic and narrative aspects of a space.
- Invisible Structures and Sonic Architecture:
- Sound design goes beyond replicating acoustic characteristics, creating an imaginative and virtual sonic architecture.
- The text introduces the concept of a virtual acoustic space, allowing for creative possibilities and alterations in the perception of landscape.
- Resonance and Emptiness:
- Resonance is explored in relation to the sonic qualities of architecture, discussing how it affects sound reproduction and manipulation.
- The creative use of sonic absence, analogous to the concept of empty space in architecture, is examined for its impact on emotional and narrative significance.
- Spatial Openness in Sound Design:
- Sound design is viewed as a form of aural design, expanding beyond mimetic acoustics to create inner spaces for the audience.
- The text emphasizes the role of sound design in exploring aural architecture and suggests its connection to sound art.
- Technological Element and Resonance:
- Sound design incorporates technology not only for processing sounds but also for conceiving and visualizing them, aligning with scientific and mathematical perspectives.
- The work of Iannis Xenakis is cited as an example of the intersection between mathematics, music, and architectural processes.
- Spatial Possibilities and Sonic Phenomena:
- Sound design offers creative possibilities for exploring spatial/physical structures, going beyond acoustical considerations to include emotional, perceptual, and subjective dimensions.
- The text concludes by emphasizing sound as the vibratory principle of architecture, akin to Goethe’s description of architecture as “frozen music.”
Quotations:
- “Sound is a spatial event, a material phenomenon and an auditive experience rolled into one.” – OASE
- “Architecture is an exterior medium, film is an interior medium: an architecture for the interior of the mind.” – Walter Murch
- “The act of designing sound can be understood as an architectural process that works in the field of acoustics but also transcends it.”
- “There’s an invisible architecture, a sonically perceived space that is not necessarily dependent on the visual stimuli.”
- “Resonance has a strong connection with the notions of propagation and immersion, and the process of sound design takes a lot of both.”
- “Sound design is in much sense a way of the mentioned ‘aural design,’ in the way that the spaces built or proposed by the sound designer are often based on what is possible (or not) to be listened.”
- “Maybe it is possible to conceive that game of architecture in terms of the sonic phenomena.”
Authors/References Cited:
- OASE
- Walter Murch
- Trevor Wishart
- Alvin Lucier
- Douglas Kahn
- Iannis Xenakis
- David J. Lieberman
- Junichiro Tanizaki
- Brandon LaBelle
- Barry Blesser, Linda-Ruth Salter
- Goethe