__entwined__

Could sound - and what it reflects on one’s mind - be an anchor point within a physical space, all by itself?

"Can one traverse space, perceiving only the sonical change around them, in parallel with the associated feelings?"

Would pitch-black darkness heighten the perception and/or the subjective meaning of a sound?

We stumbled upon an architectural concept 'genius loci' from Classical Roman Era - western translation being the spirit of the place. It is fairly easy to associate a piece of music or sound for any environment as its genius loci, since it's very much subjective. But can the duality of contrasting sounds eliminate the feeling of being a part of a single room and draw an objective line to create two different artificial spaces?

With this in mind, we imagined a space with multiple distinct athmospheres, created by contrasting sounds alone within an empty room and controlled acoustics. This new condensed space is figuratively bounded by speaker placements, and it is up to the person to make inference out of it - should one wishes to perceive.

In a completely empty room with sufficient space to walk about and pitch black darkness, two contrasting music pieces play at the same time from carefully placed speakers. There are no objects in the room, and the sound sources are hanging from above. The space is only perceivable through the sound, which lies within the contrasting sounds.

This was a collaborative project, and part of the final exhibition for RES778.

Related readings:
Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980) Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. Rizzoli.

Husserl, Edmund (1960). Cartesian meditations. [The Hague]: M. Nijhoff.