Fade Out, Fade In: Responsive Sound Intervention (2014)
Extremely high frequencies are generated throughout our built urban environment. They highlight the direct effect of industry and technology on people, drawing attention to the hegemonic nature of technology as prime contributor to the tense and restless condition of modern life. As Godfrey Reggio states, “technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe” (Essence of Life, 2002). The 16000hz and higher frequencies generated in the project are the same range as the frequencies generated by the technologies that surround us (lights, projectors, engines). By placing the same range of frequency in the stairwell the sound becomes contained and thus amplified to an almost nauseating pitch. This conscious choice was made to reflect the turmoil and angst produced by the repetitive and constructed patterns of everyday urban life, audibly marking what usually slips between the cracks of a technologically proliferated urban fabric. My project is as much about the desensitization and subsequent toleration of a sensory overload (now symptomatic of urban environments) as it is about the importance of understanding architecture, space, and experienced geographies through all the senses (as opposed to the ocularcentrism which has prevailed in theory, design, and development). The understanding of urban landscapes is dictated through a sensory filtration system that regulates what can be blocked and can be absorbed from the surrounding environment. Taking the relationship of the stairway as a transition space into the congested streets of the city, my project explores the sonic properties of the high frequencies resonating through concrete, steel, and glass, revealing how this transition impresses itself on human consciousness. The way the frequencies resonate and travel through the stairwell also reflects the passage of time. With time these frequencies fade into the background; as humans age these sounds become nothing more than a slight hum, or a barely detectable ringing. They gradually disappear, one by one, and eventually are lost forever. Congruent with this loss is the eventual loss of an electric, sensorial landscape.
concrète: the one-hour artist residency (tumblr)
In the context of a course on spatial theory and the built environment, in January 2014, fourteen student artists and art historians worked together on a creative project in a specific site. While all participants were collaborators with one another in some way, each individual's main collaborator was the site itself. This site is a place of escape: a luminous, generous, fire escape stairwell located on the eastern flank of the Engineering-Visual Arts Complex of Concordia University, Montreal.
KPMB Architects designed the "EV" as a flagship building for Concordia's growing presence in Montreal's downtown core. As such, the designers prioritized soaring interior volumes and accessible gallery spaces. The firm's signature attentiveness to the ways that materials - and programmes - meet is evident throughout. One might not expect the building's fire escapes to have received similar treatment, but they did. These stairwells are places of austere, brutalist beauty, as well as being portals to magnificent views of the surrounding city. But despite their location in a faculty of fine arts, and all that these stairwells afford, spatially and visually, these marvelous sites are rarely used for art.
From the beginning of our process, the rules and regulations that are specific to fire escapes in this institution were our guide. Along with Michel de Certeau, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Doreen Massey, we read Concordia's "Fire Safety and Prevention Policy" and fire prevention rules. Throughout, we asked how we could collaborate with a space to which we had daily, easy access, but was not ours to change? Despite the prohibition against any kind of obstruction or "storage" in the stairwell, were there ways to engage with the space that allowed for its temporary, meaningful transformation? And how might these actions change us? These are the questions that this one hour residency begin to answer.
KPMB Architects designed the "EV" as a flagship building for Concordia's growing presence in Montreal's downtown core. As such, the designers prioritized soaring interior volumes and accessible gallery spaces. The firm's signature attentiveness to the ways that materials - and programmes - meet is evident throughout. One might not expect the building's fire escapes to have received similar treatment, but they did. These stairwells are places of austere, brutalist beauty, as well as being portals to magnificent views of the surrounding city. But despite their location in a faculty of fine arts, and all that these stairwells afford, spatially and visually, these marvelous sites are rarely used for art.
From the beginning of our process, the rules and regulations that are specific to fire escapes in this institution were our guide. Along with Michel de Certeau, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Doreen Massey, we read Concordia's "Fire Safety and Prevention Policy" and fire prevention rules. Throughout, we asked how we could collaborate with a space to which we had daily, easy access, but was not ours to change? Despite the prohibition against any kind of obstruction or "storage" in the stairwell, were there ways to engage with the space that allowed for its temporary, meaningful transformation? And how might these actions change us? These are the questions that this one hour residency begin to answer.
