Tuesday, September 27. 2011Bernhard Leitner: Sound SpacesVia ArchDaily ----- de Oscar Lopez © Bernhard Leitner “I can hear with my knee better than with my calves.” This statement made by Bernhard Leitner, which initially seems absurd, can be explained in light of an interest that he still pursues today with unbroken passion and meticulousness: the study of the relationship between sound, space, and body. Since the late 1960s, Bernhard Leitner has been working in the realm between architecture, sculpture, and music, conceiving of sounds as constructive material, as architectural elements that allow a space to emerge. Sounds move with various speeds through a space, they rise and fall, resonate back and forth, and bridge dynamic, constantly changing spatial bodies within the static limits of the architectural framework. Idiosyncratic spaces emerge that cannot be fixed visually and are impossible to survey from the outside, audible spaces that can be felt with the entire body. Leitner speaks of “corporeal” hearing, whereby acoustic perception not only takes place by way of the ears, but through the entire body, and each part of the body can hear differently. - George Kargl, Fine Arts Vienna
© Atelier Leitner - Sound Tube 1971 Bernhard Leitner is considered a pioneer of the art form generally referred to as “sound installation.” He introduced sound to the installation space, allowing the installation space to emerge through the sound. Leitner, who actually studied architecture, has been a visionary ever since the very start of his artistic career. His sculptures—which he refers to as “sound-space objects”—and installations are the result of long, complex processes of development. In precise sketches and workbooks, he first approaches the sculptural, architectural qualities of sound in theory. © Atelier Leitner - Body Envelope 1970 He undertakes, as it were, foundational scientific research by studying frequencies, volumes, movements and combinations of sounds and their impact on the body, sketching possible spatial figures, such as cubes, corridors, fields, pipes, and exploring the impact of bodily posture on acoustic perception. In 1968 Leitner moved to New York, where he concretely began working on sound-space studies in his studio. He developed multi-channel compositions using sound recordings that were not musically conceived, from which he extracted specific sound material and combined it in work-specific series of sounds. He then notated these series using visual codes that he himself developed consisting of letter combinations on rolls of paper, and transferred them to perforated tape. © Atelier Leitner - Agoraphon 1993 This resulted in temporary installations of wooden slats on which loudspeakers could be arranged in various geometric arrangements. These were operated individually by way of a control device developed together with a technician, for this was not possible with devices found on the market with the then current state of technology. In this way, Leitner was able for the first time to place sounds and series of sounds in various, exactly performed movements that create “spatial models in an invisible (new) geometry.” © Atelier Leitner - Cylinder Space 1974 The visual formulation of Leitner’s installations can be read in the tradition of the aesthetics of New York minimalism in the 1970s. There are echoes of Richard Serra, Carl Andre, or Donald Judd, even if the reduced and strict formal language of Bernhard Leitner enters into a new functional context that “serves to shift attention from the visual to the acoustic level of the installation.” In the moment when the visitor is no longer unnecessarily distracted by visual stimuli, acoustic attentiveness automatically increases. © Atelier Leitner - Wing Space 1996 At a first glance, the simplest way of characterizing the sound installation as art form would be to describe it as a combination of art exhibition and concert. In reality, however, the sound installation distinctly sets itself apart from both these closely affiliated art forms and begins to disclose itself more and more as an art form capable of overcoming those deficits which one distinctly senses in the case of the conventional exhibition as well as in the conventional concert. Among the most outstanding examples of sound installations are those witnessed in the works of Bernhard Leitner. © Atelier Leitner - Sound Suit 1975 In an entirely impressive manner, the artist has been pursuing his own unique course by consistently and convincingly experimenting with the sound installation as an art form. Before embarking on a characterization of the particular complex of problems surrounding Leitner’s works with any degree of precision, one must first clarify a number of misunderstandings which would hinder the elaboration of an adequate understanding of the installation as art form. © Atelier Leitner - Pendulum Platform 2 1995 As a matter of fact, the difference between the installation and other art forms is easy enough to formulate: In the case of the installation the viewer becomes visitor. The installation is a spatial fragment, a spatial volume, which is to be read as a unified object. The central characteristic of this spatial fragment is that it is a space understood as being empty, abstract and purely geometric. And yet, it is precisely this chief characteristic of the installation that poses such a challenge to perception and interpretation. © Atelier Leitner - Sound Columns 1999 Since the space of installation represents an empty space, it can be all too easily overlooked. As any other space, the space of installation may therefore be filled with diverse objects; it can be entered and offers the possibility to move around freely within it. In this sense, the space of installation would appear as being “immaterial”, indeed,non-existent and thus incapable of assuming the role of a medium of art. It is for this reason that our attention is almost involuntarily drawn away from the empty space itself and rather towards the objects within it. As a consequence, the installation is misunderstood as a specific arrangement of objects within space – and not as the space itself. © Atelier Leitner - Wall Grid 1972 Thus, the use of sound within the installation space is in no way external to it. Quite to the contrary: the wonder of sound consists in the fact that it fills space. For this reason, sound can best serve as an indicator of holistic space insofar as it is capable of inducing in the viewer the sense of becoming part of the entire space. And it is in just such a way that Leitner’s sound installations function. Here, a single sound does not necessarily fill the entire exhibition space. It is far more that each of these single sounds creates its own space in which the viewer/visitor must enter. © Atelier Leitner - Large Tuba 2008 In the process, the visitor inevitably becomes aware of his own body as being part of the unified space of the sound installation. Firstly, a specific spatial position or even pose is designated for his body. And secondly, within the sound installation the visitor is given the feeling that the tone, which fills the installation space, also flows through his own body. The limits of his own body are consequenty put into question and relativized – and he begins to perceive himself as part of the space of the installation as a whole. © Atelier Leitner - Sound Cube 1980 The experience of being physically permeated by sound when listening to sound in one of Leitner’s installations differs decisively from the experience of listening to music in a concert hall, for example. In the concert hall, the music also fills the entire room and yet this space is visually divided in two. In the hall, the listener is territorialized, the music produced on stage. In this case, the usual exhibition or theatrical staging situation is repeated: the listening audience becomes the spectator who finds himself in the position of being in front of the artwork. © Atelier Leitner - Sound Space Tu Berlin 1984 It is in this way that the listener in the concert hall has the sense of “being seated in front of the music” – even though the music can be heard everywhere within the space. This feeling makes it impossible for the listener to comprehend his own body as being part of the music space, of the sound space. Furthermore, added to this is the temporal limitation of the concert. As a rule, the time frame of the concert is designed with the visitor in mind – the end of the concert is also the end of the music. © Atelier Leitber - Vertical Space 1975 If one has endured the concert from beginning to end, one knows that one has consumed everything that was possible and necessary to consume. By contrast, the final satisfaction, that familiar feeling of having well and truly heard and seen everything is denied the visitor of Leitner’s installations: here, the sound has already begun before the visitor has taken his seat – and continues even after he has left this seat. The presence or absence of the visitor makes no particular impression on the sound itself – it continues beyond the span of his attention. Hence, the viewer leaves the exhibition with the sense of having only briefly been in the sovereign position of hearing, though not of having taken possession of it. © Atelier Leitner - Tuba Architecture 1999 It is necessary to rethink and redefine the term “space”. The boundaries of these spaces cannot be experienced at once, and they are not “dynamic, fluid” spaces in the conventional interpretation. It is space which has a beginning and an end. Space is here a sequence of spatial sensations – in its very essence an event of time. Space unfolds in time; it is developed, repeated and transformed in time.
© Atelier Leitner - Sound Lines Sculpture 1972 Bernhard Leitners’ works deal with the audio-physical experience of spaces and objects which are determined in form and content by movements of sound. The focus is the relationship between built structures of sound and the human body. The scale ranges from small objects directly applied to the body to large-scale architectural spaces. Click here to view the embedded video. References: Bernhard Leitner .P.U.L.S.E., Bernhard Leitner Sound : Space, http://www.bernhardleitner.at/en, Boris Groys, George Kargl
Related Links:Friday, April 08. 2011Particles [openFrameworks, Arduino, Events]----- Particles is the latest installation by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi currently on exhibit at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. The installation centers around a spiral-shaped rail construction on which a number of balls with built-in LEDs and xbee transmitters are rolling while blinking in different time intervals, resulting in spatial drawings of light particles. This is an art installation which is able to create a visionary beautiful dots pattern of blinking innumerable illuminations floating in all directions on the air. The number of balls with a built-in LED, pass through one after another on the rail “8-spiral shape.” We see this phenomenon like “the light particle float around” because the balls radiate in various timing. The openFrameworks application controls both the release of “particles” as well as their glow based on the information read within the application. The image below shows perlin noise being translated into particles, giving each one glow and position properties. The position of each ball is determined via total of 17 control points on the rail. Every time a ball passes through one of them, the respective ball’ s positional information is transmitted via a built-in infrared sensor. During the time the ball travels between one control points to the next, this position is calculated based on its average speed. The data for regulating the balls’ luminescence are divided by the control point segments and are switched every time a ball passes on a control point. The audiences can select a shape from several patterns floating in aerial space using an interface of the display. The activation of the virtual balls on the screen are determined by the timing which a ball moving on the rail passes through a certain check point on the rail and the speed which is calculated by using average speed values. The sound is generated from the ball positions and the information of LED flash pattern and is played through 8ch speakers. The board inside the ball is an Arduino compatible board based on the original design from Arduino Exhibition page: particles.ycam.jp/en/ Date & Time:March 5 (sat)−May 5 (thu) , 2011 10:00−19:00 Images courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] Photos: Ryuichi Maruo (YCAM)
Posted by Patrick Keller
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Defined tags for this entry: art, artists, design (environments), exhibitions, installations, interaction design, lighting
Tuesday, November 09. 2010Image of the Day: House of ContaminationVia GOOD ----- by Patrick James
Related Links:Monday, November 08. 2010David BowenRelated Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Art, Interaction design
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10:12
Defined tags for this entry: art, artificial reality, installations, interaction design, research, tele-
Wednesday, October 27. 2010Nils NovaNils Nova, Mind the gap, Walls 90°, Photography, Ink-jet print on paper pasted on the wall, 3 m x 6 m, Installation View: Kunsthaus Glarus, CH, 2008
Nils Nova, Schatten voran, Photography, Ink-jet print on paper pasted on the wall, 320 x 1000 cm, Installation View: Kunsthalle Luzern, CH, 2009
Nils Nova, Tides, Ink-Jet Print on paper pasted on the wall and black painted wall, paintings on board, Installation view: Ausstellungsraum 25, Zürich, CH, 2007
Related Links:Thursday, October 14. 2010Troika: Shoal
Troika’s latest public art project, Shoal, sees an impressive 467 fish-like objects suspended from the ceiling at Toronto’s waterfront. Combining sculpture, architecture and technology the installation spans the length of a 50 meter long corridor where the ‘fish’, wrapped in iridescent colours rotate rhythmically around their own axis to display the movements typical to a shoal of fish.
Related Links:Personal comment: Not a "big concept" (it's not the purpose anyway) but a nice way to use iridescent colors/glass. Wednesday, October 13. 2010Ai Weiwei: Sunflower SeedsVia It's Nice That ----- The Tate Modern have always challenged people’s perceptions of art throughout The Unilever Series (now in it’s eleventh year), from Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project to Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth they have always got people talking and the latest installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is no exception. In his latest work 1000 square metres of The Turbine Hall’s floor are now covered in more than 100 million individually handmade replica sunflower seeds. (Read more) Tuesday, October 05. 2010Federico Diaz: geometric death frequency—141Via GOOD via designboom -----
Personal comment: A new work that uses industrial robots for a different purpose. Of course, reminds me of the work of architects Gramazio & Kohler (process, not result), about "digital materiality". Monday, October 04. 2010One ship encounters a series of notable exceptions (2006) - Joe WinterLoops of cassette tape are moved through a transparent mechanical armature to create three dimensional line-drawn scenes of one ship's encounters with variously fantastical, formal, poetic, and personal obstacles. Each sculpture in the series depicts a single event in the ships journey through polar waters, such as One ship struck by lightning, twice, and One ship leaves the South Pole, all directions seem north. The soundtrack on the tape propels the loose narrative, and creates a tumultuous foil for the cool, calm, exterior of each piece. The video documentation cuts between the ambient sound of the gallery and excerpts of the sound heard in headphones attached to each piece. Related Links:Friday, September 03. 2010I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting
By fabric | ch ----- fabric | ch will present a new work entitled I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting during the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose (San Francisco Bay Area, CA, September 4-19, 2010). Curated by Steve Dietz and assistant curator Jaime Austin, the 2010 01SJ Biennial will develop a full range of radical exhibitions in the Bay Area around this year's biennial theme, Build you own world. Our installation will be part of San Jose / South Hall exhibit: Out of the Garage into the World, which title takes its inspiration from the nearly mythological times of the early California's Silicon Valley, when young scientists supposedly started their future world scale business in their home's garage or backyard. Curator Steve Dietz about this year's biennial: "Build Your Own World: The future is not just about what’s next. It’s also about what we can build to ensure that what’s next matters. How can we, as resourceful, innovative, and knowledgeable local and global citizens build and participate in a desirable future in the face of global climate change, economic meltdown, political instability, and cultural divisiveness?"
-------------------------------- I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting: I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, yellow-orange phase. I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, cyan-blue phase. I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, full gradient and time rainbow.
In 2001, architect Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch jointly set up I-Weather, an open source artificial climate based on human metabolism, circadian rhythms and on the medical knowledge of the time about light therapy and chronotherapy. I-Weather.org intended to allow the growing number of de-territorialized locations and people to synchronize their atmosphere and metabolism with this Internet distributed climate: a parallel day of 25 hours, that diffused its colored “daylight” in any physical or digital space connected to the I-Weather’s server. In 2008, NASA made an announcement about a first successful communication with a 20 million miles distant spacecraft on the Deep Space Internet, the model for a forthcoming interplanetary Internet. Late in 2009, the team upgraded I-Weather to a new version, as scientific knowledge of biological rhythms has evolved, demonstrating that melatonin regulation is enhanced by using a minimum wavelength of 460nm (blue) and a maximum wavelength of 597nm (orange) rather than between 385nm (deep purple) and 509 nm (green). Actually, blue light suppresses the diffusion of melatonin in the body, while orange light allows performing actions without altering the body clock. In summer 2010, fabric | ch will set up a project called I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, during the 01SJ Biennial in South Hall. It will propose a critical use of I-Weather as a model for a metabolic public lighting source, distributed and synchronized through an imaginary Deep Space Internet into the confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles or into speculative public spaces of “distant colonies”. It will be question of public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate.
fabric | ch, May 2010
I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting fabric | ch -------------------------------- Exhibition: Build Your Own World 2010 01SJ Biennial September 4-19, 2010 San Jose, CA -------------------------------- Workshop: I-Weather: open source artificial climate (how to) Christian Babski, Patrick Keller 2-4 pm, September 16, 2010 San Jose, CA -------------------------------- Conference: Deep Space, Public Space, I-Weather as Public Climate & Technology Patrick Keller 1-2.30 pm, September 19, 2010 San Jose, CA --------------------------------
Project, conception and programmation: fabric | ch - Ligths: 3B Lighting Structure: Stages Unlimited On site supervision: G. Craig Hobbs - Curatorship: Steve Dietz, Jaime Austin Produced by Zer01
I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting has been produced with the support of swissnex San Francisco and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. It is a 2010 01SJ Biennial creation by fabric | ch.
Related Links:Personal comment: Like for previous exhibitions, new posts will follow while (and after) we set up the work in San Francisco.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art
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20:50
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, conditioning, fabric | ch, installations, internet, space, speculation, weather
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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