In January of 2012, Michael Steinmetz, a student in Catholic University's Masters of Architecture program posted on Craigslist looking for someone who was able to program an interactive music system for his thesis project, titled "Sonic Potential in Architecture". I got in touch and said that while I am comfortable with Max/MSP and Pd, others have more finesse with them.
Mike had studied musical composition for his undergraduate degree (as had I), and had developed an interest in graphical scores, and the relations between sound and space. When he came to architecture school, he brought this interest into larger venues with three dimensions. His tastes in music and mine ran along some similar lines, so after talking for a while, we decided to work together.
The plan was to create a sacred meditation space. A dark space. A space in which the sounds had been devloped in concert with the lights and walls and floors. He had conceived several potential shapes that the space might take, and decided on the one that flowed well, but left the choreography of exploration open. He already knew that it would be a very dark space with some limited and very controlled light. He also had decided that the music ought to interact with the visitor, changing based on their position in the space.
We discussed intentions and decided that the thing we would both like to pursue was a drawing of the visitor; a distant pull, taking them from one part of the room to another. We began tweaking the shape of the space. Wall angles and curves, the height of the light, the brightness, the volume and placement of the sounds: all things we discussed. We tried a variety of sound qualities, and wall finishes. We met and talked and emailed and slowly the space, and all of its contents, evolved.
The following is a collection of Mike's sketches/documentation, outlining various facets, and some recordings of my attempts at the audio.
We began by talking about a quiet mediation space; I aimed to create something that could be joyful, and also contribute to a sacred experience.
This adds in the small drone at the beginning to guide people through the hallway in the space. We had started discussing the different finishes on the walls, and I was experimenting with having one rough wall and one smooth wall.
I tried to smooth out the overly-aggressive rough-wall from the previous version. It is a push further into sacred, but less aimed at being joyful.
This is a move more toward the feeling of Morton Feldman or Hildegard Von Bingen. We wanted to shift away from relying heavily on standing sine waves, as they rest heavily in the ear. This uses various tones moving through the soundscape as "singers". It has a darker feeling. A striving for enlightenment.
A slower version of the singers; the space will be so dark, and there will be so little immediate stimulus that it seems overwhelming to have them changing too fast. I also altered the tones to be less dissonant. I meant it to be more calm.
This is the same patch being controlled by video, but I wired it wrong. Interesting, but not useful.
The same patch, controlled by video, wired correctly.
This is a piece that I was preparing to integrate as a draw toward the farther wall at any given moment.
This is a combination the original, the singers, and the previous clip. I also have included, in the initial (hallway) tone, some sounds intended to be representative of building torsion, to fit with the new more twisted models of the room.
This is the final patch controlled by video.
We installed in the beginning of May of 2012. Mike went in with a crew and built the walls. They twisted up away from the floor and had a rough broom-swept texture, important because the people in the (very dark) space spent a good amount of time with a hand to a wall. As soon as the walls were up I set up the two lights (blue LED light bars), the speakers, the computer to run them, and a security camera to allow for the interaction. For a few weeks either Mike or myself would sit in the hallway just outside the installation and usher people in, one at a time. A large number of people went through the installation. A few couldn't cope with the darkness, but most of them found it transcendent. I spent a few evenings just lying on the floor of the space letting it wash over me.
A very dark, interactive space is difficult to document. As such, this video is hardly informative. It includes the final drone patch, and glimpses of the darkness, the blue lights, and the context in which it was found.
A description of the experience, in Mike's words:
"When a visitor first enters, during that brief window when the door is open, one can see over this lowered wall that there is something happening, something that is the actual destination of the space. And sonically, there is this almost menacing or intimidating drone that attracts the visitor toward the main space. And the drone is sleeping, totally unresponsive to anything the visitor does within this hall, but it is meant to lead one into this main area.
And in addition to the sound, the light at the end of that hall is meant to be a destination, yet the light source is obscured. The hallway wall curves in such a way that you can’t quite visualize the source, only the surface the source is shining on.
By the time you reach the end of the hall, there is already another light source in the distance, and when you enter the main space, the sound activates. It ceases to be a drone and begins to react. As one moves along this wall, the sounds subtly shifts to the other wall and sounds predominate on the opposite side… and so one perhaps moves to this side, and the opposite is true and sounds predominate on the opposite wall. So it’s this play of back and forth between the walls. Most of you I’m sure realized that the area with the greatest activity and the most encompassing area sonically is the very center of the space where all of the speakers in the room are activated.
And of course the lighting condition here is similar to that of the hallway where the source is obscured, but again reinforces this idea of being led visually or sonically to these destinations but then sort of denied or led elsewhere.
And all of these moves create really kind of a mysterious, ambiguous space. In working with Jim right from the beginning we were striving for an environment that the visitors should not get right away. It should take at least a few minutes for people to acclimate, and then afterwards having this sense they could stay there to figure it out for hours. So creating ambiguity for this space was important which I feel begins to justify the lighting quality, the tactile element in the wall texture, and the sound quality.
The installation was originally intended to be a space of meditation, which sounds strange at first considering how many initial reactions were that the space was creepy, disorienting, or unsettling for instance. But I think that reaction is initially appropriate given that, when first entering, one’s senses are totally stripped, and it’s natural to be uncomfortable when things are not immediately apparent. Only after spending at least several minutes in the space does something start to happen where your eyes are adjusting, you get a feel for the boundary of the space, you begin to understand that the sound reacts to your location within the space, and it becomes soothing or meditative. Even the sounds happening within the space which may have at first seemed haunting or menacing, remain ambiguous but somehow become comforting."
The following is scans from notebooks we kept outside of the installation and asked people to write in as they exited.
The results were interesting in a few ways. Partially because we had some important architects walk through the space, but also, since we were set up in the student center of a major university, we also had a fair number of college students who weren't particularly interested in architecture or art installations or droning sounds go through. Also interesting was that the response was overwhelmingly positive, but also many of the people who went through the space wrote about fear turning to comfort, the sounds as navigational devices, feeling comforted in a womblike space, meditation, the coherance of the physical/auditory/conceptual textures; they independantly stated all the goals we had laid out at the beginning. Many people also wished they could have stayed in for hours.
I forgot about the rest of the world for the time that I was in there. I felt completely immersed in a different world.
The element of sound - interactive sound - produced a sense of mystery, awe, wonder, curiousity, & playfulness. It engaged me as i pilgrimaged within the inner space. I found myself circumambulating within the space until I found myself at the center in a meditative state. The sound was at first somewhat errie [sic] & strange but transformed into nostalgia.
Echoes are left in my head, my spirit of birthing water was evoked I was in the subconscious within moments - the 4th dimension or the sea of sublime ripples in my memories.
I definitely did not want to leave, ever, though at times I was struck by a deep existential dread that sometimes mimicked exhaustion. Lying on the floor helped this, wand was perhaps my favorite method of experiencing the space over the long-term. Running and spinning around quickly through the space was very rewarding. The sounds seemed to match the intensity of my movement. The space also grew very vocal when I raised my hands above my head to make myself appear taller - as if the room felt the need to defend its territory or shout me down.
I felt with the initial texture that I was in a shell or cocoon, encasing my being. It was both comforting, as well as terrifyingly cool and interesting. The one red light reminded me of a light sensor on the water. It was in a way an emotional encasement of what I expect the inside of the immaterial soul (if you are a dualist).
I love how the sounds guide you through the space just as much as, if not more than the architecture.
The larger room was intimidating at first, especially with an audio which described the shape.
ensconced in fluid barriers, darkness that was comforting, change in volume, but no changes in the feeling and experience, very cerebral and yet very primitive at the same time
What affected me the most was the experience of tension over time. Allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness, the distraction of disorientation (visual) subsided, only to emphasize the sonic disorientation. The unfamiliarity & "fear" of the initial journey to the center space was reversed when leaving, as the comfort experienced in the center was left behind for the darkenss of the egress.
I could tell the sound was responding to my body. I became transfixed into a meditative state of mind, in a very short period of time. I loved the experience...
when I reached the main space, I experienced a sort of unsettling comfort, as if recognising that this foreign space was somehow familiar.
There aren't many times in the urban environment where I cannot tell if my eyes are open or not. It's a great feeling. Thank you. Thank you also for the whale-like musicians you hired.
The sounds were at first intimidating, but as I grew familiar with the space the sound & light felt more amazing (for lack of a better word) than terrifying. The curve of the wall created a beautiful flow for the space & the sound.
At first, I was very confused, but the music because to orient me and my attention, oddly, towards the center of the space. I found it quite relaxing after that point and enjoyable.
The space was comforting, womblike, and the blue light, curves, and rough surface gave it an aquatic feel. The sounds reminded me of something threatening but far off, like a storm heard from the sea bed.
I was trying to play the room like and instrument. How could I move to make the sounds I wanted?? The light in the corner was like a passage to infinity.
The sound became the place to walk and your reference point in the space.
I found the space & sound unsettling at first, but became used to it after a while and in the end I found it comforting, like a womb.
The wall had a wonderful texture. I felt the texture and the music were well coordinated.
I've never felt so removed from anything. For once, not knowing what was around me was a good thing.
Sound and its reflection helps define space - thought for a second that sound might have change [sic] based on place within chamber. What would happen if a spark of light gave a brief view of something wonderful or something awful.
The blue lights attracted me and the sound made me want to explore.
Passing through the space felt as if I had entered the true place of emptiness with shadows of subtance [sic] far in the distance. I also felt an out of body experience as if my spirit was passing through and my body was left at the door.
The scale of the light portals kept on shifting. Sometimes the openings were just as tall as me but other times they seemed hundreds of feet tall.
