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Tower is an interactive sound art installation, exhibited at the Volunteer Park Water Tower in Seattle, WA on September 15th, 2024. Live digital audio processing of five microphone inputs produces song-like murmurs, obscuring footsteps, birdsong, and human voices. 

 

The site-specific and situational performance responds to the actions of observers and provides a new way of listening to architectural space.  By exploring the intersections between sound, architecture, and music, Tower suggests how spatial applications of sound can provide enriching soundscapes for our lives.

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Architecture enjoys a unique relationship with music. Music relies upon architecture to be the vessel for performance. Singers will “tune” their voices to a hall, and an orchestra will respond to the feedback of an auditorium. Both architecture and music are experienced across time, an observation Debussy made when he wrote, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them.” Is architecture not similarly experienced across time, with daylight and human activity modulating throughout the day?

 

Architecture is also non-representational like music: space does not intend to replicate a flower, or a mountain. Kandinsky felt similarly when he used abstract expressionism to represent artistic ideas independent of reference. Much like “absolute music,” architectural space is abstract, and is processed by the brain in terms of what it does, rather than what it is. Space acts upon the body like music acts upon the eardrums. Visitors to a building feel qualities such as lightness or spaciousness, much like listeners feel emotions of a performance.

 

For centuries, music has responded and adapted to the spatial parameters of architecture. Opera singers learned to project unamplified voices, and jazz bands became “big bands” to play swing in crowded dance halls. With the rise of broadcast media in the 20th century however, music may have lost its connection to architecture. Digital music can be enjoyed virtually, through headphones or a car speaker, with little connection to the place it was recorded.

 

If music is written agnostic of space, then architects broadly relinquish control over the sounds and performances that occur in a building. Concert programming is the responsibility of a manager or conductor, and theater acoustics are tuned by an engineer. Architectural space is preferred to be a clean slate, and incidental noises such as footfalls, machinery, or conversation are considered defects rather than assets. What if we took a fresh look at the relationship between architecture and music? What if we composed music to be enjoyed in the context of a specific place? What if architecture could be the instrument for a musical performance?

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The Volunteer Park Water Tower contains a spectacular double-helix steel staircase that naturally amplifies footsteps throughout the building. Typically, modern staircases are made with concrete pans, which have a sound dampening effect. By contrast, steel has the ability to transmit and resonate sounds. This acoustic phenomenon became the starting point for a musical intervention.

 

Two dynamic microphones and two pickup microphones are strategically installed on the metal staircase to capture footsteps, conversation, crows, and airplanes. The signal is sent to a digital audio workstation, processed to enhance the musical qualities of the sounds, then projected back into the space with loudspeakers.

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Tower is a re-examination of the role of acoustics in architecture. The installation responds to the unique interior volume of the water tower to produce a site specific and situational performance that reacts to the actions of observers. It suggests a new way of music composition that uses architectural space and program as an instrument for enjoyment.

 

I want to see architects more actively engage in sound composition. By blurring the disciplinary line between musician and architect, perhaps we can create the rupture necessary to charter a new role for architecture in the soundscape.

© 2024 Jonathan Nelson

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