Synesthetech

Last week I received a review copy of the latest release from WHITE_LINE editions, the publishing operation run by Baz Nichols in Northampton, UK. ARCHISONICS: sonifying architecture is a twenty page book of photographs, illustrations and essays accompanied by a CD containing six tracks related to the book’s subject matter. A joint effort by Nichols (aka FOURM), Andy Graydon and Maura Wallace-Nichols, the release is a personal work intended to begin a new series of works which will hopefully add to the critical discourse concerning the relationship between sound and architecture.

Wallace-Nichols’ photography takes the visual center stage in the book, providing the imagery which adorns the cover as well as the first half of the page count. Minimally captioned as “From the ‘Barcelona’ series”, the four images are presented as somber duotones which explore repetition and angular form. The detail view of windows and railings on page 4 is the most overtly referential to sound, with its perspectival shift and repetition splaying out like a sound wave or perhaps unravelling like a graphic score for performance by glass and wire.

FOURM’s introduction establishes Archisonics as an ongoing project, using Goethe’s “architecture is frozen music” as a thesis statement and springboard for exploration; challenging the reader to invert the phrase as “music is frozen architecture”, Nichols suggests sound be “unfrozen” as a means of defining spatial form, and in the essay “The Built Form as a Natural Metaphor” he discusses the interpretation of architectural structures as graphic notation and the fluidity of sound waves and their delineation of space. Nichols’ other major essay, “Sonifying Architecture” discusses variety of phenomena which allow people to perceive architectural space without the benefit of sight, including Blind SIght, a perceived “acoustic shoreline” and the Echelon Effect.

In the second half of the book, New York sound artist Andy Graydon takes the overarching themes of Nichols’ essays and runs with them, illustrating the relationship between sound and architecture with specific observations from his own artistic practice. From walking through the overtly public sonic space of Max Neuhaus’ installation Times Square, to joining an art historical project to photograph a group of reverberant Buddhist devotional caves in China, to noticing the acoustic properties of broken concrete intentionally included in the architecture of the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s well-trodden floors, Graydon’s observations betray a depth of sonic perception which permeates his own artistic output. A final essay on the unrealistically overdubbed sound in Jacques Tati’s Playtime opens up the conversation to cinematic portrayals of architecture, pointing the way towards yet another possible avenue of investigation the Archisonics project might lead to.

As for the included CD, FOURM and Graydon each contribute solo sound pieces which begin the Archisonics series of sonic investigations of architecture. The four FOURM pieces offer sparse soundscapes of minimalist drones with occasional sputters of dense sonic data, some manipulated field recordings and other sounds which could very well be architectural renderings and floorplans parsed through a jpeg-to-wav file converter like MetaSynth. These tiny fragments of sound continue moving through various acoustic configurations, simulating movement through shifting architectural environments. Graydon’s two tracks are even more overtly referential, with more recognizable sounds from a variety of structures and spaces. High-pitched circular drones mingle with what could be traffic heard through a window, melodies wrap themselves around what sound like a room lined with ceramic tile. “Dissolved Solids”, the final track on the disc, is a climactic journey into the superstructure of a skyscraper, with metallic breathing sounds that bring to mind the exposed-guts piping of the Centre Pompidou.

If this initial offering is a clear indicator of what’s to come, WHITE_LINE’s Archisonics project looks to be a promising ongoing investigation of the centuries-old conceptual link between architecture and sound. But in the interests of full disclosure: WHITE_LINE has announced the inclusion of one of my digital image compositions in a future installment of the series, the Archisonics Dossier…