[spectre] Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation Reader

[Derek Holzer]

The reader from last July's Tuned City event for sound and architecture
is available for order!

Tuned City. Between Sound and Space Speculation Reader
Edited by Anne Kockelkorn, Doris Kleilein, Gesine Pagels und Carsten
Stabenow
200 Pages, German/English texts, with Illustrations by Andreas Toepfer
EUR(D) 25,00 / EUR(A) 25,70
ISBN 978-3-937445-36-6
KOOK BOOKS 2008

INFO: http://www.tunedcity.de/?page_id=401
ORDER: http://www.tunedcity.de/?page_id=412
PRESS (DE): http://www.tunedcity.de/press/tunedcity_book_d.pdf
PRESS (EN): http://www.tunedcity.de/press/tunedcity_book_e.pdf

Sounds belong to the City. They determine spaces and identities. For
years, artists have been using city noises as a material to stage or to
question urban space--new territory, however, for most architects and
planners within the routines of functional planning procedures. "Tuned
City - Between Sound and Space Speculation" searches for a new
evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of acoustics.
This volume presents various positions of architects, artists and
theorists to expand the architectural discourse with the dimension of
listening.

CONTRIBUTORS:

Doris Kleilein and Anne Kockelkorn - Disconnection
Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter - Aural Architecture
Interview with Gisela Herzog and Gerhard Steinke - Reverberation Time
Susanne Hauser - Eye, Ear and Big Cities
Interview with Thomas Ankersmit - Resonance
Pascal Amphoux and Gregoire Chelkoff - How do cities sound? A
retrospective look at the concept of sonic effect
Interview with Raviv Ganchrow - Sound Material
Mark Bain - Psychosonics (and the Modulation of Public Space)
Interview with Arno Brandlhuber and Markus Emde - Noise Control
Michael Bull - Turning out the City: the iPod-Culture
Interview with Stefan Koelsch - Trigger to Flight and Ability to Speak
Interview with Jacob Kirkegaard - Otoacoustic Emission


Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation
Doris Kleinen/Anne Kockelkorn/Gesine Pagels/Carsten Stabenow (Editors)
Kook Books Pbk EUR 25

***

Review by Rahma Khazam, The Wire #296, October 2008

Published to coincide with a conference of the same name held in Berlin
last July, Tuned City explores the impact of sound on our urban
environment. This collection of 12 essays and interviews pulls together
contributions by sound artists, architects, media theorists and even a
neurologist, offering an overall picture of the multifarious relations
between sound and architectural space.

Opening up new and refreshing perspectives, the book features several
contributions from architects who actively engage with sound. These
include Doris Kleilein and Anne Kockelkorn, whose essay "Disconnection"
explains why architecture is 'disconnected' from sound and noise, noting
that at the most it is required to combat them. The authors go on to
argue, quote rightly, that sound artists show a similar lack of interest
in architecture: using recording and playback equipment, they create
acoustic spaces that exist by virtue of the performance, relegating
actual built space to the background. Other architects attempt to bridge
the gap between built space and sound: Pascal Amphoux and Gregoire
Chelkoff from Cresson, the French Sound Space and Urban Environment
Research Centre, present a typology of sonic effects occurring in urban
areas, outlining the relationship between these effects--which range
from reverberation to immersion or attraction--and architectural space.
This typology provides a standardized vocabulary that can be used by
psychologists, sociologists or architects dealing with sound, while also
reconfiguring our perception of the urban environment. Architectural
theorist Susanne Hauser likewise examines the social impact of urban
soundscapes, arguing that the functional, unaesthetic structures making
up the major part of today's agglomerations are designed to attract
neither the eye not the ear. She suggests that this sensory deprivation
may well be responsible for the retreat of city dwellers into their own
private spaces via technologies such as the iPod, which allows users to
select their audio environment. In his writings, the philosopher Peter
Sloterdijk has discussed such strategies of selective participation,
which can lead the individual to experience the rest of the world as a
poison, or at best as a meaningless backdrop.

As its subtitle suggests, Tuned City also leaves room for some
thought-provoking speculation. Architect Arno Brandlhuber evokes the
possibility of modifying the sound of one's living room by adding echo
or adjusting the volume. Elsewhere, musician and sound artist Thomas
Ankersmit points out that buildings reflect sound but never dialogue
with it. Even more intriguingly, architect and sound artist Raviv
Ganchrow considers the possibility of a dialogue between the building
and the user, in which the architecture is perceived not as a finished
product, but as a system that is only complete when it is listened to as
well as looked at. At a time when sound is becoming increasingly
controllable, directional and 'material', these ideas open up new
perspectives for architecture that are not as utopian as they may appear.

Sound engineer Barry Blesser's essay on aural spatiality comes across as
simplistic and self-evident alongside the exhaustive typology developed
by the Cresson team, while an article or two charting the theoretical
underpinnings and historical background of the arguments put forward in
these contributions would not have gone amiss. These are minor quibbles,
however; as an indicator of sound's undeniable capacity to influence
architectural practice and a plea for greater openmindedness on the part
of architects, Tuned City makes for essential reading.



-- 
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 140:
"Reverse"