25.05.2011, 16:00, Pip Greasley @ HIT E 51

Sonic Artist. De Montfort University Leicester UK.

‘Now play the building in 7/8′.

The shared language of harmony, pulse and rhythm has historically been a connect between music and architecture based on the notion that the blueprint as ‘score’ will generate a unique sound signature  – an acoustic ident engineered from material and form.  But because great architects like great composers will continue to create works that move us and spiritually engage us – buildings will continue to transcend functionality and draw us into pervasive world of their inner vocalizations.

‘Architecture is frozen music’ said Goethe. I’m not so sure. For me, architecture even in its passive state, is an experiential sensation that goes well beyond 3D, and whilst future scanarios will increasingly embrace more dynamic, interactive and transformable structures, certainly Goethe’s ‘frozen music’ becomes more a journey towards melt-down with the merging of sonics and architecture in a  state of 4D fluidity.

The architect’s manipulation and transformation of voids and mass will dictate a new form of performative aesthetic driven by a hybrid of installation art, kinetics, dance and sound.

A substantial body of my work has inhabited this ambiguous state between  environment and sound, between the real, the fictive and the virtual; between  the traditional and synthetic, between generative and linear, and the music of improvisation, ambience, and electronics.

In the lecture we’ll look at the 5K Pursuit Opera, which pioneered the idea of a wired-up interactive environment – velodrome as sonic instrument – within which competing cyclists could generate a musical score. And Accelerato, which interrogates transitional structures by utilizing the lift shaft as synthesizer within which users can compose a score and audition by riding the lifts.

Pip Greasley’s lecture:

_