INSTALLATION: UNBUILT | ATHENS Mapping Communications Soundscape (2008)

CONCEPT:

Today, a concern of sensorial experiences has permeated various fields, from sensory marketing—purveying the experience economy—to the practice of multi-sensory design and the crucial investigation of artists. Much of contemporary architecture shares this renewed interest in a sensorial environment that extends beyond the purely visual realm. Therefore, the conference paper and project topic is the creation or the re/creation and re/establishment of noise versus sound within the urban playground.

Using the early 1970’s term: Soundscape, this installation/paper is an investigation and development of sound as medium that interconnects an intrinsic relation between sound and its location, galvanizing acoustics with the contemporary of the social realm, and the environmental tensions sound versus noise inherent between the producer versus consumer. Given that sound has inherited properties through confronting differentiated situations and complex barriers, the mapping of communication between these realms are difficult to surmount.

As Mirko Zardini, Director of the CCA—Canadian Centre for Architecture—has indicated and lectured, it is true that in the last 15 years the capacity and range of drawing has greatly expanded. Thanks to new software, many more possibilities are available in the conception and development of an architectural project. These “devices of design” have not only produced a different type or technique of conceptualizing the project but also addresses the construction of the building itself. In spite of these new possibilities, a large part of a project remains to be defined out of the drawing process. In the practices of architecture and urbanism, drawings are unable to define and convey the richness of sensorial experiences.

Mapping sound is forming a place where sound becomes as much a part of auditory experience, as the material of sound itself. Architectural form hence, is a product of “place-based” sound features within a spatial experience of opportunities to situate a listener with an intensification of immediate experience that expands beyond a point of focus to an environmental situation. This project is a discussion and negotiation where “mapping communication” is the mapping the sounds which cannot be built, but effected by the built. The aural geography and locational mapping becomes less a place-holder of spatial urbanistic viewpoints, but a broad theme of global listening points—thus, to listen to a sound, is to listen to the entire body of the sound world in microdetail (footnote).


LaBelle, Brandon - Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art
Introduction to Part 5: Soundmarks: Environments and Aural Geography Pg: 197

FUTURE SOUND MAPPING: PARIS, VIENNA, TOKYO, & BEYOND


Title:
Mapping Communication: Soundscape

Design & Fabrication:
Wendy W Fok

Installation Team:
Natalia Kastravelli, Vasilis Raptis

With Special Thanks to:
Director Mirko Zardini / Dr. Maria Theodorou

Dates:
(2nd Tour)

15 - 21 JULY 2009
Location: Gazi, Technopollis

(1st Tour)

8 - 18 SEPT 2008
Location:
Byzantine Museum

WEBSITE: we-designs.org/soundscape/

Copyright © atelier//studio WF + WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC

INSTALLATION: UNBUILT | ATHENS Mapping Communications Soundscape (2008)

CONCEPT:

Today, a concern of sensorial experiences has permeated various fields, from sensory marketing—purveying the experience economy—to the practice of multi-sensory design and the crucial investigation of artists. Much of contemporary architecture shares this renewed interest in a sensorial environment that extends beyond the purely visual realm. Therefore, the conference paper and project topic is the creation or the re/creation and re/establishment of noise versus sound within the urban playground.

Using the early 1970’s term: Soundscape, this installation/paper is an investigation and development of sound as medium that interconnects an intrinsic relation between sound and its location, galvanizing acoustics with the contemporary of the social realm, and the environmental tensions sound versus noise inherent between the producer versus consumer. Given that sound has inherited properties through confronting differentiated situations and complex barriers, the mapping of communication between these realms are difficult to surmount.

As Mirko Zardini, Director of the CCA—Canadian Centre for Architecture—has indicated and lectured, it is true that in the last 15 years the capacity and range of drawing has greatly expanded. Thanks to new software, many more possibilities are available in the conception and development of an architectural project. These “devices of design” have not only produced a different type or technique of conceptualizing the project but also addresses the construction of the building itself. In spite of these new possibilities, a large part of a project remains to be defined out of the drawing process. In the practices of architecture and urbanism, drawings are unable to define and convey the richness of sensorial experiences.

Mapping sound is forming a place where sound becomes as much a part of auditory experience, as the material of sound itself. Architectural form hence, is a product of “place-based” sound features within a spatial experience of opportunities to situate a listener with an intensification of immediate experience that expands beyond a point of focus to an environmental situation. This project is a discussion and negotiation where “mapping communication” is the mapping the sounds which cannot be built, but effected by the built. The aural geography and locational mapping becomes less a place-holder of spatial urbanistic viewpoints, but a broad theme of global listening points—thus, to listen to a sound, is to listen to the entire body of the sound world in microdetail (footnote).


LaBelle, Brandon - Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art
Introduction to Part 5: Soundmarks: Environments and Aural Geography Pg: 197

FUTURE SOUND MAPPING: PARIS, VIENNA, TOKYO, & BEYOND


Title:
Mapping Communication: Soundscape

Design & Fabrication:
Wendy W Fok

Installation Team:
Natalia Kastravelli, Vasilis Raptis

With Special Thanks to:
Director Mirko Zardini / Dr. Maria Theodorou

Dates:
(2nd Tour)

15 - 21 JULY 2009
Location: Gazi, Technopollis

(1st Tour)

8 - 18 SEPT 2008
Location:
Byzantine Museum

WEBSITE: we-designs.org/soundscape/

Copyright © atelier//studio WF + WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC

Posted 5 months ago & Filed under art, athens, byzantine museum, contemporary, design, greece, installation, mapping communication, sound, sound art, sound design, soundscape, unbuilt, 2008,

About:

spatial / geometrical / mathematical / material processing

The endeavours of Wendy W Fok's research-based projects are dedicated to the creation of designs interlaced within the principals of procedural-based mathematics, logics, and material studies, within the field of architecture, digital media, and design. Her designs are substantiated through explorations between the cross-pollination of spatial installation arts and novel architectural innovations embedded within urban cityscapes.


Wendy W Fok, director/founder and team member of WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC (Architecture) and atelier//studio-WF (Art), winner of the Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award (2009), and a selected designer of the Perspective 40 under 40 Award (2011), has a Master of Architecture & Certification of Urban Policy/Planning from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, with a concentration in Economics (Statistics) from Columbia University. Notably, WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC has been selected by Twenty+Change (co-curated by Heather Dubbeldam and Lola Sheppard) as one of twenty Emerging Canadian Design Practices (2011) in Canada.

Fok has an international background from Vienna, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong & Canada. Her art installations have been displayed in Dubai, Vancouver, Toronto, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, Athens, Venice, & Prague, and has worked on several international architectural projects, exhibitions, & competitions-- including the HKSZ Bi-City Biennale 2012, 12th La Biennale di Venezia 2011, the Shanghai Expo 2010, Athens Fringe Festival 2009, & Lower East Side Tenement Museum 2004/05.

Fok's interests are toward the investigations of contextual and content-related natures of fabrication, partnered with cradle-to-cradle material investigations that compliment scaled prototypes within architectural design. Meanwhile, her design methodology is to challenge the dynamic significance in structuring and mapping the ideals of art, architecture, and urbanism within the processes of [design | optimisation | fabrication] for resilient planning, material research, and alternative methods of fabrication with progressive aims within the built environment.

On her spare time, Fok is the founder & administrator of (C)ODE-(C)OLLECTIVE-- a collective forum for Grasshopper, Rhino, Parametric Modeling, & other digital media / design tools, which pose as an educational & developing archive site to formulate the critical utility of digital design-- an Associate Member of the HKPDA (Hong Kong Parametric Design Association), and Contributing / Overseas Editor for the a+a magazine, published by the Architectural Society of China.