Masters Thesis - Indaba Agora

INDABA AGORA: A FUSION OF DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL SPACE, A SPECTACLE WITHOUT THE VIRTUAL By Ryan Griffin

© May 2012 Ryan Griffin

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Architecture School of Architecture Pratt Institute May 2012

INDABA AGORA: A FUSION OF DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL SPACE, A SPECTACLE WITHOUT THE VIRTUAL By Ryan Griffin

Received and Approved: Date Thomas Leeser

Academic History Ryan Edward Griffin Born: Pittsfield, Massachusetts - November 18, 1985 Degrees: Bachelor of Architecture - The Pennsylvania State University, December 2009

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Occupation and Academic Connection Graduate Student, Candidate for Master of Science in Architecture, Pratt Institute Enrolled: June 2011 through May 2012

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Acknowledgments I’d like to thank my studio professors at Pratt: William MacDonald for my new understanding of meteorology and for breaking us all in. Vito Acconci for sending me out into the atmosphere. And Thomas Leeser for reeling me a bit further back in.

Thank you to my past professors at Penn State for giving me my base, especially: James Kalsbeek, Darla Lindberg, Malcolm Woolen, and Alexandra Staub.

Thank you to all my new friends from around the world at Pratt who have shared in this experience over the last three semesters.

Finally, thank you to my parents and family, and all my friends who have shown support and inspired me in the past eight years and before.

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Table of Contents Thesis Statement

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Abstract

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Introduction

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Part 1: Historical Synopsis

Assessing the Landscape

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Exploiting, Desiring the Landscape

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The Projected, and Today’s Landscape Congruencies/Negatives

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Incongruencies/Positives

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Part 2: Current/Future Scenario Future Fusion

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Simulacra and Simulation: A Theory of the Virtual

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The Virtual, The Digital, and The Real

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The Digital and the Physical

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Part 3: Thesis Investigation: Music and Space, Virtual, Digital, and Physical

Music and Space



Viruality/Simulation In Music



As the “Virtual”

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Table of Contents, cont.

As the “Real”

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Part 4: Thesis Proposal: Indaba Agora

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Bibliography/Works Cited

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Thesis Statement

The components of digital space configure the new “open plan.” The ability of these technologies to modify physical space changes our ideas of predetermined functionality. With the disappearance of physical objects, a new rationality of architectural space develops that begins to distance itself from strict modularity. The built environment begins to exist for its own rationality of indulgence in physical experience.

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Abstract

The city is where people seek to witness, create, and nourish the spectacle. The spectacle stands atop the endless monument in modern cities. However today, as the internet swallows up real space, the monument and the stage fall further into the background. The thesis melds together the functional and navigational qualities of the network (digital space) with that of Cartesian space (physical space). The applications of digital space are embraced for their potential, and physical space is maintained as a body to immerse oneself in. The product is a collaboration and practice space for musicians, immersiveenvironments artists, and producers, that acknowledges the role technology plays in the evolution of art. The building allows for the same act to produce multiple outcomes; work, play, and performance occur simultaneously. The building serves as a checkpoint/oasis for derive where the machine of the interior enhances the public space of the exterior in real time.

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Introduction

This investigation began with an interest in the inherent weaknesses of architecture’s slowness, the speed of the digital, and the possibilities of “augmented reality.” The potential ability to form a more integrated connection between architecture and music with projected “AR” means inspired my first proposal: a series of local AR wireless stations, controlled live by DJs or through a script, that would digitally modulate one’s viewing of their physical environment in coherence with accompanying music, seen through digitized contact lenses or glasses. These stations could be used in isolation or in a network as “fast architecture” to activate and shift the city with an acupuncture-like technique.

While this initial proposal was exciting to me, it was a bit anti-architecture, and

I was challenged to translate these interests into a more solid architectural piece while still considering my initial concerns. The following involves an analysis of virtual, digital, and physical space, an analysis of the virtual vs. the real, and an investigation of the relationship between music and architecture. In addition, the thesis deals with a constant concern of mine: the spectacle, the derive, and its role or lack thereof.

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Part 1: Historical Synopsis

Assessing the Landscape

Towards the end of the sixties there was a moment in architectural history of radical analysis, assessment, critique, and creation. It was a break from the religious exploration and creation of and within the modernist project.

Both Superstudio and Archizoom examined and projected a world of overly

saturating modernism. The grid of mass production and rationality spanned the globe in the No-Stop City and the Endless Monument. Archizoom’s No-Stop City paints the globes surface flat, applying grids and repeated unit allotments in a way that nearly rerenders the planet flat, but now infinite. A solution to two issues historically explored by the Modernists - travel/transport/speed and the efficiency of domestic space - was found through fusion: domestic space was the definition of all space. Superstudio’s Endless Monument traversed mountains and oceans. It crossed the Atlantic from Florence to invade the grid of Manhattan. The Monument grew like an invasive species, but whose growth patterns were nothing like any natural growing organism.

Archigram realized that this existing and projected landscape was ripe for

intervention. Their architecture moved (crawled, flew, floated, rolled) across the grid. The Walking City allowed for nomads to traverse the globe, all the while inhabiting and maintaining their domestic and community infrastructure. The Walking City was an expression and expansion of the Modernist desire for speed, and possibly predicted a future of mobile city states travelling the world in constant competition to search for and acquire resources from a rapidly depleting supply. 4

Superstudio’s Endless Monument invades Manhattan (Mutant Architecture)

Archizoom’s No-Stop City (Zenghelis)

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Archigram’s Walking City follows the path of the Endless Monument (Archigram)

Archizoom’s Pop-Up City (Just Do It) 6

Exploiting, Desiring the Landscape

The Situationists, a multi-disciplinary group most active in the sixties, had influence on various forms of art and politics of the time. Their statements still echo today, sounding just as loud as their original voicings. Their critiques of the mode of life imposed by physical and socio-economic structures called for a very deliberate approach to living that necessitated a metaphysical and opportunistic navigation of the everyday. The derive was a concept that initially involved an artistic and phenomenological approach to the inhabitation of existing space. The spectacle was to be transcended, hijacked, sabotaged from within. Ultimately, all life was to be lived more fully as play.

“The element of competition must disappear in favor of a more authentically collective concept of play: the common creation of selected ludic ambiances. The central distinction that must be transcended is that established between play and ordinary life, play kept as an isolated and provisory exception. ‘Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life,’ writes Johan Huizinga, ‘it brings a temporary, a limited perfection.’ Ordinary life, previously conditioned by the problem of survival, can be dominated rationally — this possibility is at the heart of every conflict of our time — and play, radically broken from a confined ludic time and space, must invade the whole of life” - Internationale Situationiste #1, 1958 (Contribution)



The Situationists as a group reach back to the late fifties. Superstudio and

Archizoom’s critiques a decade later added new work to the ranks. Their world was one where modernism had all but erased the historical/nostalgic aspects of the spectacle and replaced it with its own type of banality: the grid. Archigram sought to exploit technology as an apparatus for immediate gratification. The Pop-Up City saw the grid not only as a landscape of sameness, but as a blank canvas.

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Spectators in Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (Society)

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The Projected, and Today’s Landscape: Congruencies/Negatives

The Endless Monument lives on today and continues to expand. Efficiency, economy, and familiarity have proven themselves as the dominating factors defining the built environment. Architectural offices find themselves filling the position of building-mill, pumping out designs that are able to find themselves in one of the different endless monuments. Through modern chic, neo-traditionalism, or neo-classicism one can participate in a massproduced, instant acquisition of having “arrived,” of connection to “real” values and “the origin,” or to immediately institutionalized high-distinction and prestige.

Not only does the Monument exist in our built environment, but also in the mass

Modern Chic (Modern Chic)

Neo-Traditionalism in Celebration, Florida (Living the Dream)

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Conference Center in Nova Scotia, Canada (Charles V.)

media. The dominance of culture by few started with the Communications Act of 1934, which transferred domain over the airwaves from the government to private, profit-making entities with the idea that the public interest would be best served in the democratic and natural environment of capitalism.

(Sanjek p.178)

This did not happen. Legislation in 1996,

the Telecommunications Bill, expanded the scope of reach of single communications companies. (Sanjek p.179) This in addition to a slew of mergers and consolidations of different communications and media companies has led to what Mark Crispin Miller, of Johns Hopkins University, calls “a national entertainment state.” He states that the only way dominance over media can be deterred is with the use of ani-trust laws, and that the FCC needs to be more assertive in their “lax pursuit” of these law, which have only been put into effect minimally.

(Sanjek p.180)

Today, the “Big Six,” (GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time

Warner, CBS) control 90% of the media. That same 90% was controlled by 50 companies in 1983. On the radio, the playlists of 80% of U.S. radio stations are exact matches.

(Mrs.

Robinson)



The internet exists as a new endless “monument.” It is a new grid type allowing

for different plug-in or pop-up cities. The internet swallows up real space, converting it into digital space. The built environment fades into the background of experience as the mobile device becomes the convergence point of so much of being and activity. One plugs into the new city from the comfort of their own bed and the buildings outside their walls disappear. Generic architecture is produced as a backdrop with singularities existing in sparse frequency in time and space. Old typologies adopt nooks for plug-in devices.

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Smart Device in the Foreground, City in the Back (War on Texting)

Incongruencies/Positives

“Everything is flattened into an infinitely wide and depthless pool where image, text and history are dissolved by the solvents of media and communication.” - Sam Jacobs, FAT, “Beyond the Flatline” (Flatline)

The internet is a new mode of realization of the grid of the No-Stop City. However, as a grid type it is radically different. The old grid was still restrained by its Cartesian definition. Distance was (for our purposes) absolute. Repetition, the right angle and the straight line allowed for a rational delineation of space, place, and location within this mode. In this world one can move forward, backwards, right, left, and in a straight, curved, or jagged path with constant but usually less dynamic movement up and down. 11

Figure-Ground Navigation in the Cartesian Grid, Delirious New York (Koolhaas’ Delirious)



While the old grid can be easily represented graphically, the internet as a new grid-

type isn’t so easily captured. Possibly the best that can be done is the representation of the new grid at a given instant as a network. Similar to the electron, a location, place, or space in the new grid can only be observed. Space, place, and points in the new grid are constantly reorganizing themselves, being reorganized, and redefining their fluctuating relationships with each other. In the new grid, distance is reduced to an idea, space is defined by immediately experienced qualities and modes of production, location is defined by a set of relationships and connections in constant flux and process of reassociation/ dissociation.

Mobile and home computing devices, while in certain ways detract from the

collective perception and enactment of real space (specifically, public space), can act as a productive force as well. At a more personal scale, mobile devices can serve to augment, add more layers to, or modify experience. The personal derive can be tweaked or modified with its own soundtrack. A pop-up city is deployed through ones immersion in a cell phone 12

game on a daily train commute. The city is cohabitated by multiple locations in Cartesian space while in multi-player mode.

In addition to these modifications of space, there is also a democratization of means

in many applications. The physical, material, and costly is translated into the digital, the abstract and omnipresent, and the affordable. As space is malleable within this grid, our ideas and expectations of time as linear are challenged through ideas of instant edit, erasure, and recall. All of these qualities offer new possibilities unavailable previously with the Endless Monument and No-Stop City.

A Network Snapshot (Network Diagrams)

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Part 2: Current/Future Scenario

Future Fusion

“…He turned to the creature sitting on the table. ‘Welcome to Barcelona, Mr. Rabbit,” he said. He waved at the towers of the Sagrada Familia, which soared up and up from just across the street. The cathedral was best seen without virtual elaboration; after all, the reality of Gaudi architecture was gaudy beyond the imagination of modern revisionists… The bidding on physical tour slots to the Sagrada Familia was closed for the day, but there was still a queue of people near the cathedral entrance, people hoping for no-shows. It proved once again that the most important things were those you could touch.” (Rainbows, p.8-9)

“Pyramid Hill had all the latest touchy-feely gear. These were not just phantoms painted by your contact lenses on the back of your eyeballs… If you turned off all the game views, you could see other players wandering through the woods in their own worlds. Somehow the Hill kept them from crashing into each other… ‘Ahhh!’ The monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was so good - Juan flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime - real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.” (Rainbows, p. 44, 46)

In science fiction author Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, he explores in his narrative a world completely saturated with digital layers for almost any application. People no longer carry around laptops or smart phones but instead, they “wear.” “Wearing” involves a more nearly complete fusion of digital data, communication, and entertainment interfaces with 14

our everyday navigation through the world. These new digital layers are rendered in space through the use of digitized contact lenses. The possibilities offered by this extrapolated technology seem to be endless. In the meeting in Barcelona, only one of the members of the meeting is actually there. Similar to Mr. Rabbit, the members take on avatars to disguise their identities. The grid of the internet has become so loaded at this point in the future that while Mr. Rabbit is actually sitting in San Diego, he is able to walk through the streets of Barcelona. Nearly all of the first world population wears and can see Mr. Rabbit as he dodges between people on the street. (Rainbows, p.7-19)

Future applications of this coming technology are explored by designers today as

well. Keiichi Matsuda’s videos present a world where domestic comforts and organizational tools follow us in our own personal digital space. This security however, is constantly being bombarded by advertisements: floating digital flyers flooding the streets and our own homes. (3d Interior) Simone Ferracina’s projections involve applications that might suggest a more positively augmented reality, filled with games and filters that alter our perceptions of our own physical space.

(Ferracina)

Smart phone applications like Layar offer opportunities

for users to create their own digital interventions in physical space. The “Pulling Layers of Space Out of Thin Air” exhibition at Art OMI in Ghent, NY brought together various NYC architects to create their own architectural interventions on the grounds outside at Art OMI. (Peeling Layers)



Current and predicted digital saturation and intervention at these levels invite us

to ask questions about the real, the virtual, the physical, and the digital, where they exist, where they blur and intersect, and when they are indiscernible.

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Digital Domestic 1 (3D Interior)

Digital Domestic 2 (3D Interior)

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Ferracina Filter 1 (Ferracina)

Ferracina Filter 2 (Ferracina) 17

Ferracina Game (Ferracina)

Art OMI: Augmented Siberia, Leeser Architecture (Augmented) 18

Art OMI: What Is Space Out of Thin Air?, KOL/MAC (Henderson)

Art OMI: Grow Your Own: House of Grass, Acconci Studio (Grow)

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Simulacra and Simulation: A Theory of the Virtual

In his book, The System of Objects, (1968) Jean Baudrillard discusses the orchestration and arrangement of our material world in terms of their separate and combined functional, exchange, symbolic, and sign values. He argues that all values tend to converge on the creation of sign value: the values whose combinations define our system of objects and create identity and environmental phenomena. In this book he begins his argument that our reality is an implosion of meaning; an unconscious struggle to find some sort of semblance of meaning in a world becoming more and more devoid of it, irreconcilably distanced from the “origin” where real meaning once was. (Baudrillard Wiki)

He further explores this in his seminal work, Simulacra and Simulation. (French

publication: 1981, English: 1994) The System of Objects is now just a part of a scheme that destroys the real in totalized capitalist phantasmagoria. Commodity is no longer an idea attached to purchasing or selling materials but encapsulates all of life through its omnitemporal connection to all actions. He takes this passed Marxist theorizing by suggesting a new hyperreality emerging from a widespread acceptance of this reality scheme, evident through acquiescence and new contributions made to maneuver it. Mea¬ning is now up for grabs.

A more concrete example of this idea is discussed in an article published by

Baudrillard shortly after Simulacra and Simulation’s English translation release titled “Disney Company” where he examines Disney’s plans to buy the “hot” section of 42nd street in Manhattan in order to transform it into an erotic theme park. Disney plans for what was New York’s red light district involved:

“Transforming the pornographers and the prostitutes, like the factory workers in Smurfland, into extras [figurants] in their own world, metamorphosed into identical figures, museumified, disneyfied.”

(Disneyworld)

Here he takes on an easy target, but also a helpful example. Here the hyperreality is 20

perverted more fully, being placed on an obvious stage but still attempting to parade itself as “real.” “…a vast “reality show” where reality itself becomes a spectacle… the real becomes a theme park.” (Disneyworld)



He must have seen himself as being generous in calling anything “the real,” but the

point is made. Disney has taken their domain so far as to cover not only the cozy feeling of fairy tale myth and mythologized American puritanism, but to even co-opt the brothels. A contemporary of the Situationists, Baudrillard is able to offer us a connection to Debord and the spectacle. We are obviously in a situation related to the spectacle, but taken to a different level.

“And so it does not take much work for Disney to scoop up reality, such as it is. ‘Spectacular Inc.,’ as Guy Debord would say. But we are no longer in a society of spectacle, which itself has become a spectacular concept. It is no longer the contagion of spectacle that alters reality, but rather the contagion of virtuality that erases the spectacle.” (Disneyworld)



The Situationist critique of the spectacle as a false masquerade of “real life”

seemed so convincing before. Does this suggest that now it is something we long for? In Baudrillard’s chapter “Holograms” from Simulacra and Simulation he offers us an explanation of how we perceive and accept the real and the true: “In short, there is no real: the third dimensional world, the fourth that of a three dimensional universe… Escalation in the production of a real that is more and more real through the addition of successive dimensions. But, on the other hand, exaltation of the opposite movement: only what plays with one less dimension is true, is truly seductive.”

(Simulacra, p.107)

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The Virtual, The Digital, and The Real

“The real, the real object is supposed to be equal to itself, it is supposed to resemble itself like a face in a mirror - and this virtual similitude is in effect the only definition of real - and any attempt, including the holographic one… will eventually miss its object, because it does not take its shadow into account…” (Simulacra, p.109)

It is important to make a distinction between the virtual, the digital, the real, and how they exist in combination with each other. Baudrillard’s criticisms of the virtual are for when they come in the form of simulacra. Although his criticisms often seem to be nostalgic lamentations of disappearing, or fading reality structures, they are in fact most strongly directed at the simulacra that induce or stem from nostalgia itself.

The virtual as simulacra are moments of attempted immersion into a copy in order

to replicate affect of real world situations, past or present. We have already discussed one such example: most things created by Disney. In addition we have simulacra from advertising, creating virtualities of identity. Coors Light commercials offer an affect of being a fun-loving hero, by “tapping the rockies.” MTV sells simulacra of “rebellion” or sexuality through painfully staged reality shows or with the promotion of pre-packed identities through new stars. Lady Gaga is not weird, but an idea of “weird” that has been given permission to be sold in a spotlight. Musical reality competitions enact a similar function where even the idea of “hype” is hyperreal. These are simulacra at their most degenerative, nostalgic, and delusional.

After the virtual as simulacra, we have the virtual as digital, or as digital simulation.

Here we use digital tools to reintroduce the functionality of existing physical typologies (chat “rooms”, forums, my “space”, face “book”, “buttons”, e”mail”), or to document spatial characteristics of specific spatial locations or systems to be more easily accessed and understood from any point in real physical space. In addition to this, there is the ability to simulate real space and movement through stereophonics, image reproduction, and 22

computer graphics through mediums such as film/cinema. Just because something is not physically real, or actually “happening,” does not make it a virtual simulacrum. Baudrillard is even keen to make this distinction:

“The difference is that when we put on our digital suits, plug in our sensorial captors, or press the keys of our virtual reality arcade, we enter live spectrality whereas Disney, the genial anticipator, has entered the virtual reality of death.” (Disneyworld)

In short, one should not confuse the digital, and certain modes of simulation, with the simulacra of the virtual. The digital comes in the form of simulations and creations, and is real.

Lady Gaga Thinking Outside the Box (Lady Gaga) 23

The Digital and The Physical

Joseph Nechvatal is a digital artist and theoretician who teaches theory courses in immersive virtual reality and lectures around the world. For his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Wales he started work developing his concept of viractualism, a concept to approach the digital in our physical world; a new type of topology. It attempts to examine the relationships between the virtual vs. the actual, and the computed vs. the (uncomputed) corporeal. (ecole Toulouse)

“Viractuality is a theory that strives to see, understand, and create interfaces between the technological and the biological. …the viractual recognizes and uses the power of digitization while being culturally aware of the glamourous values of monumentality and permanency…”

(ecole Toulouse)

Cybists are a conceptualized group of people who participate in research and creation within this aesthetic:

“[C]ybism can be used to characterize a certain group of researchers and their understanding of where cultural space is developing today. Cybists reflect on system dynamics with a hybrid blending (cybridization) of the computational supplied virtual with the analog. … [T]he role of the cybist is that of the explorer/ researcher. The function of such an explorationally inclined artist however is not to only find, but to participate in and foster a constant instability of consciousness, to mitigate against self-stabilizing formations so as to encourage internal ‘cybomatic’ connections to sprout and expand. [T]oday, with the emergence and continual growth of cyberspace, it seems that no sense of closure will ever be able to contain the deterritorialization articulated and monumentalized by cybism. … [C]ybists seem to perceive the world now as a kaleidoscopic environment in which every tradition has some valid residual form as information and sensation. A world of perpetual transformation has emerged and established a seemingly unrestricted area of abundant options.”

(ECAM)

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Part 3: Thesis Investigation: Music and Space, Virtual, Digital, and Physical

Music and Space

“Architecture is ‘frozen music’… Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Ergo Architecture)

All concrete arts may be able connect to certain elements or moments of music. A painting may be able to capture the essence of an instant of a musical composition better than architecture could ever hope to, but architecture’s connections to music are not necessarily in its ability to replicate or translate, but in the fact that architecture and music occupy similar “spaces” and “frequencies” within our world. Both inhabit and define space and time, and both have characteristics of rhythm, texture, tone, modality, and structure among others. While no pairing of architecture and music may ever connect all its elements to unify one with the other, their similarities can account for a very symbiotic relation of enhancement.

Throughout history architecture and physical space have always had a connection

to music. Music always finds itself in a space, or space has been created for music and musical performances. These spaces directly influence the acoustics and thus the sonic space of the music. These effects are always at least somewhat accidental, intentional when possible, and recently, electronically mediated.

The relationship between architecture, space, and music has changed throughout

history. A timeline of typologies might go something like: informal space - religious space - opera house/concert hall/theatre/ballroom (elite) - concert hall/theatre/dance hall (common) - recording studio/recorded media/home entertainment/radio - laptop/internet/ 25

mobile device. These typologies never replaced the previous typology, but accumulated. These stages and typologies represented cultural classifications and definitions and followed the paths of concentrations of power. Initially, folk music occupied informal space. The importance and power of religion slowly pulled musical creation and performance into its own space, culminating in spaces like Notre-Dame de Paris or San Marco di Venezia. When the elite classes started to occupy religion as more of a pretense than a true life structure, culturally exclusive centers for entertainment and music were created (ex. Palais Garnier), followed by smaller, less opulent replications for the common classes. This process of re-democratization of access to and creation of music grew especially in the last two centuries with the growth of new technologies, now allowing anybody with a laptop and a pirating website, to absorb, create, broadcast, and even possibly sell their own music. With the accumulation of building typologies and technological bridging of means, the space music occupies in our world has changed from being extremely defined

Cathédrale de Notre Dame, Paris (Cathédrale) 26

Basilica di San Marco, Interior, Venice (Interno Della Basilica)

Palais Garneir, Paris (Palais Garnier Long Section)

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Apollo Theatre, Harlem, New York City (Black History)

Family Gathering Around Home Entertainment System (Happy Holidays) 28

Roseland Ballroom, Manhattan, New York City (Butterfly)

Recording Studio, Queens, New York (New York Recording)

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and limited in time and location to a state of nearly omnitemporal access and complete spatial saturation.

In additional interest are the ideas of stage/backstage and their positionings within

these moments in history. At times the backstage was just as informal as the stage or nonexistent. At times it was architecturally defined such as in grand opera houses and concert halls of the baroque. At other times they existed in the same place, such as today, with both contained within the hardware of a laptop. However, in this case, the hardware is only part of backstage, as input and output can and usually do, take place in different locations.

Backstage, Stage, Audience - Palais Garneir, Paris (Palais Garnier Long Section) 30

Basic Home Music Production Setup (Making Future Magic)

Viruality/Simulation In Music: As the “Virtual”

As was previously stated: the virtual as simulacra are moments of attempted immersion into a copy in order to replicate affect of real world situations, past or present. Music of the past and today can be analyzed using these distinctions, in terms of their virtuality or lack thereof.

To look at music as the virtual, we can go back to impressionist, romantic, or other

narrative “classical” music. The ability of this music to transport - from one place to another, from one set of emotions to another - was contemporaneously existent with a rise of global travel and communication, and with an expanding audience. The industrial revolution had brought manufacturing technologies enabling the creation of new instruments and improvement of the quality and reliability of existing instruments. It also brought about a 31

rise in the middle class. Growth of industrial production created an expansion of economic means which allowed for this expanded audience. These new instruments were able to reflect and infer emotions with more diverse means of expression. In addition, this new audience tended to be less musically educated, so the music had to find reception through emotional, humanistic connection rather than strict musical expression. (Romantic)

Gathering Middle Class Family (ENG 463)



The virtual in this sense of music can be assessed as interpretation, or

reinterpretation. An example of the virtual as interpretation is Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie series. These short, nearly minimalist piano pieces are interpretations of moving water, possibly the Seine during a walk through Paris in the morning. They transmit emotions of comforting nostalgia. The virtual as reinterpretation can be seen, for example, in Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Instead of spring’s common interpretation as a time of chirping birds, blossoming flowers, and newfound love, Stravinsky’s choice of narrative offers a 32

Rite of Spring, Ballet, With Virgin in Center (Joffrey Ballet)

reinterpretation of this time of year: a pagan ritual ending with the sacrifice of a virgin; dissonant in tone and subjectivity. This reinterpretation transmits emotions of disturbance and displacement. Such a drastic interpretation mixed with new musical tonalities, jarring the neural passageways of brains used to comforting Romance music, caused a violent riot during the premiere of the piece in Paris in 1913. In a follow-up performance - a year later at the same venue - people’s brains were less jarred by these patterns, and the piece was embraced. Stravinsky was carried out of the venue on the shoulders of adoring fans. (30:00, Radiolab)



Another interpretation of music as the virtual is in Allan Bloom’s critique of popular/

rock music in his neo-conservative diatribe: “The Closing of the American Mind.” For many people, not just the stereotypical teenage audience, contemporary popular music is a conduit for escape, catharsis, release, and indulgence in a mood that coalesces with one currently experienced in one’s life or inaccessible at the moment except by musical means. Bloom, even in the eighties when Closing was published, still thought that teenagers were the only audience for popular music. However, his interpretation of this idea of catharsis through music is that it is one of complete virtuality; a cheap escape from the true realities and emotions of real experience. (He also thought the music would make children start thrusting their pelvises uncontrollably and want to kill their parents) (Bloom, p. 75)

Taking a more contemporary look at popular or rock music within the past ten

years, an interesting subject in this context is the popular genre of “retro rock.” In this 33

genre, we see a retrieval of various affects of popular music from previous eras, whether it be technological, or through methods of expressive technique and style. Where does the desire to reach back in such an identifiable and categorizable way come from? Is it a post-modern conundrum coming from a generation at a loss in its search for meaning? An auditory System of Objects? Is it a failure of our media system to produce anything “good”; to let it surface? Is only that which is established, the real? Or is it a non-discriminatory approach to time? The sound technologies of each time period all have their own unique sonic qualities. But are the reactions we get out of their use a true expression of the innate qualities of that sound or more heavily affected by a psycho-temporal relocation to a more complete immersion into the culture that originally surrounded that sonic quality? One might argue the latter considering the usual apparel choices of the artists creating this music to match the styles of the era they are extracting from.

How to judge this anachronism? Should it be viewed negatively as an expression

of nihilism (in the western sense)? Or should it be viewed positively as a transcendence of our linearity? In the music of the band The Strokes, we see an expression of ambivalence to technology:

The Strokes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzO7IGWGxu8&ob=av2e 34

In the music of D’Eon (if he is of an age, it is mostly not this one) we see an expression of technology’s existence outside of normative chronology:

D’Eon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuMufoHT4vQ

It seems D’Eon is deriving his sounds from those of the hip, but from those who were hip when life for him was filled with security; from those who were hip twenty to thirty years ago. Unlike The Strokes, whose music incorporates more time-spanning norms of rock music as a traditional genre, the music of D’Eon exists in nearly complete ambivalence to its temporal separation - despite the insertion of the sound of interference made by cell phone signal altering the electrical current of a speaker - in its extreme specificity of and adherence to reference. D’Eon’s music is a complete exploitation of simulacra.

Another artist in this paradoxical genre (paradoxical in its saturation of referentiality

and its self-proclaimed superiority), is Grimes. Her recordings use techniques and technologies that may be dated but are usually mixed with current technologies and approaches that couldn’t exist in any time but the current. Her recordings are maximalist compositions indulging in the plethora of current and past technologies and styles.

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Grimes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE

“Everything is flattened into an infinitely wide and depthless pool where image, text and history are dissolved by the solvents of media and communication.” - Sam Jacobs, FAT, “Beyond the Flatline” (Flatline)

Viruality/Simulation In Music: As the “Real” “The difference is that when we put on our digital suits, plug in our sensorial captors, or press the keys of our virtual reality arcade, we enter live spectrality whereas Disney, the genial anticipator, has entered the virtual reality of death.” (Disneyworld)

Beginning with the invention and accumulation of new types of musical instruments, adding to our voices and the things we hit with sticks, the technologies we create have 36

always been influencing and expanding our ability to create new music and sound. This is the same with all forms of art. As big of a revolution as was the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution we are experiencing now is just as monumental.

Starting with the recording and production techniques of the mid-20th century we

have seen the library of these techniques grow, now containing a multitude of affects from artificial reverb, to distortion, to phase shifting, to auto-tune. As previously stated, many of the sonic qualities produced have strong connections to a specific time period. However, the questioning of the “reality” of these tools in this discussion doesn’t have anything to do with chronology or history, although it does have to do with time.

In music production and recording, the end result is record as product/art artifact,

whether it be a physical object or a digital file. The space of the recording, the sonic space, is one that exists unto itself, like the digital space previously discussed, with no confines. If a space has no limits or true dimensions or densities, it has no referents. While various subjectivities may be found in this space, at one time they were not subjectivities, but new sonic qualities to be experienced. Even when music recording was an analog process, we had arrived at a certain beginning of music in digital space with the introduction of stereo sound: left-right, 1-0.

With the advanced technologies we have today, producers and sound engineers

navigate and modulate the new digital space. They are able to stretch time and space through their modulations of frequencies, resonances, stereophonics, and more. The role of the producer has been more traditionally as a navigator of the network of talent and ideas supplied by the musicians at his/her disposal. With the rise of this new type of networked space - today’s digital - the role of producer as artist and producer as performer has grown, as evident in the successes of artists like Moby, Daft Punk, and Flying Lotus.

With the growth of the producer as artist and performer has come the creation of

more fully immersive environments that encapsulate the performance. Light manipulation, the positioning of sound, the vibrations from the speakers as they affect one’s body, and the music itself, all work together to create new atmospheres. Applications like this can reach for a maximalism that Grimes can only scratch the surface of. This is one of the new fields of the Cybists, and one of the focuses of my architectural proposal. 37

Flying Lotus, Stage-Backstage Interface (Daily Bugle)

Flying Lotus Stage Projections (Salacious Sound) 38

Daft Punk’s, Stage-Backstage Interface (Inside Daft Punk’s)

Daft Punk Pyramid (Total Flux) 39

Part 4: Thesis Proposal Indaba Agora

Digital space is swallowing up physical space.

The spectacle is relocated into digital space but controlled by the new endless monument of the media.

The same functions that once occurred within the city now occur in the digital realm and inhabit a city that spans globally.

Future scenarios predict a world starving for physicality.

The project had to embrace the potentialities of digital space while indulging in the physical. This was done by taking one of these digital spaces that was swallowing up physical space and reintroducing it in a mode that accentuated the physical and realized its value. The space chosen was indaba.com, a website used for networking and collaboration between musicans and producers. Indaba.com incorporates an audio mixing and recording interface and has a forum for meeting and discussion. However, it forgets about the physical spaces in which music has historically been created in and inhabited, and the bodies themselves that play these instruments.

The project is called Indaba Agora. It is a place for creation and collaboration

between musicians, producers, and immersive environments artists. As a whole, it is a cybist workshop. It is a network that functions through the interaction of separat units. The units are digitally connected and their relationships to other units can be reconfigured on the fly. Musicians in the city need a place to practice where it is quiet for themselves and others. Producers need sounds to work with, whether they be intentionally crafted or

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found. They need a place to interact with other artists of their kind. Immersive environments artists need large, digitally activated spaces to experiment in and a willing audience to test their creations with.

Able to be placed in any city, the building has two main levels, one above ground and one under, and a public space that is an extention of the ground plane that extends to inhabit the space above the top level. These two main levels are the spaces for collaboration, and serve to enhance the public space above and below by transmitting sound and visuals from the inside and using it as atmospheric ornament on the exterior.

Spatial arrangements on the interior are derived as a fusion between the models

of physical figure-ground and the digital network. The resulting translation is a model that uses points to create a phsyically inhabitable space of figure ground: the voronoi. This model generates spaces that are similar, but none the same, thus creating multi-functional spaces with varying spatial and acoustic characteristics. Smaller spaces are used for practice or creation with a small number of musicians, or even as solitary practice rooms. Medium sized rooms can be used for groups slightly bigger and the largest rooms can be used for large ensembles, for experiments by the immersive environments artists, or as performance spaces. 41

Ground Floor Plan



The entrance at the bottom right serves as a meeting place. After entering, one can

navigate the pathways around the separate spaces. The hallways create a double wall between the rooms, allowing some sound to transmit into the hallway itself, but not between enclosed spaces. This transmission adds a derive-like quality to one’s navigation through the interior spaces, similar in its dispersed localization of sound to the transmitted sounds in the public spaces above. Producers occupy the rectalinear spaces and orchestrate digital connections (sonic and visual) between the separate rooms. The producer may be sampling an active practice session without the active knowledge of the musican, or orchestrating collaborations between multiple musicians and immersive environments artists. Both the musicians and the immersive artists are meant to have an influence on the creations of the other. The way one musician practices or performs a single peice of music could be drastically affected by the visual environment he or she is immersed in. Additionally, producers can alter the already varying sonic qualities of the spaces through digital means. This arrangement creates an arena for cybist creation. 42

Stairs leading from bottom to top level, with two lounge spaces interspersed.

Top Floor Plan

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Immersive environments in practice rooms

Digital surfaces transmitting interior environments to public space

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Practice rooms animation sequence



The public space accentuates the physical out of necessity through its undulating

landscape - a form working with the interior to create the varied qualities of the practice rooms - and through the introduction of vegetation varying in hardness/softness, density, height, color, etc. Through the real time transmission of sound and video into the integrated public park space, the interior becomes a machine for spectacle on the outside without entering the Buardillardian virtual. Work, play, performance, and leisure are all potential outcomes of the same act in real time. The key factor in its lack of Baudrillardian virtuality is that the machine creates a dynamic, ornamental atmosphere for the exterior, there is no directly translated image of “musician.” Through this artistic integration of the digital and the physical, a viractual composition is created.

Exterior animation sequence

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Public path leading to park space above

Above public park space

46

Complete building

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Exploded Perspective

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Interior gathering space and large immersive environments space

Public park space, ground level

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