“Like a nomadic gazer, the exploratory mapper detours around the obvious so as to engage what remains hidden.”(Corner , 225)
MIX HOUSE (2006)
I decided to focus on THE MIX HOUSE, a project created in 2006 by the architects Karen Van Lengen and Joel Sanders, alongside Ben Rubin, a media artist and founder of EAR Studios in NYC. The Mix House was on display as part of Open House: Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living, which describes itself as an “open-ended exhibition and multi-faceted research initiative [that] encourages creative individuals to make a substantial contribution to the dialogue on how we will live in the future,” at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, from April 14-July 1, 2007.
Here is a link to the project through the site of architect Joel Sanders:
http://www.joelsandersarchitect.com
Upon visiting the site, the viewer must click on ‘Projects,’ then ‘Speculations,’ then ‘Mix House.’ The images in the current critique are taken directly from this site.
The project itself, though architectural in scope, is a mapping project in the sense that James Corner suggests: “‘space’ is created in the process of mapping.” (Corner, 229) The images of the Mix House are essentially drawings, but these particular drawings are invested with a vision of the future. The “final product” (an actual building) would be nothing less than a “space” created with a map.
As these are projected images (and I mean this temporally), the project is able to theoretically touch upon the fourth dimension (space-time), a concept that has only ever been speculatively understood, whether in the arts or in the sciences (or elsewhere…). Perhaps this is why Sanders keeps the project in his ‘Speculations’ tab.
Here is a pdf, where the project is discussed by all three creators in full:
http://www.artcenter.edu/openhouse/pdf/mixhouse.pdf
According to the project creators:
“Mix House explores the possibility of closely coordinating sound and vision with the goal of enhancing the individual’s audiovisual experience of the domestic landscape. This residential dwelling is conceived as a dynamic space enriched by an acoustic link to its external environment and the integration of new channels of communication within the house.” (86)
Thus the interest is in the relationship between space and sound, and new ways in which we can link these two senses in (imagined) spaces. The intellectual tradition of the West, in its perpetual privileging of the visual faculty over other sense-perceptions, has effectively handicapped us in our ability to think in new, creative ways that lie outside of the confines and limitations of sight. This project, in suggesting that we come to “think” of space with sound, challenges that tradition while providing us with the aural stimulation necessary for such creative thought. This ties into my own project as I intend to represent (abandoned) spaces with sound.
In their words: “Mix House rejects the privileging of the visual, putting sound and sight on equal footing. The project proposes a dwelling that rethinks and extends the modernist notion of visual transparency afforded by the ubiquitous glass window to include aural transparency as well.” (86)
The Mix House is geographically mapped so as to fictively exist on a random suburban plot in Charlottesville, Virginia. Certain “sides” of the house consist in custom-made “sonic windows,” which regulate sounds from a variety of sources (from ambient sounds outdoors to Satellite transmissions). The “sonic windows” function like an “audio-visual telescope,” and are equipped with both video-cameras and microphones. The microphones record sounds which are then transmitted to various speakers located throughout the house in an effort towards “aural transparency.”
The “sonic windows” assume three forms (and here I quote the creators directly):
1. The Sonic Front Entry: The louvered section of the front sonic window allows residents to hear the ambient sounds of the streetscape. Here, the curved sliding surface doubles as the front door. It can be operated to pick up and highlight particular sounds of this locale: guests arriving at the house, the dog that is greeting the mailman or the occasional jogger.
2. The Sonic Picture Window: This sonic window facing the backyard is designed like a camera bellows. It includes a translucent glass dish that is fully integrated into the window wall with the ability to rotate freely in three dimensions. Again, the louvered windows regulate the ambient sounds while the rotating dish focuses on specific activities of the backyard: the birdfeeder, the children playing in the sandbox, or the dog chewing on his bone.
3. Sonic Skylight: This louvered glass skylight located near the top of the vertical volume is designed to both capture and then muffle the ambient sounds of the neighborhood. This soft “sonic breeze” is appropriately located just above the sleeping area.
Sound is the “invisible” we so ubiquitously take for granted. We know it exists, yet we cannot see it. However, just because we cannot see it, this does not mean we can merely ignore it, as has traditionally been the case in cartography. The exclusivity of a statement such as “seeing is believing” is truly astounding once we understand that “hearing,” too, constitutes truth (as does smelling, touching, etc.). This is an important point as it challenges the last 500 years of the western intellectual tradition, which treats “vision” as the way in which reality is experienced (internalized and repeated).
Challenging, however, is not enough; new ways of “believing” (or of “knowing”) must be instituted/recognized if we are to break out of the visual hypnosis demanded by such a seeing-specific culture. Projects such as the Mix House have a very real and a very practical value in that they they suggest real ways in which this “challenge” can manifest itself.
As a projected illustration of an imagined space, this project functions as a map. Realized, the house would also function as a map. I mean this in the sense that the (imaginary) inhabitants of this (imaginary) space would exist inside the map, and would use the house as a map. On the counter-top in the kitchen is a controle-module, from which the (imaginary) inhabitant would be able to “chart” territory, and navigate their way through the house, thus utilizing the house in the same way maps have traditionally been used: as a way of representing space, and as an aid in understanding spaces (and the relationships between spaces) in ways much bigger than our individual selves. Maps traditionally allow us to see what exists beyond our visual field. In the same way, this project allows us to hear what exists outside of our auditory field. Sound is thus not treated as a static phenomenon, and it gains “visibility” in the process of (imaginary) engagement.
For each window, there is a “passive” mode wherein a user can “play” with the sounds as they are filtered, selecting certain frequencies to exclude, for example. This also feeds into my own project, as I would ideally like to have a portion of my map dedicated to such usability, and this will exist as an “off-site” tool that allows users to physically play with sound represented. In my project the user will be able to add multiple effects, change the b.p.m. (of a loop, if the user chooses to loop), adjust the pitch, etc., as mediated through a Roland PS303 Dr. Boss sound-sampler.
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Overall, I think this project is great if only because it blends the visual with the aural, thus stimulating the viewer to truly think about space in a creative way. This creative act alone challenges the Cartesian notion that “seeing is believing,” as it becomes clear when engaging with projects such as this, that one can “believe”aurally, just as one can “know” through visualization. Again, it is crucial that we avoid qualifying between these two sense-perceptions. Furthermore, the project assumes a pedagogical function, as well, inviting us to think about what particular spaces sound like.
here is a video-walkthrough of the project (1:22-2:05):
http://vimeo.com/12319636
CRITICAL-CREATIVE APPLICATION:
D’Ignazio draws on Guy Debord, “who coined the term ‘psychogeography’ […] to denote critical spatial practices that could be put to use by an individual in encountering and changing the rationalized, urban environment and the ‘society of the spectacle’.” In building off of this tradition (either consciously or not) established by the Situationists, the mapmaker is able to “make a political case that challenges the authority, embedded value system, and perceived utility of the map by displacing our attention to things that are definitively small, everyday, and personal.” My application of the concepts presented in the Mix House assume the form of such “everyday and personal” experience.
Given the focus on “space” in the Mix House project, particularly as it relates to the aural perception/representation of that “space,” I began thinking about the kinds of sounds that may emanate from a Mix House. I then thought about a figure I consider myself “familiar” with: Charles Bukowski. So many of Bukowski’s poems from the 60s and 70s are written from his apartment in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and so often he actually reflects on this apartment in his poems.
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Charles Bukowski, in his 50s during the height of hippie-culture, wrote several volumes of poetry, as well as his first novel Post Office (1969), from his Hollywood apartment at 5124 De Longpre Ave.
So I began to imagine Bukowski in a room, typing such poems. And I began to take an inventory of the things he did while he wrote: smoke; drink; listen to classical music; type.
By simply recording myself doing the things I imagined Bukowski doing, I was able to create a fictional soundscape of the noises I imagined emanating from those activities. I then imported the wav.file into ableton live, wherein I added a bit of reverb (to suggest ‘space’) and a bit of distortion (to suggest ‘instability’ or ‘movement’). I then reversed the entire wav.file (to suggest the ‘backwardness of time’). The sound made “today” thus exists in a direct relationship with the room “yesterday” (or 40 years ago, ad infinitum).
Aside from the stylistic imperative informing these creative choices, Graham Harman goes so far as to suggest that “any relation between any two objects automatically produces distortion.” (168) Harman argues that “time” is something only ever experienced, thus to think of “time” as something that can be “grasped,” or “known,” is a fallacy: to locate an object in another “time” (or in another “space”) means to relate to that object, and in entering into a relationship with any other object one inevitably disturbs or disrupts that object.
The effected wav.file, then, serves to remind the viewer/listener first, that there are means beyond the purely visual with which we can think about such objects, but also, to suggest that our entering into a relationship beyond the purely visual with these objects effectively alters (or distorts) our relationship to these objects.
The soundscape thus exists in relation to the visual field, and challenges the normalizing imperative that treats “time” as something exclusively linear and rational.
In the juxtaposition of “sounds from yesterday” (though in this case they are constructed and thus fictive) with “images of today,” we can literally hear bukowski typing from beyond the grave.
bukowski (“then”)
NOTE: This process can obviously work both ways: I can just as well juxtapose “sounds of today” with “images of yesterday” (and perhaps this is even more intuitive [and possible!]), but as I was just beginning to experiment with these ideas/methods, I did it this way.