SOLIPSIST from Andrew Thomas Huang on Vimeo.
Saturday 23 March 2013
Thursday 21 March 2013
Sunday 17 March 2013
Transfiguration - Olivier de Sagazan
I first came across the surreal and disturbingly powerful performances of Oliver de Sagazan in the recent Ron Fricke film, Samsara. These performances are a reflection of our traumatised society, suffering from delusions, paranoia, obsessed with self image. Olivier de Sagazan points to how our identity is fleeting, reconstructed and destroyed.
Friday 15 March 2013
Music For Airports
Having
spent a number of years working on the design of major international airport
terminals, as well as travelling in many of them, it has been illuminating
revisiting Eno’s music for airports. Eno describes the music being a result of
an experience where he was delayed at Cologne Bonn Airport for several hours.
Struck by the amount of attention and design given to every other facet of the
airport, the soundscape had been essentially left to chance, and as a result
was uninspiring.
How
a building sounds, unless it is a concert hall, is something architects rarely
consider. Airports are no exception, they are vast halls where the lighting,
signage, passenger flows and even advertising placement has been carefully
orchestrated. The resultant soundscape however is rarely considered beyond
tannoy placement and reducing the noise of aircraft. Eno felt that a functional
soundtrack could be designed to uplift and inspire passenger experience.
Airport
clients carefully define and break down into quantifiable parameters for what
makes for good passenger experience. Speed, ease of use (the phrase ‘intuitive
way finding’ is a common one) and durability often head the list. Successful
airport architecture has gone to great lengths to ensure visually that
successive parts of the airport read clearly and are well defined, so that the
passenger seamlessly moves from one function to the next, without having to
engage in strenuous navigation.
The
neglect of attention to a soundscape could work against the careful calculation
of architectural wayfinding. An airport’s soundscape can potentially be
chaotic; multiple tannoys, noise of jets and the consumer frenzy of duty free
can be disorientating. On the other end of the spectrum waiting when waiting for
a plane the soundscape is totally inane, magnifying the already intense dis-ease
our culture suffers from of not being able to sit quietly.
Eno clearly recognised these chaotic and banal sound environments as missed opportunities to ‘celebrate of the achievements of mankind’ and ‘to reflect on our mortality’. The result was Music for airports, a set of musical compositions specifically designed for an airport environment.
Eno clearly recognised these chaotic and banal sound environments as missed opportunities to ‘celebrate of the achievements of mankind’ and ‘to reflect on our mortality’. The result was Music for airports, a set of musical compositions specifically designed for an airport environment.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
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