scales

For quite a while, I have been very fascinated by the idea of buildings as hearing and speaking entities, and I am especially taken by the drawings of Athanasius Kircher from the 17th century, which turn whole buildings into listening and speaking devices. At the same time, I am curious about self-referential systems that work with what is already there, using the space itself as a source both to create form and to form sound. Scales is a site-specific sound installation for my studio at the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Norway. It consists of three architectural wooden models of the studio’s interior at scales 1:20, 1:26.66, and 1:33.33. Each model contains a loudspeaker and a microphone pointed inside, creating an audio-feedback loop that generates a steady, drifting drone. The pitch depends on the resonant frequencies of the space, allowing for tuning through precisely scaled models to produce a defined interval of three tones. The sound interacts with the studio’s acoustics, forming a constant dialogue. The mouth, a large horn loudspeaker, is capturing and projecting the studio’s sound into the outdoor environment, acoustically linking the spaces inside and outside and making the building speak.

the project was developed during a residency at Nordic Artists' Centre Dale, Norway