research proposal
February 16, 2009
Hypothesis:
the mood of music (and poetry) can to some extent also be achieved by means of architectural devices such as (but not limited to) composition of space and light.
I will do some background research into all elements of architecture, music and poetry which I believe are important in setting the mood, and explore ways to ‘translate’ these from music to architecture. Translation of music to architecture has been tried numeral times by various architects and designers. Usually, an algorithm is used to translate these 1 on 1. By doing so, the goal of my research, translating the mood, is lost, as the link between the music and the architectural form is only recognisable when one knows the algorythm.
The method I will try to develop is not so much focused on a 1 on 1 literal translation, which can be translated back again, but focuses more on the, let’s say, interpretational side. The architectural form will be inspired by the music or poetry. The result will therefore not be a strict formula which acts as a black box that automatically creates a form based on an input, but a set of guidelines on how several elements might be ‘translated’ into architecture. The term translation should maybe be replaced by a term such as transformation or interpretation. During this research, I will primairily be focusing on composition of space and light, because of the limited amoud of time, but other devices won’t be thoughtlessly discarded or ignored.
To test the hypothesis, an interpretation method will be developed, which will be used on ideally several examples, say seven. Through a questionary, people will be presented the seven inputs and outputs, and asked to sort out the pairs. Then, the average score will be calculated and this will be used to determine how succesful the test is. A low score, up to 3 out of 7, can be achieved by random guessing, 4 is already a lot harder to guess, and chances on 5 or 7 out of 7 are very slim.
Probably there won’t be enough time to do more than one interpretation. To test this, people can be showed the output, and asked to select the right music/poem out of a set. Or vice versa, the music/poem can be showed, and the corresponding architectural form has to be selected.
