the scale of light
February 20, 2009
The last couple of days I’ve read some of the literature suggested by Truus, mostly about light zones and the ‘scale of light’. Especially the scale of light intrigues me, as it’s set up, a scale, resembles a tonal scale, or, associated with poetry, the different vowels. This reminds me of an example a friend of mine gave me on the connection between vision and sound:
One is presented two doodles of characters. One is pointy, like a star or sun, while the other is round. When asked which of both would be Kiki, and which one would be called Bobo, about 90% (if not more) of the people choose the sharp character is Kiki (keekee), and the round one is Bobo. This is because the sound of the ‘i’ is considered a sharp sound, while the ‘o’ is a round one.
The same might apply for light. Using the same names, I personally would associate Kiki with hard shadows and direct lighting, while Bobo would be more diffuse and soft shadowed. Or in music, Kiki would be a higher tone. I guess the i in Kiki is indeed a higher tone than the o in Bobo. A higher tone would be consistent with a stronger shadow. Continuing on the lighting, a louder tone would be associated with more luminancy, while a softer tone would be less. In a spatial form, for example a curving wall or a series of spaces, a louder tone could be associated with more reliëf, or a larger space.
Though I do not intend to end up with a literal translation, I might try to do this with a light scale and music, just to see what the visual effect will be. It would certainly make a cool windows media player visualisation.
Considering the previous post about Xenakis, a good way in using music/poetry could be to analyse it’s basic elements (rhythm, pitch, etc) and use those to make an architectural form. Not as a direct input-output relation, but as two separate works, based on the same underlying principles. The architecture for instance wouldn’t have the exact same sequence in pitch, but it could have a similar distribution in high and low tones and abrupt or fluent transitions between them.
A problem which I haven’t mentioned yet, but which I have discussed with my instructor Rudy, is the element of time. In music and (spoken word) poetry, time is an important factor. In architecture it is not, as it is static mostly. A solution could be to make the architectural experience dynamic. A series of spaces, which is experienced in a sequence, can introduce the element of time in architecture. A continuously transforming space can do this as well. But when introducing the element of time in the architecture, there is also the problem of ‘freedom’. When one has time in both architecture as music, it will be more difficult to make architecture which is inspired by the music, rather than a direct translation of it.
