The Poland Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale will feature a design exploration into the interaction between sound and architecture in creating our environment. The project, by Katarzyna Krakowiak, is a sound sculpture that presents architecture as a primary system of listening. The sculpture collaborates with neighboring pavilions and echos the sounds that reach the Polish Pavilion, highlighting its acoustic qualities. The exhibit will be on view from August 29th through November 29th.
More on the exhibit after the break.
“All architecture is essentially a phenomenon of sound – it constitutes the environment in which sound spreads, enhancing some of its qualities at the expense of others. But it also absorbs, filters, and transmits sound. In a discrete and invisible way, architecture organizes our social existence. Seen from the perspective of sound, however, we can view this process in a different way than categories of delineating and isolating social space. Walls, floors, ventilation, heating, or sewage systems – are all structures that connect and transform, rather than isolate, interpersonal relationships. We constantly make ourselves heard to others, and are heard by them – often in spite of, or even against, our will. From the perspective of architecture theory, the promise of ensuring intimate space is therefore realized as an ambiguous participation in intimacy which can be traced in practices such as listening in, eavesdropping, or other procedures of hearing through architecture.”
Designed through detailed calculations, the exhibit will explore the acoustic qualities of its own construction – creating, transporting, amplifying and distorting sound. It was determined that a map of the building’s acoustics will enhance the sensations of sound for the viewers. The work explores an interest in the “fleeting, invisible, and almost imperceptible character, which is at the same time intimate and physical, the work is an apt metaphor for our contemporaneity” as it is derived from sound. Ultimately, it explores the impact of architecture through sound as it relates to the theme of this year’s Biennale: “Common Ground”.
