Architecture and music are seemingly discrete entities. Yet when blended our impressions of them tend to play one off, or with, the other. Collective members Robert Feist, Glenn Sparks and Michael Stearns have each enjoyed decades working with sound waves in recording studios; they can confirm the interrelationship.
What in our human perception commingles sound waves with solid structures? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed: “Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music”. Marcos Novak, a self-described transarchitect (architect, artist, and composer), is a theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to design actual, virtual and hybrid intelligent environments. He’s expanded his definition of architecture to include electronic space, and refers to his creations as ‘liquid architecture’, ‘navigable music’ and ‘archimusic’. “If we described liquid architecture as a symphony in space, this description would still fall short of the promise. A symphony, though it varies within its duration, is still a fixed object and can be repeated. At its fullest expression a liquid architecture is more than that. It is a symphony of space, but a symphony that never repeats and continues to develop. If architecture is an extension of our bodies, shelter and actor for the fragile self, a liquid architecture is that self in the act of becoming its own changing shelter. Like us, it has an identity; but this identity is only revealed fully during the course of its lifetime.” This adaptability is remarkable for its kinetic intelligent design. It may also become a necessity in the very near future.
-Glenn Sparks/Collective Producer
