Pavilion, 2007 (Intro / InSitu foundation, Maastricht).
(click for hi-res picture of new version of Pavilion)
exerpt from the lecture at 'Soundsouvenirs', University of Maastricht:
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A Pavilion refers often to a building that’s basically achieved for its esthetics, a token of fine architecture. A shelter, habitually placed in parks, where from the environment can be conceived differently.
A spot to observe and to be observed.
Highlights in history can be found in world’s fairs such as Montreal, Sevilla and Brussels and the buildings of the Giardini of the Biennial of Venice.
In 1958, at the Brussels world’s fair, The architects Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis cooperated with the contemporary composer Edgard Varese in the “Phillips pavilion”.
This cooperation resulted in “Poeme Electronique”.
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Poème électronique is the first, electronic-spatial environment to combine architecture, film, light and music to a total experience made to functions in time and space. Under the direction of Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis' concept and geometry designed the World's Fair exhibition space adhering to mathematical functions. Edgard Varèse composed both concrete and vocal music which enhanced dynamic, light and image projections conceived by Le Corbusier. Varèse's work had always sought the abstract and, in part, visually inspired concepts of form and spatial movements. Among other elements for «Poème électronique» he used machine noises, transported piano chords, filtered choir and solo voices, and synthetic tone colorings. With the help of the advanced technical means made available through the Philips Pavilion, the sounds of this composition for tape recorder could wander throughout the space on highly complex routes. "(Wikipedia)
This could be regarded as one of the first steps of the specific coalition of sound and space or architecture. Since ’58 a real milieu developed within this field; with examples of Rioyi Ikeda, Paul Panhuysen, Justin Bennett, Carsten Nicolai, Franz Pomassl, Knut Åsdam, Yolande Harris and many others.
To work with sound and space, in order to create a condition towards an audience, implies an exclusive relation of this audience to the production. This goes beyond an experience from standardised media as such, like from hifi at home. Instead of the repetition or representation of something that was once recorded and frozen accordingly, now the artists have the means to invent an always refreshing situation for their listeners and spectators. PD
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