HARMONIC COMPOSITION OF LIGHT

John Cage refers to harmony as a condition that can be noticed when different sounds exist at the same time. This idea of his can be read in his composition of the 49 Waltzes where the 147 locations offer 147 harmonic compositions of sounds.
In our building in Brooklyn one can read this idea of harmony when sound is replaced by light. The building as a whole can be read as a composition of light. While stacking is the technique we use, masses of concrete roughly cut are used in a way that the proportions of the masses and the voids give form to an apocalyptic experience. The cracks (cuts) exist both in the horizontal and vertical directions. One could say that those cracks (cuts) function as a notation system that can be used from the body as a path to circulation. These moments of light and darkness manage to transfer the visitor, through a collection of rhythmic stairs and paths, to the highest moment of his experience inside the building, the auditorium. The final outcome of the movement of the body can be identified as an irrational and non rhythmic composition of moments of light and dark conditions. The Auditorium found in the top floor of the building acts as a still moment in the harmonic composition that the building defines.

UNINTENTIONAL TEXTURES

“The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence, and the silence almost everywhere in the world now is traffic... If you listen to Beethoven or Mozart you see that they are always the same, if you listen to traffic you see that it is always different.”

-John Cage

Urban architecture exists in a field of fluid change between capital, material, energy and people. It is always both subject and object transmitting and receiving movements that become permanent form. Projects that map or a record city constructs, in time become a collection of non-referential memories re-sampled or discarded, piled up and reinterpreted. Cities constantly change while architecture acts like cooled glass with a liquid memory. If the only consistent rhythm is difference, then the only rationale is to compose the unintentional.

In The 49 waltzes for the Five Burroughs John Cage composed a score that sampled sounds throughout the city as they are, creating, as he would say, a sculpture which remains. The score is a map of New York City superimposed with points and lines indicating 49 locations and durations of sounds sampled throughout the city. The points and lines, selected by chance, do not indicate notes or rhythms, but rather “invite listeners to consider the sounds and textures that exist naturally in the city. The finished project combines sounds into an intriguing, nostalgic rumination on the diverse vibrations of urban life as an unintentional music made by people, birds, planes, automobiles, police and fire sirens, and countless other debris of sounds; forcing one to accept their ordinariness.”

Then to think would always be to construct, to build a free plan in which to move, invent concepts, unfold a drama. Making a philosophy would become a matter of architecture in the way a novel, a painting, or a piece of music is, where the plan of construction must be always built anew, since it is never given in advance through a system or underlying rules. Philosophies would become free, impermanent constructions superimposed on one another like strata in a city. John Rajchman, Constructions

Heart of Darkness

"True, by this time it was not a blank space anymore. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery-a white patch for a boy to dream gloriusly over. It had become a place of darkness."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Pure Pitch & Jagged Sound

Pure pitch and jagged sound in John Cage's Imaginary Landscapes No. 5 give form to an expanding and contracting space. These two distinct sounds are set in opposition and mingle together throughout the composition. To create a pure pitch he uses electronic production of a tone to reduce any fluctuations from overtones. The jagged sound, which has a jagged wave form, is produced by vibrating piano stings.



This simple dialectic of smooth and rough a strategy to give form to a music center in Brooklyn Heights

context

Smooth Violence. John Cage's imaginary landscapes has two distinct qualities of sound that explore pure pitch, the erasure of overtone through electronic production and jagged vibration through analog manipulation of piano wires. These two qualities mingle throughout the piece.

Smooth light filters through a rough composition of concrete masses stacked horizontally. In contrast sheets of glass cut through the building disrupting the rhythm of the space and open up shafts for vertical circulation. On the ground floor a diagonal cut breaks the rhythm and links the circulation of the community to the larger public which enter as they approach from Atlantic Ave. The overall composition gives a monolithic presence and is broken down into individual pieces that relate to the scale and texture of the community.