The Serpentine Gallery, Art Through Touch and Shape collaborated to deliver Sounding Architecture, a project exploring non-visual experiences of architectural space by visually impaired people.
Sound artist Kaffe Matthews, artist Lynn Cox and sound engineer Bob Field, led a series of experimental and experiential workshops to explore largely non-visual perceptions and heightened awareness of space. 12 visually impaired and four sighted participants took part, who each had an interest in art and architecture.
Participants worked with the artists to explore spaces and environments through listening, walking, locating, mapping and recording journeys. They investigated touch, smell, temperature, humidity, sound, light and dark and how they influence each other through experiments, such as finding smell maps in unknown spaces, making temperature drawings, making music, building other kinds of interfaces for experiencing sound, writing, constructing, destructing and finding text, and broadcasting.
Some of the maps and texts were used as scores or processing routes from which to make sound works to play/replay in other environments. Resonance FM presented daily broadcasts from the project with programmes made by the artists and participants. The project launch included a live sound performance in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005, designed by Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond – Arup, and consecutive radio broadcasts on Resonance FM.
Supported by
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With additional support from
Sounding Architecture Launch 2005
Photograph © 2005 David Bebber
Sounding Architecture Launch 2005
Photograph © 2005 David Bebber
