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The project is called Indaba Agora. It is a place for creation and collaboration between musicians, producers, and immersive environments artists. As a whole, it is a cybist workshop. It is a network that functions through the interaction of separat units. The units are digitally connected and their relationships to other units can be reconfigured on the fly. Musicians in the city need a place to practice where it is quiet for themselves and others. Producers need sounds to work with, whether they be intentionally crafted or found. They need a place to interact with other artists of their kind. Immersive environments artists need large, digitally activated spaces to experiment in and a willing audience to test their creations with.

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INDABA AGORA: A Fusion of Digital and Physical Space, A Spectacle Without the Virtual

Thesis Statement

The components of digital space configure the new “open plan.” The ability of these technologies to modify physical space changes our ideas of predetermined functionality. With the disappearance of physical objects, a new rationality of architectural space develops that begins to distance itself from strict modularity. The built environment begins to exist for its own rationality of indulgence in physical experience.

Abstract

The city is where people seek to witness, create, and nourish the spectacle. The spectacle stands atop the endless monument in modern cities. However today, as the internet swallows up real space, the monument and the stage fall further into the background. The thesis melds together the functional and navigational qualities of the network (digital space) with that of Cartesian space (physical space). The applications of digital space are embraced for their potential, and physical space is maintained as a body to immerse oneself in. The product is a collaboration and practice space for musicians, immersive environments artists, and producers, that acknowledges the role technology plays in the evolution of art. The building allows for the same act to produce multiple outcomes; work, play, and performance occur simultaneously. The building serves as a checkpoint/oasis for dérive where the machine of the interior enhances the public space of the exterior in real time.

Status: School Project
Location: New York, NY, US

Able to be placed in any city, the building has two main levels, one above ground and one under, and a public space that is an extention of the ground plane that extends to inhabit the space above the top level. These two main levels are the spaces for collaboration, and serve to enhance the public space above and below by transmitting sound and visuals from the inside and using it as atmospheric ornament on the exterior.

Spatial arrangements on the interior are derived as a fusion between the models of physical figure-ground and the digital network. The resulting translation is a model that uses points to create a phsyically inhabitable space of figure ground: the voronoi. This model generates spaces that are similar, but none the same, thus creating multi-functional spaces with varying spatial and acoustic characteristics. Smaller spaces are used for practice or creation with a small number of musicians, or even as solitary practice rooms. Medium sized rooms can be used for groups slightly bigger and the largest rooms can be used for large ensembles, for experiments by the immersive environments artists, or as performance spaces.

The entrance at the bottom right serves as a meeting place. After entering, one can navigate the pathways around the separate spaces. The hallways create a double wall between the rooms, allowing some sound to transmit into the hallway itself, but not between enclosed spaces. This transmission adds a derive-like quality to one’s navigation through the interior spaces, similar in its dispersed localization of sound to the transmitted sounds in the public spaces above. Producers occupy the rectalinear spaces and orchestrate digital connections (sonic and visual) between the separate rooms. The producer may be sampling an active practice session without the active knowledge of the musican, or orchestrating collaborations between multiple musicians and immersive environments artists. Both the musicians and the immersive artists are meant to have an influence on the creations of the other. The way one musician practices or performs a single peice of music could be drastically affected by the visual environment he or she is immersed in. Additionally, producers can alter the already varying sonic qualities of the spaces through digital means. This arrangement creates an arena for cybist creation.

Digitally animated room surfaces

Sound transmission/Acoustic dérive

Digital surfaces transmitting interior environments to public space

Stairs leading from bottom to top level, with two lounge spaces interspersed.

Interior gathering space and large immersive environments space

Animation: https://vimeo.com/45924556

Immersive environments in practice rooms

Public path leading to park space above

Roofop public park space

The public space accentuates the physical out of necessity through its undulating landscape - a form working with the interior to create the varied qualities of the practice rooms - and through the introduction of vegetation varying in hardness/softness, density, height, color, etc. Through the real time transmission of sound and video into the integrated public park space, the interior becomes a machine for spectacle on the outside without entering the Buardillardian virtual. Work, play, performance, and leisure are all potential outcomes of the same act in real time. The key factor in its lack of Baudrillardian virtuality is that the machine creates a dynamic, ornamental atmosphere for the exterior, there is no directly translated image of “musician.” Through this artistic integration of the digital and the physical, a viractual composition is created.

Ryan Griffin

INDABA AGORA: A Fusion of Digital and Physical Space, A Spectacle Without the Virtual