#music osmotic exchanges

[earhartsease]

music you got hooked on by people in your past that you can't have anything to do with any more is some weird discomfiting magic

back in the early 2000s we went out with (and then were married in a terrible way) to an aussie who once made us a mix tape that was mostly people we'd never heard before, and we got really into at least half of these voices and bands - Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Goldfrapp, Portishead, Gomez, PJ Harvey, Straitjacket Fits, Spiderbait, Hole, and we still listen to these a lot and feel that mess that surrounded getting into all this and it's okay somehow

[jnometeora]

A TASTE OF GREEN

I had to deal with a big problem my dear, I’d never match up to his success and I’ve always been in his shadow.

For this reason I sold all my participation quote in my father’s empire to my brother and decided to move to Paris looking for new opportunities and new loves.

Last time I went to Paris I ramble over (…) and took a general view of the city. I crossed the Seine at the Pont Louis Quinze, and walked along the noble quays as far as the Island, admiring, on the opposite side, the vast extent of the united palaces of the Tuilleries and Louvre,(…) and whether I looked up the river, towards the Pont Neuf and Notre Dame, or downwards, to the Champs Elysees (…) I had always a noble scene before me. [1]

Charmed by this memory I returned to that bridge and I walked up the Seine to widen my glimpse; arrived at the height of “pont neuf” I decided to cross it and to reach the “Ile de la cité” ;

the only instance where Haussmanns destruction was total [2]. Passed by Notre Dame, I crossed the “Pont Saint-Louis” leading to Île Saint-Louis; a big white sign with the red inscription “A vendre” caught my eye. I immediately called the number reported on the sign;

That was really the beginning of something new.[3]

After spending some months in Paris, [4] I made the acquaintance of some interesting people. One of them, Edmond, a really smart guy who also seemed to be feeling lonely and was very ready to keep me company [5]

Together we decided to use the beautiful space I bought and to start organizing parties and events to strength the links between the people we knew in the city and expand the connections. In fact, the real essence of a city is its people they provide its buzz, its soul, and its spirit, those indefinable characteristics we viscerally feel when we are participating in the life of a successful city [6]

We cleaned out the entire block, letting only the facades and the roof, and we throw our first Party.

That evening Edmond introduced me to a Swedish couple, who were in the city, like me [7], looking for new opportunities, enjoying an uncommon drink they called “synesthesia”.

They offered me a metallic glass which contained a viscous liquid, slightly aromatic with a bitter green apex. wait… green? Did I just tasted a color ?

One sip after I was watching myself chatting and entertaining the Swedish couple. I could feel how cold it was, I could smell the dust around me. I was completely immersed in the memory. I could smell, see, taste, everything. This went on for some time; my mind wasn’t anymore allocated in my body which was melting in the surrounding while my mind was rising above everything. I slowly started to feel new sensation, to experience the space from another dimension, I was able to discern all layers of sounds: the chatting of people, the music, the footsteps, the sound of the empty space and to isolate the one I wanted. Then I entered another dimension, the dimension of smells and tastes, the touch dimension and finally sight. I suddenly realize that I was able to combine them at will and even more sensations were defined.

I just had the time to realize someone were pouring some more bitter greenish “liquid” in my glass, before watching myself walking back to my car and drive away.

——

The young architect was enjoying some “Chateau Musar 1975” while reading in front of his fireplace; when the bell rung, a blond, woman on her early thirties was chaotically speaking through the videophone.

The architect interrupted her and let her accomodate on the LC4 at his place; he went to the  kitchen sideboard and poured her a glass of the same wine he was drinking asking her to calmly repeat from the beginning.

Elizabeth tried to explain the experience she just went through, telling him she really liked them and she wanted to create a path into spaces were “normal” people can live the same experiences.

“You could never describe (…) what happened in a more accurate way [9] there is no experience of society which is not first the experience of a few individuals. [10]” said the architect.

“What you just described is a neurological condition of involuntary cross-modal association[11] called synesthesia ‘abnormal’ only in being statistically rare. [11] By imagining the world that people with synesthesia perceive, we investigated the generation of spaces. [11] what kind of world do people with synesthesia perceive?[11]

Take this great wine, for example, taste it,(…) a sensorial bomb(…) If we had to set out what the wine contains, and taste the list would be as long as our admiration of the wine was profound, the label would cover the bottle, the cellar, the vines and the surface of the countryside, mapping them all faithfully, point by point [12]”

In the comfortable silence that followed (…) Elizabeth, keeping the wine in her mouth looking for the taste of the vines, experienced that strange but widely familiar sensation of having been there before, of having had this precise exchange with this very gentleman in this location some time ago, a fleeting moment of experiencing the present as a memory. [3] But the present itself was somehow a vivid dream, she couldn’t really explain herself where she was and how she came there.

Her wondering about that feeling was suddenly interrupted by somebody screaming “A votre santé” and she emptied her glass before realizing that the young architect was speaking about some sketching and ideas he had in developing the spaces.

She pleased him to repeat, apologizing for being absentminded.

“The aim of the proposal is to induce a synesthetic experience in the visitors, by taking both architecture and function to the limits of perception, to the critical point where synesthesia might occur in ‘normal’ brains.[11] Passion spaces here are compared with conceptual spaces (Noma et al, 1998) in the analogy of ‘logos vs pathos’.[11]”

She was excited of his proposal and immediately asked him how to conceive those spaces.

He continued on articulating his idea:

“According to some studies, Elizabeth, Sensory deprivation proves to be an efficient method: the reaction of the neurological system in absence of any stimuli is to invent its own. A brain deprived of external input starts to project an external reality. [11]"

She explained him she bought an entire block in the city center of Paris where she would like to organize those spaces.

The young architect asked her about the materiality of the block explaining that, there are two types of skin, the inner and the outer. If the outer skin is made of hard stone, the durability of the building will be improved. [13] Elizabeth’s happiness couldn’t be greater in becoming aware of that.

“ We will organize the inner space as follow: The part next to the facade will be left [14] empty in order to perceive the facade in its integrity from the outside but even on the inside, and working as a puffer space, an osmotic membrane between the city and the inner tensions; in fact the entrance hall is the first step in the de-conditioning process.[11] This took the place of the atrium or vestibule.[15]”

The architect then continued in articulating the inner space, probably already having the pathway in his mind.

The visitor will encounter a series of chambers, located on three different levels, corresponding to the conceptual organization of the nervous system and the associative routes of synesthesia [11]

These three levels should be connected by a staircase; we have two types of staircase (…) one ascended not by stairs but by an inclined ramp, the other by steps. Personally, I strongly approve of stairs; the fewer the stairs in a building and the less room they take up, the less of an inconvenience they will be.[16] We will use both of them.

The entrance hall shall be directly connected to two staircase ascended by steps, one private and one public. The public one lead directly to the third floor where the pathway begins. The three levels are then organized on ascending or descending ramps more or less inclined without differing to much from this rule: an incline of one part in height along the vertical to six in length along the baseline.[16] The ramps are designed and disposed following the natural men’s flow, their linger and their crossing principle.

This organization should lead the visitor to naturally plunge throw the street level where the chamber representing the deepest level of the nervous system is located.

“The private staircase will be closed to the visitors and be accessible only to you, on that pathway, which will mostly be organized in the nordest part of the block, we will organize your life spaces and some synesthetic chamber you prefer to keep private; the two pathway will cross several times but never interchange, in order for you to imagine how do they fill the inner space try to think about a double helix, such as the DNA, where two different (but complementary) helix will intersect keeping their belonging track. You should think the block, the facades, as the skeleton of the head, containing the brain organized in its 3 level and the staircases the connection between the spinal-chord and the brain stem”

Elizabeth felt like the architect was describing and building up the building at the same time, she could perfectly follow his thought and imagine what he was explaining.

“We now come to the opening. There are two types of opening, one for light and ventilation, and the other to allow man or object to enter or leave the building. Windows serve for light; for objects there are doors and stairs [16], doors should only be placed in accordance to the ramps disposition and windows are in our case only for light because the ventilation will be automatically regulated.”

The public pathway should be articulated as follow, the first room is the “TIME SEEING” chamber, which should blurring the boundaries of the interior and exterior space [11] treated as a portico where the exact view of the site is displayed with an eight hours delay, is the only part emerging from the existing building, this circular Portico shall be covered with a Cupola. [16] the covering hemisphere is perforated from small opening bringing zenithal light into the space, corresponding to the displayed moment.

Sloping further through the pathway, the visitor will be brought to the “SOUNDS WATCHING”  chamber: a theater in which a full orchestra is playing directed by a passionate and vigorous conductor, but nothing is heard. The length of the “scaena” ought to be double the diameter of the orchestra.[17] And the wall has a height one ninth the radius of the central area [13]. The ramp exiting this chamber is slightly ascended and leads to the “LIGHT HEARING” chamber

A chamber were lights openings are modulated and an obscure, cold, humid and foggy atmosphere makes it possible to see the small rays coming from all directions. Freely moving into the space single tones are reproduced when interrupting a light ray.

Next up is the “HEARTBEAT SMELLING”chamber: here the participant is seated in an anechoic chamber [18] were even the visual boundaries of the chamber are blurred, the participant start to hear two sounds one high and one low.’[t]he high one is the nervous system in operation. The low one is blood in circulation’ [19] The brain then compensates the loss of auditive input by heightened attention to all other senses, and at this moment the brain is stimulated by introducing into the chamber an Imput such a particular smell and a wall changing color; hallucinations can occur after only a short while [11].

Leaving the “heartbeat smelling”chamber the visitor will enter the “SOUNDS TOUCHING” chamber where the symphonies played by the orchestra are reproduced; every color is associated to an instrument, the “artist” is now called to paint what is hearing in real time. Every color is only available when the related instrument is playing. Finished the symphony paintings are collected and distributed at the end of the next chamber: the “TASTE HEARING” chamber.

This chamber is the only one accessible also from the street, is the apex of the path, a food court were finger food is served and notes are played on regular interval, or the space is suddenly saturated by one color.

——

I started to feel cold and I wanted to ask him to add a new chunk of wood to the fire, but suddenly I realize to be out of the block were the party started, and a splash of water and mud thrown by a passing-by car covered my beautiful pale red dress. I looked for the swedish couple in order to get some more “synesthesia” but none of the guests was still there, neither was Edmond which I saw walking away hand-in-hand with Alizée in the fog. So I turn my back to go back home and all I saw was a blurred Ferrari symbol and lots of light, I open my eyes and I found myself laying in my own bed, it was late in the morning and doorbell rung, was the mailman carrying a roll of plans, sketches and annotations. Every sheet was labelled:

jnometeora_[#] 48.852604, 2.353694

[1] Woods, Letters of an Architect from France Italy and Greece 1

[2] Kunstler, The City in Mind

[3] Hovestadt Buehlmann, Quantum City

[4] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

[5] Freud,The Psychopathology of Everyday

[6] West, Scale The Universal Laws of Growth

[7] Hollis, Cities Are Good For You

[8] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[9] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[10] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

[11] Ascott, Art Technology Consciousness Mindlarge

[12a.] Serres, The Five Senses

[13] Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books 1988

[14] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture 1999

[15] Williams, Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567

[16] Alberti, 10 books of architecture 1755

[17] Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture 1914

[18] Broeckmann, Machine Art in the Twentieth Century

[19] Smith, Bare Architecture A Schizoanalysis