ter Weel / Architectural Plug-In

Architectural Plug-In Explorative Machine for the Sonic Recomposition of Space

Author: Taufan ter Weel, TU Delft

Supervisor: Roberto Cavallo, Dr. ir., TU Delft; Heidi Sohn, Dr. ir., TU Delft

Research stage: intermediate doctoral stage

Category: Artefact

Abstract

The human use of ultrasonic waves and electrical energy as carriers of information changes and complicates the relationships between bodies, media technologies, and lived environment. It brought about shifting spatio-temporalities and modes of governance. The increasing dependency on media technologies coupled with the decreasing clarity of their inner workings, which is inherent in their expanding complexity, enable new forms of automated control. The transdisciplinary theoretical and practice-driven research explores these complex relationships through an experimental and diagrammatic architectural approach based on sound and signal processing. The paper outlines how a focus on sound and signal processing allows for an intensive and diagrammatic way of thinking and making to explore the inner workings of media technologies in relation to bodies and lived environment. The presented artefact is a site-specific sound installation – an architectural machine which modifies and recomposes the space sonically by extracting, processing, and redistributing signals in real time.

Keywords: signal processing, automated subservience, explorative machine