Spaces That Perform Themselves: Multisensory Kinetic Environment for Sonic-Spatial Composition

Building on the understanding of music and architecture as creators of spatial experience, this paper presents a novel way of unfolding music’s spatial qualities in the physical world. Spaces That Perform Themselves arose as an innovative response to the current relationship between sound and space, where we build static spaces to contain dynamic sounds. What if we change the static parameter of spaces and start building dynamic spaces to contain dynamic sounds? This project combines architectural theories with musical mastery and computation to create an environment as kinetically undulant and emotionally varied as music itself. To achieve this, a multisensory kinetic room is built in order to augment our sonic perception through a cross-modal spatial choreography that combines sound, spatial movement, light, color and vibration. By breaking down boundaries between disciplines, the possibilities of a new type of architectural typology that morphs responsively with a musical piece can be explored. As a result, spatial and musical composition can exist as one synchronous entity. Spaces That Perform Themselves seeks to contribute a novel perspective to the discourse on leveraging today’s technology to provide a setting to enrich and augment the way we relate with the built environment. This project’s objective is to enhance our perception and challenge models of thinking by presenting a post-humanistic phenomenological encounter of the world.