architecture: music, city, and culture

What makes chinese music chinese?

2009-11-25T07:43:00.001-08:00

In an effort to push the study of music, culture, and architecture a little deeper, I spent a few weeks last month researching Chinese music. My initial research of Arabic music during my thesis proved fruitful, as some of the ideas of proportion, heterophony, and organization found in music can be translated into an Architectural language (you may find a summary of my thesis presentation on this blog, or can access the whole thesis document here). Both Arts, while they may not have a direct link connecting them, share common cultural attributes that can be found trickling down in other arts as well. In order to pursue this further and take it to the next level, it was felt that a study of other musical regions was also important. The end expectant result (at the moment) is a new methodology that both architects and musicians can develop; one that extrapolates elements of the culture through other art-forms and then reapplying it to their own, creating an artifact that adheres to the regional cultural heritage without being too nostalgic about its traditions.

During the early stages of the research, I was struck by how little information is out there regarding pre 1949 PRC music, and most of the literature deal with how western music was adopted into the region. Starting with Fredercik Lau's Music in China (part of the Experiencing Music, Experiencing Culture series), I still had one of the major question reserved in my mind unanswered : What makes Chinese music Chinese?

Synesthesia factor "number" 15

2009-11-25T07:16:00.000-08:00

Music of the week: Master of war (RPWL - Bob Dylan cover)

Movie of the week: Vertigo

Literature of the week: My name is Red (Orhan Pamuk)

Color of the week: white

Taste in mouth of the week: Turkey

Smell of the week: Turkey fat

Touch of the week: feathers

Synesthesia factor of the week:

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life."

- Frank Zappa

Presentation Drawings

2009-05-18T19:22:00.001-07:00

Section through Rast and Bayati

Section through Saba and Hijaz

Reverse Section through Bayati and Rast

Transverse Section through Hijaz, Sikah, and Bayati

Sikah

Saba

Hijaz

Bayati

Rast

Synesthesia factor week 14

2009-05-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: slipstream (threshold)
Movie of the week: Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Literature of the week: The Cairo Diary ( Maxim Chattam ), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (Samuel P. Huntington)
Color of the week: Lilac
Taste in mouth of the week: pollo a la brasa
Smell of the week: guitar strings
Touch of the week: guitar strings
Synesthesia factor of the week: music keeps on singing in my head; if I keep quiet and thoughtless enough, the music will completely take over!
Moud of the week: incontrol

Inspirational Quote of the week:
"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
-Hery Wadsworth Longfellow

Entire Thesis Presentation

2009-04-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

Over the past several years, there has been a question that I've been preoccupied with, keeping me up at night and all that: Can music of a particular region be reflected in the region's architecture? Research has shown that basic ideas about a particular music are rooted in its region's language. This thesis explores such a connection between music and architecture within the historic islamic city of Cairo, applying arabic melodic modes, or as they will be referred to from this point on as maqams, to create a place for listening, "il Masmaa".

Before getting into that, let me put you in context with some of the other research that has been done about this connection between music and architecture. Throughout my research, I have noticed that there are five main different ways of addressing this connection:

1) Music and architecture being connected through proportion, where the proportions of architecture correspond to the harmonic proportions of music.

2) Through rhythm, where, as debussy put it, "music is the space between notes".

3) Through acoustics, where architecture is utilized as a resonator of sound, much like a musical instrument.

4) Through synesthesia, or the mapping of one sense onto another, where architecture becomes the product of a reflex musical inspiration.

5) Or through a method of re-interpretation through deconstruction, where a rational algorithm is used for the translation between arts. An example would be Steven Holl's stretto house, where he used composer Bela Bartok's "music for strings, percussion, and celesta" as a reference. The light curvy roof element represents the string section, the heavy masonry walls represents the percussion, while the celesta is represented in the walls that connect the other two elements.

My first stabs in applying architectonic form to music was through a series of animations I conducted on specific musical pieces. Since the research findings use western music as a reference, I felt that comparing a western music piece with an arabic piece was important. The pieces chosen were Pachelbel's canon in Dmaj, and Um Kalthoum's "Alf leila we leila".

Pairing these animations together I found to be very revealing. My expectations were that the differences between arabic and western music in respect to rhythm and musical intervals would be apparent in these animations. They are not. What is apparent however is how the musical structures differ from one another. The Canon piece is very cyclical in nature, there is a simple chord progression that goes on and on, which acts as a central unifying element, and the themes and variations are being applied on to it. Where the arabic piece is much more episodical. Other ideas could be extracted by pairing both these animations together, which I may choose to explore later down the line. I then make the comparison between this idea of musical structure with some of the architecture of the same period; the Central "big room" space of Palladio, to the series of courtyards, or episodes, of the ottoman house.

Applying some of these ideas to islamic Cairo, I took upon the most preserved street on the site, the main through fare between the historic gates of the fatamid city. I analyzed and animated it the same way I did the music. It became apparent to me, while walking down the street, that you can easily identify nine major different zones within this path, each zone an episode having its own identity and texture.

The following video is an amalgamation of audio-visual experiences of the site, composed to give you a feel of what its like walking down this path. On the animation and figure ground, I have pin pointed a series interventions that would be composed on the path. Each one of these interventions would deal with the macro-function of the street, which is now a public museum of islamic culture, as well as the micro-character of each zone, all using ideas of arabic music in design generation.

I was hoping to actually get to design all the interventions, but apparently I am too ambitious for my own good. The first zone, the moqadema, or introdctuion, was picked for further exploration, in hope to return to the street later in the process. Using the episodical ottoman house as a paradigm, the proposed building is set to explore the ideas of the maqam in arabic music.

The maqam is the foundation of all melody in arabic music, and the tetrachord is the most basic element of a maqam. Each tetrachord has a unique pattern of intervals - but more than that - rules for how you move between notes. Thus maqams have a very different kind of structure, feel, and importance than western modal scales, and its these tetrachords that are in the center of this architectural project. The project is taking this basic unit of the tetrachord and, through juxtaposition, seeing how they interrelate in architectonic form.

There are many maqams, but the ones that I have chosen to focus on in this exploration are Rast, Bayati, Hijaz, Saba, and Sikah; the same five that are traditionally used for the call to prayer in Islam. Because of the structure and spacing of their musical intervals, each of these maqams, different characters and personalities, those that can be translated in architectonic elements. The figure you see here on the left lists each maqam with its attitude towards proportion, light, pattern, acoustics, material..etc..

The building is organized around five clusters of rooms, each one depicting one of the 5 maqams

I call this building "el masma" which could be translated into "the place of listening", or "the listener". It is intended to be a place where one goes to learn about these maqams, to listen to others either playing music, reciting quran, or practicing the call to prayer using these maqams.

Traditionally, the knowledge music has been passed down by a master to apprentice system, music was not documented, the culture was much more aural based, which goes with the claim that Cairo is an aural based community, where the whole city is in aural reach of the call to prayer.

Returning to il Masma3, Pragmatically, there are very few program requirements to fullfill, letting the focus of creating a variety and flexibility of spaces within the building to encourage communal interaction between those of knowledge and those seeking knowledge.The intent is to create 5 different spaces that correspond to each of the characters of these maqams. The most contributing factor that led to the generation of character is the application of the maqam interval proportions onto the vertical surface of the rooms.

Such studies have also been done on a number of minarets that exist along the street, which interestingly enough, all seem to adhere to the same interval proportions as maqams.
Spatially, each room is manipulated to emulate the character of each maqam. Upon entering the Northern gate, one finds themselves inside the Rast room - rast being the most celebrated maqam in egyptian music, used in most nationalistic and many folkloric songs. The Rast room functions as a pivot between the street and "el masma3", an in between space, serving both in public realm of the street and the private realm of "el masma3".
The existing site at the moment has one entering and confronting a blank wall before walking into the main space, which seems like an awkward jog. We must remember that such a jog is not uncommon in the Islamic architecture within the city, where this is necessary for privacy reasons, and to give a sense of enclosure when we finally are in the triangular open space infront of Al Hakim mosque, one of the biggest and eldest mosques in Cairo.

The challenge is how to make the Rast room serve as an enclosure on its own, yet provide a strong sense of direction allowing traffic to flow through to the street. The current solution creates a large setback, as opposed to the existing condition, closes off the west wall which now serves as an entrance to il masma, and keeps the east wall a free standing element, offset to allow views to the mosque minaret acting like a drawing in device. From the Rast room, one can enter the building and navigate through all the other spaces.

The Bayati room is the room with many attitudes towards space, adhering to the notion that the bayati maqam is one which many different variations occur; scholars don't agree on a distinct character, but many agree that the maqam has different flavors.

The Hijaz room has a very distinct and clear difference between the smaller and larger spaces, adhering tot the hijaz maqam interval pattern size (1/2 - 1 1/2 - 1/2).

Saba, the maqam attributed to music of sadness, is designed to utilize acoustics to create an vast echoing room, with a minimal source of light creeping into the building from the dome.

And the Sikah room, serves an above floor tight gallery space, peeking views into all the rooms, adhering to the notion that the Sikah maqam has the most narrowest range out of the five, and is usually paired with some of the other maqams in the music.

On an ending note, My very first aim of this thesis, way back when, was to combat the excessive power of westernization and globalization that is sweeping Egypt by storm for the last 200 years or so. My hope was to find clues within the region's music to help push the architectural evolution in another direction, one more unique to its place and context. What I found instead was a method of deconstructing music to get a better understanding about a region's culture on issues that I may have previously overlooked or taken for granted. The result building is meant to be conceived as what critical regionalism would consider a defamiliarization of music. Unfortunately, much like architectural globalization, there has been a process of musical globalization as well, and these concepts of maqams are in danger of extinction. Such defamiliarization of the musical concepts only work then with repeat visitors, after students and scholars come and study these maqams over extended periods of time, the building starts to reveal itself, and after such connections are made, the student goes back out to rest of the city to make further connections with the architecture, in hope to understand ourselves better as Egyptians... In hope to understand ourselves better as arabs.

Synesthesia factor week 13

2009-04-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

I realize that this is both LOOOOOOOONG overdue, and isnt really week 13. Forgive me for my absence!

Music of the week: Who's the boss in the Factory (Karmakanic)
Movie of the week: Watchmen
Literature of the week: A Mango Shaped Room
Color of the week: Mango Orange

Taste in mouth of the week: Mango (God I miss Mango)

Smell of the week: Mango

Touch of the week: beard stubble

Synesthesia factor of the week: It seems that weird noises, that exist only in my head, seem to appear to remind me of something, like I have my own internal memory triggering alarm clock.

Moud of the week: Lazy

Inspirational Quote of the week:

The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. -Socrates

deconstructing Music pt 3: deconstructing pachelbel's canon in Dmaj

2008-11-26T17:54:00.001-08:00

finally I've been able to finish this!! The following two animations is attempting to address (or deconstruct) the experiential / sequential quality of the musical edifice.

Synesthesia factor week 12

2008-11-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

Music of the week: Arabian Waltz (Rabih Abou Khalil)

Movie of the week: True Lies

Literature of the week: Music of the Arabs (Habib Hassan Touma)

Color of the week: Crimson Red

Taste in mouth of the week: nice juicy burger

Smell of the week: the wax from my prismacolor pencils

Touch of the week: tracing paper

Synesthesia factor of the week: Hearing about different illnesses and pain makes me feel slight pain in the area described (sympathy pain?) .

Moud of the week: focused

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first."

-Shakespear

Synesthesia factor week 11

2008-11-19T12:59:00.000-08:00

Music of the week: No me No you (Frost)
Movie of the week: Quantum of Solace (especially the Tosca scene)
Literature of the week: Urban Diaries (Walter Hood); Building for cities, the Architecture of Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti (Peter G. Rowe)
Color of the week: Apple Green
Taste in mouth of the week: Green Tea
Smell of the week: Green Tea
Touch of the week: leaves
Synesthesia factor of the week: Sounds of the city start to emerge into musical sounds in my head.
Moud of the week: un-sane

Inspirational Quote of the week:
"If you try to take a cat apart, to see how it works, what you have in your hands, is a non-working cat."
- Frameshift

Deconstructing Music pt 2

2008-11-12T20:46:00.001-08:00

Synesthesia factor week 10

2008-11-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

Music of the week: Devour (Shinedown)
Move of the week: Unbreakable
Literature of the week: Resonance (Essays on the Intersection of Music and Archi tecture)

Color of the week: Lilac

Taste in mouth of the week: Pepper

Smell of the week: Pepper

Touch of the week: mouse buttons

Synesthesia factor of the week: www.synesthete.org

Moud of the week: slightly energized

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"If you aim for the stars, you might land on the moon"

- someone at some point in my life

Deconstructing Music

2008-11-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

deconstruct |ˌdēkənˈstrəkt|

verb [ trans. ]
analyze (a text or a linguistic or conceptual system) by deconstruction, typically in order to expose its hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and subvert its apparent significance or unity.

"You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.

But suddenly, you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful." That is architecture. Art enters in.

My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers, or the Telephone service. You have not touched my heart.

But suppose that walls rise toward heaven in such a way that I am moved. I perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming, or noble. The stones you have erected tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes regard it. They behold something which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals itself without wood or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly revealed in a light. The relationships between them have not necessarily any reference to what is practical or descriptive. They are a mathematical creation of our mind. They are the language of Architecture. By the use of raw materials and starting from conditions more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture."
- Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture 1927

The technical aspect of any kind or art, wether its painting, composition, architecture, or even sport, will only take you so far to create something that others may call art. There is this hidden quality that differentiates drawing from painting, muzak from music, building from architecture, or aerobics from sport. A musician once told me that this hidden quality is attitude, two soloist can play the same exact musical phrase, but one possesses a certain "emph" in his playing, maybe using dynamics to accentuate some notes from the rest, allowing the phrase to be much more rhythmic than it actually is, while the other player, but not adding anything to the mix, is just reciting a bland musical phrase. Even if two gifted soloists play the same phrase, each with the right amount of attitude, the outcomes would be entirely different, as each would perform the phrase to reflect their own soul. That's why ever time you hear tchaikovsky's Swan Lake by a different orchestra and conductor it sounds slightly different.

The question becomes, staring from conditions more or less utilitarian, how do you turn lines, colors, and shapes into art; notes, chords, and rhythm into music; structure, material, and space into architecture; dribbling, kicking, and passing into sport. My thought is that there should always be an intent towards a work of art, even if the intent is to capture specific moods or spontaneity of the artist at that specific moment. A narrative or overriding story (or plan of attack in sports) that is not explicitly spelled out within the work of art, but could be understood through cycles of deconstruction. A level of abstraction is need to break the tangible artifact from its bonds of reality (from the frame off the wall) into a realm of conceptualization. It is then when you can start to translate, or transpose, one work of art into another.

Deconstruction is often mistaken for Synesthesia. The main difference between both is while Synesthesia may be post-rationalized (depending on the level of Synesthesia, the direct levels often could not be post-rationalized), it never is pre-rationalized. Deconstruction entails a

preemptive analysis of the subject matter, which means a certain degree of intellectualization is needed at the beginning, as opposed to the sensory reflex action of Synesthesia. That is why many believe that artists like Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Scriabin are not Synesthetes as had been previously noted, but are Pseudo-Synesthetes, those who rely on association and memory rathen than the sensory reflex action of Synesthesia. In Point and Line to Plane, Kandinsky discusses how musical ideas have influenced his art, specifically mentioning his painting Little Dream In Red. He discusses how dynamics and sounds of musical instruments influences his choice of line weight and color. Although this is very much akin to a synesthete's perspective, Kandinsky states that although some of his correspondences are founded upon his own personal "feelings", others are founded upon cultural biases and mysticism.

Schematization of the correspondences between colors and musical timbres according to Kandinsky:

Colors		Musical timbres
Yellow		Trumpet; Sound of the fanfare
Azure		Flute
Blue		Deep sounds from the organ
Dark blue		Cello
Very dark blue		Bass
Green		Middle tones of the violin
White		Temporary pause
Black		Conclusive pause
Grey		Lack of sound
Bright red		Fanfare; Tuba/Horn
Crimson red		Drum-roll; Tuba/Horn
Cool red		Medium and deep tones of the cello
Bright cool red		Other tones of the violin
Orange		Middle bells of the church; Strong cantralto voice; Viola
Violet		English horn; Bagpipe
Deep purple		Deep tones of the woodwinds; Bassoon

There is more to these correspondences than just these Synesthestic reflexes. Some architects took specific events within a musical edifice and used that to as a conceptual bias for their architecture. Steven Holl used Bella Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta as his inspiration for the Stretto House, "(the edifice) has a materiality in instrumentation which the architecture approaches in light and space." Both the piece and the building are formed in four sections, consisting of two modes: heavy orthogonal masonry representing the percussion, and light curvilinear metal roofing representing the strings.

Daniel Libeskind drew inspiration from Arnold Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron" for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. He was particularly interested in the sudden break of the music in the third act of the operetta, after two acts of fairly complex music, the music abruptly stops in the second act, allowing the silence to act as a figural element just as the music. Libeskind goes on to say that the unwritten third act is actually one of silence, allowing sounds from the audience to come into play. Whether Schoenberg actually intended that is highly questionable, but his contemporary John Cage "composed" 4'33'' based on that idea; not letting the musicians play their instruments for 4 and a half minutes, allowing the sounds from the audience to compose itself into the piece. Libeskind says that his "void" spaces within the museum are placed to achieve the same effect; a disorienting phase to allow the visitor to become a participant in a space allowing contemplation and reflection.

How people dance and sway to rhythm is subjective, but they do move to it nonetheless. The following series of exercises, done in Professor Michael Ambrose's ARCH670 class at the University of Maryland, attempts to deconstruct Extreme's "Get the Funk out". The song is an upbeat catchy, funk-rock/funk-metal tune. The objective of the project was to deconstruct the rhythmic sensations of the song. I asked former tap dancing state champion, Martiena Schneller, to improvise a routine for the song, and I analyzed her body movement accordingly.

Pachelbel's Canon in Dmaj Second Batch of Animations

2008-11-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

This is a followup to a recent post. The next two animations are different variations of their predecessors. Both deal with Rhythm as the form generator. The reason why this particular piece was chosen was that it could be read as layering of music, with each chord progression, another variation or layer of music is added to the loop. The previous animations had the new theme added to the outer edge of the animations, so it never is highlighted, while the very first theme is always in focus. These next two flip it around, making the new theme the one in focus, and the older themes pushed away (which is more true to the edifice as opposed to the older versions).

Synesthesia factor week 9

2008-11-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: The Perfect Element (Pain of Salvation)

Movie of the week: Memento

Literature of the week: In the Place of Sound: Architecture | Music | Acoustics

Color of the week: indigo blue

Taste in mouth of the week: cough drops

smell of the week: cough drops

Touch of the week: cotton

Synesthesia factor of the week: As I walk home, listening to my ipod, each song makes me notice specific colors in the atmosphere / landscape. The highlighted colors paints a different hue over my eyes, making me experience and see things differently with each piece of music.

Moud of the week: numb

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"if you take from those you fear everything they value, then you have bred the perfect beast, drained enough to kill you."

- Daniel Gildenlow

Thesis site: Mamluk Cairo

2008-10-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

The following are a series of diagrams, displayed during the A01 thesis meeting (10/20/2008), that start to document and diagram the site in an objective manner.

The above diagram is a plan of Mamluk Cairo as it stands in the beginning of the 21st century, compiled from Nicholas Warner's Monument of Historic Cairo .

The above diagram highlights major traffic axis within the city, creating a distinction between pedestrian and automobile traffic. It should be noted that although el Mu'izz street is highlighted as autombile street, automobile access is highly regulated and considered very light to make it more pedestrian friendly.

The next diagram highlights the various building types and uses within the historic city. It should be noted that the diagram is incomplete; it was compiled by limited amount of information that I have, and will be added onto within this thesis year. Purple marks the Relgious use, Green the leisure use, Blue the educational use, Brown the municipal / defense use, and Red marks the commercial use. The uncolored buildings are meant to be residential use at this point.

The above series distuingshes between the various time periods where the buildings were erected. Starting with the Fatimid Period (969-1174), the Ayubbid Period (1174-1257), the Bahri Mamluk period (1257-1392), the Circassin Mamluk period (1392-1517), the Ottoman period (1517-1805), the Mohamed Ali period (1805-1956), and the Post-Revolution period (1956-present). The monuments highlighted in bright blue depicts the Fatimid Period, while the bright orange depicts the Post-Revolution period.

The next two diagrams deal with acoustic space. It was mentioned that Cairo was planned out so that each individual house would be in hearing reach to the mosque's call to prayer. This diagram tests this claim. The small orange dots marks the spot of the minarets within the city, while the large faded yellow circles maps out the threshold of where the call to prayer would be hold, meaning anything outside that circle wont hear the mosque's call to prayer. The diagram was based on a simple physics equation on the intensity of sound: each time the distance is doubled, the intensity level is divided by four. Knowing that any sound made by a human being can not exceed 80dB (without amplification), the outer large circle mark the point where the sound has reached 20dB (audible whisper).

Interestingly enough, there were a few patches of space that are not within audible reach to the call to prayer. At first, I was disapointed that the theory would therefore by false. However, if you look closely to the map, you would notice that the eastern area is a post revolution grid addition to the city, near the southwestern corner is a Mohamed Ali extention (emulating Hausmann's Paris), and the western part of the city includes a number of Synogoges, which leads me to believe that the area was Cairo's Jewish quarters.

The following diagram is similar to the one before, but it focuses more on the intensity of the mosque clusters. Notice how the cluster is intensified arround both the Qalawun / Barquq complex and arround the Rifa'i / Sultan Hassan mosques near the citadel.

Mahmoud Riad's Cairo

2008-10-30T20:16:00.001-07:00

On a recent trip back home to Cairo, I was engaged in conversation with a few relatives over the course of a welcome back dinner party. We were talking about specific developments that have been going around the country that they particularly found charming. Over the past decade or so, the image of the american suburb has been adopted by Egyptian developers, and planted on the outskirts of Cairo, with the intent of boosting up land value of the untouched desert surrounding the capital. A novel idea, since Cairo has been suffering from intense overcrowding density, the city of opportunities for many Egyptians. I believe that the statistic at the time was that 96% of the population was living in 2% of Egypt's land, mainly the nile banks and delta. So creating satellite cities seemed like the way to go to solve this problem.

I digress...At the dinner, a phrase was used to describe one of these developments that really intrigued me, "it has become such a beautiful place, you don't feel that you are in Egypt." It took a few seconds for me to comprehend the gravity of such a phrase. Since when have the criteria for something being successful or beautiful been disassociating it with the surrounding context? Have we (Egyptians) become so ashamed of our country, our culture, our heritage, and ourselves that we feel the need to be identified as something other?

Unfortunately, there is a general sentiment in Egypt that whatever looks or sounds western is considered beautiful. Arabic pop music attempts to mesh arabic singing (using different musical scales and maqams) onto generic western chord progressions and western pop beats. I always felt a disconnect between both, since arabic musical scales would often create slight cacophony when played on western chords (arabic music itself is not based on chords but on heterophony). Even our food is becoming more and more of a copy of other culture's cuisines. Homes now pride themselves in cooking Italian, Chinese, American...etc. It seems Ironic that restaurant moguls are now selling our cuisine back to us, marketing that the menu is composed of "home style Egyptian cooking", overcharging tens of times more than the original cost. It just doesn't make sense to me.

While cross cultural exchange has been around for centuries, the concept of complete westernization is relatively new. Many scholars attribute the initiation to Mohamed Ali's rule in the 19th century. Coming out of a cultural recession and an invasion by France, Egypt was in dire need of a paradigm shift, a boost in the country's cultural richness. Europe has just been experiencing it's own paradigm shift with the Industrial Revolution, so Mohamed Ali thought that a cultural exchange between Egypt and Europe would benefit the country. He started sending many young scholars to continue their education and be exposed to what he thought was a superior region. While some of these scholars came back preaching ideas that helped solve some of the issues lingering in society (Kassim Amin and his ideas of the liberation of women, and Mohamed Abdo's message of tolerance and compassion in religion), others started to apply European concepts without thinking about the consequences. The creation of Downtown Cairo, although is now considered one of Cairo's cultural hotspots, is an example of such. Taken after Hausmann's model of Paris is 1850, the downtown area (West el Balad) was designed to house Neoclassical and Baroque style buildings, where architects all-over Europe jumped at the chance to design in a foreign country with no obligation to respond to contextual buildings.

One of the fundamental ideas of Islamic Cairo is the creation of the inward centered street wall, where the entire street, including the facades of the buildings, becomes public property, and you can't tell where one building ended and the other started. You could not tell the rich man's house and the lesser fortunate one's house apart, as they all belonged to the same street wall. Houses faced an interior courtyard, where each could lavishly decorate according to their financial means. This created a block where the rich and poor can live side by side on the same block, where they are rendered equal outside between the street walls, praying side by side in the mosque. By creating these new european model cities, the rich (who are the only ones who can afford these lavishly decorated baroque buildings) moved out, leaving the poor behind in abandonment, creating, what Galal Amin would call, a social mobility shift, and a tension between the two classes that would continue to grow and intensify as time goes by.

Such effects of globalization, I feel, are much more serious than just the mere image of it that we are reacting against. In Soundscape, R. Murray Schaffer makes an argument suggesting that the drastic conditions of traffic in third world countries are a product of such effects of globalization. Europe, having gone through the whole Industrial and Electrical Revolution, are accustomed to the stop-go mentality of the conveyor belt. He states that those in the third world, having not gone through the whole industrial revolution process from the beginning, are still treating their cars as horse carriages, attempting to finesse their way through traffic, rather than traveling in one lane abiding by traffic regulations. If this is infact the case, then such cultural exchange should be examined carefully before enforcing it to a region.

However, I am not advocating against cross cultural exchange and interchange. The most exciting works of art and inventions have come through a marriage of two elements that has been unprecedented. Oriental jazz brings an exotic blend between arabic musical scales and rhythms while being played under western "jazz" chords and western instruments. Yet here a high level of proficiency in both musical styles independently is need here to be able to identify where such a rub between the two could happen and when would it be highly distorted. I firmly believe that rules are made to be broken, but a conscious breaking of such rules to highlight a specific condition would yield a more powerful result than an breaking of such rules due to general ignorance or negligence.

Which brings me back full circle. Egypt, just like any other place in God's world, is a distinct place. It seems to me, that an indepth study of the characteristics of this place is imperative and unavoidable before designing or composing anything that has to do with the country. Each place has different sensory characteristics, whether its what you see in the urban and rural landscape, what you hear in the soundscape and regions music and language, what you smell in the odors, what you taste in the food, or what you touch in the ground, water, or air. Understand that, you understand the place, and you appreciate the place.

The Healing Colors of Sound

2008-10-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

As a guitar instructor, I tried to keep my lessons interesting. I felt that a guitarist (or just a musician in general) should always be proficient in three aspects: his technical dexterity on the instrument, his knowledge of music theory, and his ability to be creative. It's relatively much easier to improve your technical skills, and study your music theory as opposed to expand the horizons of your creativity. As an instructor, I tried to keep the student engaged in all three throughout the lesson. For the creativity part, I would try to get the student to force themselves to think out of the box. For example, the very first of these exercises, would be focused on painting. I would ask the student to describe to me what they see, what they feel the artist is trying to express, what do they think the intent of the artist was, what aspects of the painting makes them feel that way...etc. After I felt the student had deconstructed the painting and started to be at one with the emotions spurring out of the painting, I would ask them the million dollar question,

"What Music was going on in your head, while you were analyzing the painting?"

Usually the first response would be that of shock, "Music? I thought we were talking about colors here!" Some of them had to take a while to be able to let the idea sink in. What was interesting is the variety of answers that I got from them, and what aspect of the painting that they identified the music with; some students would try to imagine the sounds that may have taken place in the scene painted and just see what music fits best with the scene, others looked at it like a film scoring method and identified the general mood that the painting conveys and adds the score that depicts that mood, others responded more to colors, others to quality and character of the lines and brush strokes, some identified them with actually music pieces, some to genres, and some to instruments, and some students just didn't get it and couldn't make any connections whatsoever. The paintings used were of my favorite painters: Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Dali, Giger, Da Vinci...among others.

The idea of the association between music and art came upon me in high school, when a particular painting of an abstraction of a landscape that I have been working on prompted a comment that it "felt" like ballet "swan lake". I was very intrigued by the comment, especially because I was listening to alot of swan lake at the time. I felt that some of the expressive elements of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece that resonated within me was manifested in the painting I was focused on. At that point of time, I believe that architecture and music could also be related, and I have since (eight years now) been pondering and wondering about it.

Years later, while taking Professor Peter Noonan's seminar " Sensing Architecture: Body and Place", the class was introduced to the phenomenon of "Synesthesia". The way I would personally describe it (I am sure most, if not all, neurologists would disagree with me) would be a phenomenon when two or more senses linked together, to create a higher consciousness (or unconsciousness in this case) that transcends the norm, making you feel things slightly differently than others. Diane Ackerman's opening sentence in the Synesthesia chapter of A Natural History of The Senses, possibly describes this better:

"A creamy blur of succulent blue sound smells like week-old strawberries dropped onto a tin sieve as mother approaches in a halo of color, chatter, and a perfume like thick golden butterscotch."

She defines Synesthesia saying that "stimulation of one sense stimulates another", while the word actually comes from the Greek syn (together) and aisthanesthai (to perceive). According to Richard E. Cytowie, author of the book The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Synesthesia occurs in the limbic system, the most primitive part of the brain. He states that those whose limbic system is not entirely governed by the much more sophisticated and more recently evolved cortex. His book seems to look at the phenomenon as more of a neurological disease of some sort, although he, on many occasions, writes that the phenomenon is fascinating and should not be considered as a handicap but as an advantage. He also states that those who experience intense Synesthesia are about one in every 500,000, ignoring those cases that seem to be more about association rather than Synesthesia. The difference is, with association, you kind to have to think about it for a little while, to see what fits, but with Synesthesia, the connection between both senses just happens, with no explanation to it.

According to Sean A. Day (moderator of The Synesthesia List), the types of Synesthesia are:

Current count: (at least) 54 types of synesthesia

Graphemes -> colors	= 660/1014	= 65.1%
Time units -> colors	= 236/1014	= 23.3%
Musical sounds -> colors	= 191/1014	= 18.8%
General sounds -> colors	= 149/1014	= 14.7%
Phonemes -> colors	= 86/1014	= 8.5%
Musical notes -> colors	= 85/1014	= 8.4%
Smells -> colors	= 68/1014	= 6.7%
Tastes -> colors	= 65/1014	= 6.4%
Personalities -> colors (“auras”)	= 64/1014	= 6.3%
Pain -> colors	= 53/1014	= 5.2%
Touch -> colors	= 39/1014	= 3.8%
Emotions -> colors	= 25/1014	= 2.5%
Temperatures -> colors	= 23/1014	= 2.3%
Orgasm -> colors	= 21/1014	= 2.1%
Emotion -> smell	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Grapheme personification*	= 37/1014	= 3.6%
Non-graphemic ordinal personification*	?????	?????
Number form	= 77/1014	= 7.6%
Object personification*	= 16/1014	= 1.6%
Ticker-tape*	?????	?????
Emotion -> pain	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Emotion -> smell	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Emotion -> taste	= 2/1014	= 0.2%
Emotion -> temperature	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Emotion -> touch	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Kinetics -> sounds	= 3/1014	= 0.3%
Lexeme -> taste	= 21/1014	= 2.1%
Musical notes -> tastes	= 2/1014	= 0.2%
Personalities -> smells	= 5/1014	= 0.5%
Personalities -> touch	= 2/1014	=0.2%
Smells -> sounds	= 5/1014	= 0.5%
Smells -> tastes	= 2/1014	= 0.2%
Smells -> temperatures	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Smells -> touch	= 5/1014	= 0.5%
Sounds -> kinetics	= 5/1014	= 0.5%
Sounds -> smells	= 16/1014	= 1.6%
Sound -> tastes	= 55/1014	= 5.4%
Sound -> temperatures	= 6/1014	= 0.6%
Sound -> touch	= 41/1014	= 4.0%
Tastes -> sounds	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Tastes -> temperatures	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Tastes -> touch	= 6/1014	= 0.6%
Temperatures -> sounds	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Temperature -> taste	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Touch -> smell	= 3/1014	= 0.3%
Touch -> sounds	= 6/1014	=0.6%
Touch -> tastes	= 11/1014	= 1.1%
Touch -> temperatures	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Vision -> kinetics	= 1/1014	= 0.1%
Vision -> smells	= 13/1014	= 1.3%
Vision -> sounds	= 25/1014	= 2.5%
Vision -> tastes	= 28/1014	= 2.8%
Vision -> Temperatures	= 2/1014	= 0.2%
Vision -> touch	= 16/1014	= 1.6%

Cytowie goes further and distinguishes three different levels of Synesthesia:

The Direct Level: Sensually concrete, stimulus-response combination should be invariant. The same stimulus should always trigger the same reflex over and over. If one links the color red to the note A, this link will always remain, and not change under any circumstances, yet it is semantically meaningless. Cytowie calls this a Low Link (One to One) level.

The Cognitive Level: Sensually abstract, context may influence the experience. One may start to react to passages of music rather than specific notes. Cytowie says this level is loaded with meaning, and links it to the Aristotle cross-modal associations found in normal people. He calls this a High Link (One to Many) level.

The Intermediate Level: Associations and partly invariant, partly contextual. Intermediate link (One to a Few) level.

For purposes of this thesis, the concentration would be on the Cognitive Level Synesthesia. It seems to me, that the colored music type in the list above is of most fruitful investigation, although Kandinsky, a synesthite, also talks about line width and character that expresses different musical sounds or instruments (from point and line to plain). I personally experience point and line character synesthesia when listening to music, and particular songs or musical pieces paint an overlay wash on the image in my head. For the final project for Professor Noonan's seminar, the idea of colored music was tested in the below movie clip. Each song would highlight a different hue or tone to the visual image. The movie clip (which was also uploaded in another blog post) is supposed to convey my experience while listening to my ipod and walking through the McKeldin Mall of the University of Maryland.

While I tend to experience these washes to certain types and moods of music, other would experience colored music in musical scales. To Rimski-Korsakov, the Cmaj scale was white, while Alexander Scriabin saw it as red. These composers also saw musical notes as colors, the following graph lists how different composers and personalities saw the notes of western music and colors.

As the thesis year goes on, more information will be provided about each of the personalities on the list.

synesthesia factor week 8

2008-10-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: Pachelbel's canon in Dmaj
Movie of the week: Saw
Literature of the week: Islamic Architecture in Cairo (Doris Behrens-Abouseif)
Color of the week: Purple
Taste in mouth of the week: Fajitas
Smell of the week: marker fuel
Touch of the week: wool
Synesthesia factor of the week: walking through the DC area, with all the autumn leaves changing colors, I start hearing warm jazz chords (maj7th chords)
Moud of the week: sleepy

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."

- Mahatma Ghandi

Music and Architecture Matrix Chart

2008-10-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

The following chart was presented at the A01 thesis meeting (10/20/2008). It organizes the personalities that have talked about the relationship between music and art, in a timeline, and highlights key elements of their ideas and applications. This chart will be added upon along the thesis year, and I will post an updated version every first weekend of the month.

Evolution of Cairo

2008-10-27T11:20:00.001-07:00

Initial Animation Diagrams of Pachelbel's Canon in Dmaj

2008-10-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

The following two animations use the musical edifice "Canon in Dmaj" as a generator for form. This particular edifice was chosen because of its simple, looping 8 chord progression, and a simple theme, that goes through numerous variations with each loop of the chord progression.

The animation above addresses the rhythmic value of the edifice. It was difficult to match the animation and the music too 100% accuracy, as the piece has numerous slight tempo changes to aid the crescendo. The animation treats the edifice as a series of layers, adding another musical layer with each loop of the chord progression. Other versions of the animation will be posted within the next few days.

Another Version of above.

The animation above addresses the tonal aspect of the edifice, uses Pythagorus ideas of musical/mathematical ratios (discussed in a previous blog). Each chord of the progression is translated into a 3D shape. The problem is that the shapes corresponding to the chords do not match up in 3D, thats why the strips of light are visible on the left walls. Other versions of the animation will be posted within the next few days.

synethesia factor week 7

2008-10-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: Layla (70's version) Eric Clapton

Movie of the week: Atonement

Literature of the week: Cairo (Andre Raymond)

Color of the week: Sepia

Taste in mouth of the week: black cherry cough drops

Smell of the week: black cherry cough drops

Touch of the week: grass

Synesthesia factor of the week: Listening to peruvian flute music makes me taste delicious peruvian steak

Moud of the week: exhausted

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"A leader is a dealer of hope."

-Napoleon

Synethesia factor week 6

2008-10-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: When Everything Dies (God is an Astronaut)
Movie of the week: The Truman Show

Literature of the week: Music, Language, and the Brain (Aniruddh D. Patel)

Color of the week: Cerulean Blue

Taste in mouth of the week: ice

Smell of the week: water

Touch of the week: icey-water

Synethesia factor of the week: Atlanta (Georgia) has a magenta aura over it...

Moud of the week: focused

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain."

- Khalil Gobran

Architecture as a Sequence of Harmonic / Melodic Space pt1

2008-10-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

The following is taken from a paper entitled "Frozen Music" that I wrote in my independent study with Professor Ronit Eisenbach, during the fall 2007 semester at the University of Maryland.

The famous quote “Architecture is Frozen Music” seems to be an oxymoron; music relies on the notion of time, so if music is frozen in time, it is non-audible. Some believe that the key to unravel the connection between both arts, that the quote suggests, lays in the phrase Frozen Music; if one understands the musical notes not as vibrations that resonate through time, but as a series of proportional ratios between two notes playing together in harmony.

There are twelve notes found in the traditional Western music vocabulary. Each of these notes is a semitone apart from one another, creating what is known as the Chromatic
scale. The notes in this scale are commonly known as:  
A - A# / Bb - B - C - C# / Db - D - D# / Db - E - F - F# / Gb - G - G# / Ab

A semitone (also known as a half-step) is the interval between each note and its successor in the chromatic scale, for an example; a semitone after the A note would be the A# / Bb note, or a semitone after the B note would be a C note. A wholetone is equal to two semitones, for example; a whole step from an A note would be a B note, or a wholetone from an E note would be an F# / Gb note.

Western music are not based on the Chromatic scale, but uses a variety of Diatonic scales. The difference between them is that while the Chromatic scale relies on the 12 notes being played successfully at semitone intervals, the Diatonic scale incorporates a mixture of both semitone and wholetone intervals. A Diatonic scale generally consists of seven notes and repeat at the octave. Western music in the Medieval and Renaissance periods (1100-1600) tends to use the white-note (natural major) diatonic scale C-D-E-F-G-A-B and its transpositions. Notice that this scale is made of Whole-tone and Semi-tone intervals, more specifically, two Whole-tones / one Semi-tone / three Whole-tones / one Semi-tone.

Rameau discusses that the reason for that is that these are the intervals that are easily proportionally extracted from a length of string. As documented in his Treatise on Harmony, a length of string that produces a certain pitch could be easily divided up to create different intervals of that pitch.   Let’s assume that we have a piece of string held at two points that produces that pitch C. If the length is divided into two equal parts, the pitch of each side of the string also produces a C pitch, except an octave higher. This pitch is the tonic degree of the scale, meaning the first note of the musical scale.   Now lets divide the string into three equal parts and pluck the string at the point where the resultant length is 2/3 times the original length. The pitch produced would be the 5th note in the scale, in this case the G note. This pitch is the dominant degree of the scale.   If the string is divided into four equal parts, and the string is plucked at the point where the resultant length is 3/4 times the original length, the pitch produced would be the 4th note in the scale, the F note. This pitch is the sub-dominant degree of the scale.

Note that while F is the 4th degree after C, C is the 5th degree after F. If you play the sequence of pitches C - F – C (octave higher), you will be moving 4 degrees to the sub-dominant and then 5 degrees to reach the octave. The same is reversed with the G; while the G is a 5th degree to the C, the C is a 4th degree to the G. This also makes sense mathematically, if you multiply 2/3 to 3/4 the answer would be 1/2. The tonic - dominant - subdominant degrees are the most vital in any musical scale; they are sometimes called perfect tones and the most commonly used chord, the 5th chord (or power chord) is derived from these notes; either using the tonic and the dominant with the tonic in the bass note, or using the subdominant and the tonic with the subdominant in the bass (both examples are 5 degrees apart from one another). Such chords are vital because the note that completes the chordal triad, distinguishing the major and minor chords (the 3rd degree) is absent, so the chord could be applied to both major and minor scales. If the string is divided further, into 5 or 6 parts, the 6th (Submediant) and 3rd (Mediant) degrees would be produced.

Professor Eisenbach's website: www.roniteisenbach.com

music and architecture around the world pt2

2008-10-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

The following youtube video, by Cika , juxtaposes a slideshow of architecture around the world with the eagles' "new kid in town". I understand how both the images of the slideshow and the music are related through content (the whole notion of being new in a certain town seeing things differently), but I felt that there was a huge disconnect between both. I would go as far as to say that this juxtaposition, at times, seemed very cacophonic.

This next video, he juxtaposes images of animals and landscapes with Toto's "Africa". I think this works a little better, although I felt that the music got disconnected when the images of the animals were in close up. I am not sure if "Africa" utilizes any of the rhythms or instruments of indigenous African music (I always felt that it was much more Caribbean based rather than African), but I felt that at some points, the music was able to be in sync with the mood and texture of the image.

Synethesia factor week 5

2008-10-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: Roses (Rpwl)
Move of the week: Be Kind Rewind
Literature of the week: Experiencing Architecture (Steen Eiler Rasmussen) Music, Language, and the Brain (Aniruddh D. Patel)
Color of the week: olive green
Taste in mouth of the week: Fillet Mignon with Brandy mushroom sauce

Smell of the week: spinach

Touch of the week: cool apple skin

Synesthesia factor of the week: alarm clock makes me feel like a million tiny little finger pinching my skin

Moud of the week: empowered

Inspirational Quote of the week:

"The best time for awakening is now"

- Siddhartha Gautama

Architecture as a Stimulus for Movement pt1

2008-09-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

The title "Building as a Stimulus for Movement" comes from Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore's "Body, Memory, and Architecture" (the chapter "Body Movement" is actually a contribution by Robert J. Yudell"). The chapter asserts that the movement of our bodies is affected by the animation of space, and thus the spaces we create, tend to embody our own natural rhythms of movement.

"The ebbs and flows, weights, rhythms, and surges that emanate from us are inherent in the body and its movements. Try to walk in a precise and even measures. Even if you succeed in doing so horizontally, as in a march, there will still be complex rhythmic events in the vertical dimension (the raising and lowering of the chest with breathing and the changes in the relative alignment of body weight), not to mention the internal rhythms of heart and pulse.

Given this rhythmic richness which we all possess, and the fact that patterns as mundane as pavement cracks and picket fences can elicit complex haptic responses, we might well wonder why any building cannot be as good as the next in generating a body response."

- Robert J. Yudell

Yudell goes on to criticize today's repertoire of movement, saying that our bodies are increasingly becoming immobilized. While automobile and transit technology have been able to connect places and open up vast landscapes of space we would have never thought of treading before, it is slowly turning us into what Yudell calls "frozen bodies". The idea of the procession and promenade of pilgrimage is diminishing, so in a sense, it could be argued that we don't appreciate our spaces as much as we used to. The end location is becoming much more important that the journey that we go through to reach such a location. In Topophillia, Yi-Fu Tuan talks about this end-location mindset:

"Walking purposefully from A to B is felt as leaving so many steps behind and as having much more ground ahead to cover. Change the environment by introducing band music and, objectively, one still marches from A to B with seeming deliberation. Subjectively, however, space and time have lost their directional thrust under the influence of rhythmic sound. Each step is no longer just another move along the narrow path to a destination; rather it is striding into open an undifferentiated space. The idea of a precisely located goal loses relevance."

- Yi-Fu Tuan

Pamplet Architecture's "Architecture as a Translation of Music" cites numerous examples of how musical rhythm can affect one's movement and awareness of space. Elizabeth Martin introduces the subject-matter, saying that while "architecture represents the art of design in space; music is the art of design in time." If one flattens the dimension of time, into a 2D surface (in the same way sheet music does), one could really play arround with different rhythmic patterns onto the surface. Mannerist Facades often compose their surfaces that way, using some kid of parts to serve as the metronome (datum) and other parts to play up these rhythmic changes. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. Giulio Romano (1499-1546), one of the first promoters of Mannerism, used the triglyphs on the facade of Palazzo Te in Mantua as the metronome element, where all the spacings are equal, while the intervals of the intercolumnination differed creating a rhythmic pattern on the facade. Looking closely to the image below, one could read the facade giving an ABABAC rhythm, and more specifically, if one imagines each triglyph forms a 1/16th note, one could read the columns forming a musical rhythm of 1/8th - 1/4th - 1/8th - 1/4th - 1/8th - 5/16th.

Le Corbusier's La Tourette covenant also uses this same play of rhythm in the architecture. Iannis Xenakis, Le Corbusier's right hand man and internationally well known 20th century composer, designed parts of the facade to correspond to some of his musical compositions. The seemingly irregular window mullion intervals of the lower levels, juxtaposed with the pompous window openings of the upper levels (which serves as a datum, or metronome, for the irregular mullions below), creates a phenomenological play of light and shadow in the interior. The rhythmic intervals of the La Tourette facade is alot more complex than that of Romano's Palazzo Te. This is mostly due to the fact that Xenakis bases his musical intervals on mathematical ideas like the golden section and fibonacci series (more on that when I blog on Xenakis work within the next few weeks).

In Professor Noonan's seminar "Sensing Architecture: Body & Place", Ritsaart Marcelis and I worked on a project draft together that talks about this issue of musical rhythms that affect promenade. The following animation investigates how a procession through a colonnade could be altered using different musical rhythm patterns to dictate the intercolumnination.

The criticism presented in class was that the animation seemed to rigid, and unmusical. This animation lacks two very important aspects of music: layering and attitude. While the animation is a direct translation of rhythm written down on sheet music, audible music is seldom played with one layer of rhythm. Even the most mono-rhythmic music, you will find multiple layers within the rhythm to give it a more powerful output. The animation above is the equivalent of a guitar student, playing a rock riff acapella; you dont have the rest of the band (datum) to fully grasp the idea of the music.

Attitude (dynamics and cresendo) is also a very important aspect in music. This is why a classical musical piece would sound different when it is being led by one conductor than another, as each conductor would understand the whole mood of the piece subjectively. This is also why many blues guitarists are considered to have "soul", as the selection of what notes are important to be emphasized and attacked, while what notes are known as leading notes. The same solo, if played without the emphasis on these select notes, would also feel unmusical.

The notion of attitude and poly-rhythmic layers is also found in architecture. The use and hierarchy of Michelangelo's "Super-order" on his facades could be read as the visual correspondence of a multi-rhythmic compositions. Looking at Palazzo dei Conservatori, at the Campidoglio, the balustrades on the roof serves as the metronome (it could be argue that the dentils of the cornice has the same effect), with the Giant Corinthian pilasters serving as the hierarchical rhythmic stomps. The intervals between each Corinthian pilaster and the other is equidistant, as opposed to that of Palazzo Te, which means in auditory terms, the musical rhythm would be that of a pounding heartbeat (imagine a POMP - POMP - POMP musical piece). The intercolumnination of the ionic columns on the lower floor, and the smaller Corinthian columns on the floor above to support the window openings, are what provides the variations in the rhythmic patterns of the facade. So in drumming terms, if you would take the giant Corinthian pilaster as the booming bass drum, the ionic columns on the lower floor as the lesser impact Ionic column as the loud yet lesser impacted snare drum, and the variation of window openings and division of balustrades as subtle playing on the hi-hat, then Palazzo dei Conservatori has been transformed into a simple drum rhythm.

This idea that Palazzo dei Conservatori is analogous to a modern drum rhythm is an interesting one. As classical music of that time is much more melodic based as opposed to rhythm based, it is worthwhile to find out if that analogy has any correspondence to the evolution of music in Europe around that time.

Architecture as an Instrument for Music pt1

2008-09-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

Sound production depends on two factors; resonating volumes and choice of materials. Musical instrument tectonics is based on the size, shape, and volume of the resonating chamber and the qualities of the materials used. This is the reason why steel stringed folk acoustic guitars sound different than nylon string classic guitars, and why both sound incredibly different than the nylon string middle eastern 'ud (the lute's precedent). The decisions made in both factors affect the reverberation time and the tonal quality of the sound produced.

The same could be argued with architecture. An instrument is merely a device that amplifies the sound, so architectural spaces could be seen as large scale instruments. In concert halls, the acoustics of the space is considered to be the last piece of the puzzle that synergizes the orchestra and blends all the musical instrument so it is perceived as one artifact, as opposed to fragmentary musical lines played collectively. This means that any concert performance would sound slightly different according to the space that it is being played it, as each concert hall as a unique acoustical identity. Aside from concert halls, every architectural space carries sound different than its neighbor. Granted that with small scale rooms these changes in aural quality are not noticed as much, but sound is definitely an influencing factor that affects our perception of space. A CD titled "music and architecture: the sound inside" provides a number of musical performances, recorded live in iconic architectural spaces, each space chosen to highlight its associated musical piece's unique aural qualities.

Architecture, at times, has even contributed to the creation of music. The birth of the gregorian chant is credited to the proliferation of space in the gothic cathedral. Cathedrals were the acoustic twins of large natural caverns. Blesser and Salter (authors of "spaces speak, are you listening?") have noted that the volumes of some caverns in the Czech Republic approach 50,000 cubic meters, which are comparable to the volume of a cathedral. Both are large enclosed spaces with irregular geometries, randomly shaped surfaces, minimal acoustic absorption, and uniform diffusion of sound arriving from all directions.

It may seems obvious that the creation of such vast acoustical resonance chamber for cathedrals would be intentional to convey a religious / spiritual message or connection. The history of the evolution of sacred spaces in Christianity would prove otherwise. Before Emperor Constantine declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in BC 313, Christians would congregate, secretly, in abandoned large spaces within their region. These spaces were typically Greek basilicas, that had once served as courthouses and commercial meeting places. These spaces were usually rectangular in shape and were defined by two rows of columns. After the Imperial adoption of Christianity, walls were added for protection from the weather and to display political power. This was a major change in the quality of the aural space.

Within the next few centuries, the growth of Christianity prompted the need for larger congregation spaces. These spaces had increasing floor areas and dramatically high ceilings (some would argue that these figural spaces were a symbolic connection to a higher power). The surface materials were usually made of stone, which replaced the use of wood, as a result from advances in building technology, and because stone was resistant to fire. The resulting acoustics was thus unintended. The acoustics were terrible for speech; as the priest spoke to his large congregation, his words, if heard, would blend into one another due to the vast reverberation time (Blesser and Salter note it to approach 10 seconds for middle frequencies). However, such spaces can be used to create sounds that pleases the ear. If one was to speak in long tones (sing slowly), the blending between one tone and the other could sound harmonious, and thus the communication here becomes a musically tonated one, and not the spoken word. This segues into the birth to the Gregorian chant.

The interesting thing about reverb, is that the ears detect a slight harmonizing tone alongside the original one thats being voiced. The tonal difference between the original tone and the harmonic one is a perfect fifth (more on that when musical scales musical scales and harmony would be discussed), creating a common chord that is used throughout western music, and which pop/rock music refers to as the "power chord". This slight harmony was picked up by the chanting monks, and exploited even furthur in their chanting. The choir could be divided, each group singing a different harmony line, and these tones would just blend into one another, creating beautiful musical chords. Ofcourse, each space has its own reverberation time, so the choirs belonging to each church would compose their music accordingly.

In Experiencing Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen talks about two other composers who have used spaces as a generator of their musical compositions. The Byzantine church of S. Mark's in Venice was Giovanni Gabrielli's instrument. The church is built over a Greek cross plan and has five domes, one in the center, and each of the four arms of the cross. S.Mark's had two music gallerires, one to the right and the other to the left, as far away as possible with their domes acting as mighty resonators. Gabrielli made use of this, by letting the music come from both sides, one answering the other, in his Sonata Pian e Forte. The congregation did not hear two different orchestras, but heard two musical rooms, each responding to one another in counterpoint, or as Rasmussen puts it "one speaking with silver tones, the other responding in resounding brass." The congregation was placed underneath the central dome, which served as another instrument, or blending spaces that connects the music coming from the left and right.

The St. Thomas church at Leipzig was Bach's instrument. This church was not known for its vast reverberation time. After the Reformation, large areas of resonant wood were added to the naked stone, the side walls were lined with tiers of wodden galleries, and curtains were added at openings of the new added private boxes. All elements that resorb sound and not reflect it. Playing the soft slow blending tones of the gregorian chant would seem boring and less enchanting, as such tones would not sustain or resonate in space for very long. Hope Bagnel, the famed acoustician and author of "Planning for Good Acoustics", figures the reverberation time of the church to be 2.5 seconds, as opposed to 6-8 seconds in standard medieval churches. Bach had to find different ways to how his composition would be as enchanting and awe inspiring. The resultant musical compositions gave birth to the Cantata and Passion. Bach's famed inventions were thus much more musically complex, with alot of use of counterpoint, where two very distinct musical lines, played in relatively fast speed, could be listened to simultaneously, without the notes blending into one another to form a cacophonic mess.

Synethesia factor week 4

2008-09-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: Let go (Frou Frou)

Movie of the week: Garden State

Literature of the week: The Man Who Tasted Shapes (Richard E. Cytowie), The Soundscape (R. Murray Schafer)

Color of the week: Aqua

Taste in mouth of the week: cream cheese

Smell of the week: rainwater

Touch of the week: water

Synethesia factor of the week: I hear lots of bouncing balls (boooooings) as I take my shower in the morning

Moud of the week: blah

Inspirational quote of the week:

"Everybody wants to to be somebody; nobody wants to grow"

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Music as Intellect, Music as Expression: Initial Thesis Ideas

2008-09-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

Throughout history, music has been looked upon as either an intellectual body or an expression of emotion. These two different approaches can be traced back to Greek mythology. In a Homeric hymn to Hermes, the "lyre" is said to have been invented when Hermes proclaimed that the shell of the body can produce sound if its body was used as a resonator. This myth embarks on a discovery of sonic properties in the materials of the universe. The lyre becomes the instrument of Apollo, and music is conceived as external sound that God sent us to remind us of the harmony of the universe. Such music is serene, mathematically derived, associated with transcendental views of Utopia and the Harmony of the Spheres. This train of thought is evident in Pythagoras's teachings and renaissance ideas, where music is a subject of the intellect belonging to the seven liberal arts (it belongs in the Quadrivium section, along with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, while the expression, Trivium, includes the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic). Schoenberg's music in the early 20th century (12 tone method of composition) is a good example of such thought in music. The methods of expression are number theories, seeking to harmonize with the world through acoustic design.

On the other hand, Pindar's twelfth Pythian Ode tells the story of the beheading of Medusa, leading to the creation of the aulos. Athena, Goddess of strategic warfare and heroic endeavor, was touched by the cries of Medusa's sisters over her slaying, so she created a special nomos in their honor. In this myth, music arise as subjective emotion. The aulos (reed oboe) is an instrument of exaltation and tradegy, and the instrument of Dionysian festivals. Such music is conceived as internal sound breaking through the human heart. The music produced is subjective and somewhat irrational (comapred to the Apollonian view). It employs expressive devices such as tempo changes, dynamic progressions, and tonal colorings. It is the music of opera, of Bach's passions, of Beethoven's symphonies, of Tchaikovsky's ballets. It is the music of the romantic artist, the kind of music that we associated 18th and 19th century classicism , and the kind of music that we would be trained in today.

Music, in general, is found to incorporate both views. The Apollonian thought can be viewed as a left brained mode of thinking, as it deals with issues in music theory like scales, rhythmic value, and acoustical design, or in other words, the objective scientific aspects of music theory. The Dionysian thought can be viewed as a right brained mode of thinking, dealing with how these scales, rhythms and acoustics properties can be used, altered, and manipulated to create expressions of emotions.

Architecture theoreticians have talked about the intersection between music and architecture in both views. There are five different ways that I have found that discuss such intersections. I will list all five now, and will come back and discuss more about each one in coming blog posts:

1) Architecture as a Musical Instrument

2) Architecture as a Stimulus for Movement

3) Architecture as a Sequence of Harmonic Spaces

4) Music as an Inspiration for Architecture (irrational expression)

5) Music as an Inspiration for Architecture (rational expression)

The first three belong to the Apollonian view, as architecture deals with acoustics, rhythmic values, and harmonic proportions. The last two belong to the Dionysian view, where architecture and music could be linked through Synesthesia, or, music can be deconstructed rationally, and then reconstructed to express certain elements within architecture. These titles are tentative and are subject to change within the coming weeks. By next week, I hope to bring more information about each type and how different architects have used these ideas in their designs.

Committee Members update

2008-09-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

I am glad to welcome two new committee members:

William Bechhoefer, FAIA, Professor Emeritus

Dr. Eliot Bates, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology

Dr Bates website: www.eliotbates.com

Synethesia factor week 3

2008-09-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: Wearing the inside out (Pink Floyd) - Rip Richard Wright

Movie of the week: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Literature of the week: Music in Egypt: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Scott L. Marcus)

Color of the week: Maroon

Taste in mouth of the week: Lemon herb chicken

Smell of the week: Cucumber dove soap

Touch of the week: soap

Mood of the week: happy

Inspirational quote of the week:

"Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire."

- Samuel Johnson

The Rosslyn Motet: Ciphered Music in the Rosslyn Chapel

2008-09-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Collegiate Church of St Matthew, aka the Rosslyn Chapel, was founded as a Roman Catholic collegiate church at the village of Roslin (Scotland) in the mid-15th century. The Chapel is a major feature in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code", and is rumored to house the holy grail.

The interior of the Chapel is filled with intricate carvings. Among those are a sequence of 213 cubes protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. The nature and meaning of these patterns have long been a mystery, until recently. Thomas and Stuart Mitchell have interpreted the patterns as a musical score, where the patterns is viewed as those seen in the study in cymatics.

Thomas and Stuart Mitchell placed powder upon a flat surface, vibrating at different frequencies, to recreate the patterns found on the so called "musical boxes". These Chladni Patterns were then matched to their corresponding musical frequencies, to write a musical tune that the team calls the "Rosslyn Motet".

Notice the pitch of the oscillator, hum the pitch to yourself and keep humming until u hear the first note of the choir. You will notice that they are one and the same.

Thesis committee members

2008-09-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

As of today, the official members of this thesis's committee are:

Peter Noonan, AIA, LEED AP, Professor of the Practice

Dr. Robert L. Vann, Ph.D., Professor

Brian P. Kelly, AIA, Director, Architecture Program

I look forward working with these distinguished faculty members of the University of Maryland, and look forward to a great year.

Synethesia factor week 2

2008-09-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: the oscar goes to... (gotthard)
Movie of the week: the shawshank redemption
Color of the week: orange

Taste in mouth of the week: buffalo chicken strips

Smell of the week: lavender

Touch of the week: soap

Mood of the week: collected

Inspirational quote of the week:

"We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us."

-Jean-Paul Sartre

Architecture as an Instrument for Music : Le Cylindre Sonore

2008-09-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

"Sound is no longer exclusively the instrument of musical expression, designed with precision, it becomes a building material in the creation of space." - Bernhard Leitner

Le Cylindre Sonore is a cylindrical space located within Parc de la Villete, that is conceived as a hub or transitional space within the landscape. The space uses sound as the primary element to provide the transition between the north and south sides of the park. It is built up as a double cylinder: The outer wall acting as a retaining wall and acoustical buffer, while the inner wall containing 8 perforated - precast concrete panels. There is enough space between the inner and outer wall to act as an acoustical chamber, with three speakers mounted at different heights, serving as a resonator. The sounds produced encourages visitors to stop, listen, linger, and reflect before continuing their journey through the park.

Reflections: I am curious on how to use wind as the generator of sound, rather than speakers. The intensity and direction of the wind maybe factors that help produce different dynamics or pitches within the sounds produced (sort of like the wind chimes effect, yet a more spatial representation of that). I am also interested to find out whether dealing with sound in architecture helps assist the blind in their awareness of space.

Bernhard Leitner website: http://www.bernhardleitner.at/en/

Synethesia factor week 1

2008-09-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

Music of the week: in the presence of enemies pt 2 (dream theater)

Movie of the week: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Color of the week: orange

Taste in mouth of the week: orange

Smell of the week: orange

Touch of the week: comforter fabric

Mood of the week: enraged

Inspirational quote of the week:
"the reasonable man tries to adapt to the world. The unreasonable man tires to adapt the world to himself...therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw

architecture: music, city, and culture

2008-09-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

Below are the posters that were presented during thesis fair at the architecture school (september 4-5 2008).

sounds of cairo

2008-09-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

"We are usually more touched by what we hear than what we see. The sound of rain pelting against leaves, the roll of thunder, the whistling of wind in tall grass, and the anguished cry excite us to a degree that visual imagery can seldom match. Music is for most people a stronger emotional experience than looking at pictures for scenery... Partly, perhaps, because we cannot close our ears as we can our eyes. We feel more Vulnerable to sound. " - Murray Schafer

" (I propose) a method of design based purely on sounds of site. The ultimate goal is that sensitizing the designer to the contextual soundscape culminates in an awareness of all the sensory and supra-sensory perceptual aspects of the site not only as a source of inspiration and tool for design but also as a means of creating spaces that in turn fully engage the perceptual capacities of the user." - Kourosh Mavash

Both Schafer and Mavash have called for soundscaping and sound analysis to be an integral part of the architecture design process. In Mavash's paper SITE + SOUND : SPACE (presented in the Architecture|Music|Acoustics International Cross-Disciplinary Conference; Ryerson Univeristy, Toronto, Canada; 8-10 June, 2006), a number of representational methods are listed to help instigate the design process:

Contextual Sound Piece: a recording of the aural experience of space, letting the aural elements described the space.

Spatial Sound Instrument: walkthrough instrument to regenerate sounds of the site

Sound Collage: assemblage of aural media (sounds, songs, words, music...etc) to describe elements within the site

Interpretive Sound Piece: free interpretation of site through composed sound pieces

Associative Sound Piece: explorative use of vibrations (inaudible sounds) to describe the site.

The following are contextual sound pieces taken in various locations in Cairo. Unfortunately the quality isn't as pristine as I would have hoped. If my thesis does end up going in this direction, better samples will be gathered during my visit to Cairo this winter. You might want to put on headphones for this one.

In the courtyard of Mohamed Ali Mosque

Underneath the dome of Mohamed Ali Mosque

On el Mu'izz street, infront of al Hakim mosque

On el Mu'izz street, infront of of mosque and sabil-kuttab of Sulayman Agha al-Silahdar

On el Mu'izz street, between al-Silahdar complex and Qalaqun complex

Murray Schafer bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Murray_Schafer

music and architecture around the world

2008-09-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

I believe that there is a reason why music from certain regions fit seamlessly with its architecture

arch670 project 1 (march 2008)

2008-09-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

The following project is a deconstructing movement of the body performing a tap dance (tappin to extreme's "get the funk out"). It was part of Professor Michael Ambrose's ARCH670 course at the university of maryland. The intent of investigation was to deconstruct the rhythmic pattern of the dance, reconstruct it using digital modeling and trying to reinterpret the rhythmic motion of the space using different framing and lighting methods.

Special thanks to world class tap dancer Martiena Schneller.

Michael Ambrose faculty page: http://arch.umd.edu/people/faculty_and_staff/bio.cfm/70

Michael Ambrose website: http://www.arch.umd.edu/Faculty/Ambrose/courses.html

Mahmoud Riad 670 blog : http://riad670umd.blogspot.com

Student 670 blogs: http://www.arch.umd.edu/Faculty/Ambrose/670/student_pages.html

final project for arch678z (may 2008)

2008-09-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

The following is a short film that I have composed with Ritsaart Marcelis for Peter Noonan's class "Sensing Architecture: Body and Place". The film explores how music affects our emotional perception of space, using University of Maryland's mall as the referential space.

Peter Noonan's bio : http://arch.umd.edu/people/faculty_and_staff/bio.cfm/89

Peter Noonan's website: http://mcinturffarchitects.com/

and here we go

2008-09-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

As of September 5th 2008, I have officially kick started what is known as "thesis year" at the University of Maryland. I am expected to conclude this thesis and graduate in May of 2009. This blog should serve as a journal till then (and afterwards), and hopefully will attract both attention and dialogue from those who are interested. Below is a copy of my abstract that was sent to Graduate school.