CXEMA recently completed an installation called «Preservation of Silence». It is located in Moscow city centre in Gorky park. The aim of this project is to bring attention to new types of cultural practices in a big city and to look at the topic of «silence» from a different angle. Take a look at the complete story after the jump.
From the architects: Preservation of Silence — is an interdisciplinary project, which combines sound art, experimental architecture, acoustic ecology and social engineering. The concept of it — is to preserve the quiet places in urban environment by building a special structures around them, which should make the quiet spot even more silent, by reflecting outside noise and absorbing sound from inside. The principles of the structures are: no roof, no doors; weather and vandal proof; outside noise reflection; inside noise absorption. The aim of this project is to bring attention to new types of cultural practices in a big city and to look at the topic of «silence» from a different angle.
Authors welcome any kind of activity inside the pavilion. No permission or agreement is needed for this, as long as the activity keeps within the existing legislation and the park rules.
The construction of the object is multi-layered: the outer layer is smooth, it reflects sound waves, while the internal surfaces absorb and diffuse them at the same time. The sound impulse gets into the pyramids-diffusers, breaks into parts and gets «stuck» in them. After getting into the holes, waves are completely absorbed. Between the outer and the inner walls there is a natural sound-absorbing material.
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In addition to the utilitarian function, perforation also carries information about the sound land-scape of the place, which was fixed before the installation had been built. The sound wave was transformed into the binary code, in which 0 became a hole of a smaller diameter and 1 of a larg-er one. This code can be read by a program so we can observe changes in the sound environment after time. This is another reading of the preserving silence idea.
The concept, which was funded by the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and BMW, has taken a decade to develop, while the structure itself is made entirely from partially or fully bio-degradable materials. The author of the concept is a sound artist — sergey kasich.
Photography by Ivan Erofeev
Find more projects by CXEMA: cxe.ma
