This article originally appeared on Motherboard.
Resonant Architecture / N1C0L45 M41GR3T
Videos by VICE
Nicolas Maigret has a thing for bass. Since 2006, Maigret and Nicolas Montgermont, the other half of France-based Art of Failure collective, have been blasting iconic European architecture with high-powered subwoofers, and rolling tape as they go. The results are overwhelming. Devastating, even.
They call this set of field recordings Resonant Architecture. The sonic experiences—it’s tempting to call them rituals—are nothing more that vibrating buildings shot through with high bass frequencies. The architecture is the instrument, making Resonant Architecture an earsplitting example of how we’re sonifying the city—and everything else, too.
I had a chance to chat with Maigret about pulling off sonifications on such epic scales. Here’s the lightly edited version of our discussion.
Motherboard: This reminds me of a band like Sunn O))). Do you get that comparison ever?
Nicolas Maigret: Musically, it’s clearly related to drone music, American minimalism. But it’s also really concrete. Outside the sonic/musical aspects, there is a lot about the physical experience: sensing the building’s body vibrations conducted to your own body. Your body becomes a receptor.
There is also another layer: the spatial and contextual experience. The audience can experience the project by approaching the site from far away, moving around the building, moving inside the building. Each of those position is unique, and allows a specific attention to the acoustic/resonant/vibratory behaviors of the building.
At the same time, I think it’s quite far from those references, as this simple vibratory activation of the place involves an active perception of the site, developing attention to all the senses. We often realize that people are looking at parts that they would never look at in a regular situation. They notice architectural aspects that would otherwise be invisible. They touch the materials of the building, notice a specific smell of the space, and so on. It’s all a range of perception usually under-activated.
Why did you choose to record at these specific locations? How did you find them?
Each of the locations is a strong architectural entity. They are somewhere between the building, the sculpture, and the instrument. We did a lot of architectural research, and finally selected the ones that were radical and had few materials, no ornamentation, but also according to the specific history of each place.
For instance, The Landmarke Lausitzer Tower is a symbolic building. It is in the east of Germany, in an area initially devoted to mining and that now suffers high unemployment and a totally devastated landscape.
The region started a revitalization program, to attract people there and reactivate the area. Urbanists and architects were asked to produce radical/unusual projects especially for this context. The tower is one of those projects. It’s actually a landmark, a viewpoint to observe the changes of the surrounding area, from an initial devastated mining context to a future artificial lake complex.
Which location was the loudest?
Clearly this tower. The Landmarke Lausitzer is like a giant metal drum.
18:00-20:00 = Crushing.
What did you use to generate and record the noise?
It depends on the building’s qualities. We can choose to use one to five powerful subwoofers if the space is really large or complex, for instance at the Maison du Peuple in Paris. I think this is one of my favorite video documentation on this project. Just one intention, no cut:
Maison Du Peuple, France (Single screen) / N1C0L45 M41GR3T.
In other contexts we also use transducers, which are speakers without membrane that are build to transmit vibrations in contact with a solid material. This is adapted for smaller buildings or metal based structures, for instance at the Freitag Tower in Zurich or Maison Latapie.
CORPUS – Maison Latapie – 2009 / art of failure
We recorded the sound installations with a 5.1 surround microphone. During the first few years we used regular Schoeps mics.
What’s next, Nicolas?
After eight years of research, we are becoming more demanding on the selection of buildings that could make sense to reactivate. It’s a huge amount of work. Usually, once we find the right idea of building/context it takes a few months just to negotiate with a place, [especially if] they don’t really understand what we are proposing. Then we need to run some sound tests in the buildings to make sure it’s worth doing an event. After that, for about a week, we develop the sound installation. We scan the reactions of the building to bass frequencies, and select a few that we reactivate into the building.
All this to say that we could do a new one someday, but it has to be a great spot.
Photo: Resonant Architecture/Flickr
For the past four years we worked with Jérémy Gravayat, a French documentary film director, to find a way to keep the substance of those ephemeral events. Together, we gradually developed a way to capture those events in order to present a large series of video documents, all united. This is more of a transversal approach, bringing together different sites where the project have been realized.
Right now we are showing this three-channel video installation, which is also an experience in itself. We also recently activated an installation in an abandoned military zone.
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