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Re: I find that place a kind of Boschian Hell- a sentimental shell over a lonely, ritualistic non-human space

Posted by Bambi B (A) on January 20, 2007 at 17:35:39

In Reply to: Re: I find that place a kind of Boschian Hell- a sentimental shell over a lonely, ritualistic non-human space posted by musetap on January 20, 2007 at 16:18:14:

musetap,

I appreciate yout thoughtful comments. And I admit that I've stated comments to be a bit provocative as no one ever seems to criticise these spaces on an aesthetic level visually. I'm a person that can't separate the environment in which art is presented from the art. Climb the stairway to Michealangelo's Laurentian library in Florence and read a book as compared to reading a book under flourescent light in a basement- and the perception of the same book will be altered.

The aspects that set me off in this case have partly to do with the contrast of the exterior qualities to the interior. The exterior has one kind of quality- inviting, traditional, maybe even a bit cozy, but the interior is intensely inward-looking and all elements are servant to the technology. I liken this to the Disney Hall in Los Angeles, which has a forceful anti-contextural anti-geometry on the outside, but containing a fromal box on the inside with the exterior forms completeyl subverted- it's architecturally self-indulgent and coneptually hypocritical in my terms. Probably, if this place were done in an industrial aesthetic - make it a technological space, it wouldn't have what I find as such an uncomfortable duality. It's the absense of any object that doen't contribute to the sound reprodcution that troubles me- I would always feel in that space that I would have to "live up" to the carefullness of the technology- serve it rather it being a medium of artistic presentation. The location of the rather upright single chair in the centre does seem ritualistic and exclusionary- if it had wrist and ankle manacles I shouldn't be surprised.

I've spent most of my life developing a sensitivity to architectural space- and have designed quite a few spaces and perhaps I suffer from a residual humanism of post-modernism, but this room as presented is well over the edge of a kind of intense focus that conceptually in stasis appears as anti-art.

Yes, I have plans for a new house and the room that will contain the audio stuff is quite large- 65 X 16 X 12, but it will also contain a piano, a harpsichord, an organ, 3000LPs, 1500 books, sofas, ceiling fans, a library table, a fireplace, and a cat- plus it will have tall, wide windows onto trees on three sides and the listening chair will most likely have an open book on the table in front. Certainly, I will not attain the level of audio reproduction probable in the listening room we're discussing, but nor will I feel imprisoned by narrowly focussed perfectionism.

Of course, I wish the owner of this well- by reputation this is a friendly accessible person, and don't wish to make direct comments about a person I don't know, but my training and sensitivites to space can only produce a certain reaction and analysis, and in my terms I find this space simply too unilaterally techno-obsessive and exclusionary in concept to accomodate art. In it's extreme way, this seems to be a room that just doesn't need people or perhaps even music to fulfill it's intention.

As you say, this is always a case of "different strokes"- and it's a great thing that not everyone is like I am. Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours in a space even more austere and dimly lit than the listening room- the high clerestory windows were blanked off, and except for a hard bench in the centre there was nothing else in that space except 8 large Mark Rothko paintings on all four sides. No other signs of life, a room of even more intense exclusion and single- mindedness than the listening room- and yet in that almost completely quiet, bare room was pure sublimity of aesthetic experience and deep humanity that brought me to tears. This succesful artistic communication was due to the space and the contents reinforcing each other in character and concept.

Audio is a realm where the technology must be carefully considered to be able to experince the artistic, but for me the circumstances of the original creation of the music- which is a human activity- needs more expression in the presentation environment to maintain a sense of that connection.

Cheers,

Bambi B

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