nothing but what is therein contained...

i spent this past week in philadelphia, to install several works in thomas u. walter's 1835 building for girard college. all of the works were installed on the top floor which has not been open to the public for 100 years. i've posted several times about this project which i've been working on for almost two years, so here some images of the first of three works which will be present in the space (the other two include a letterpress text work, and a sound, sculpture, and drawing installation).

this piece is titled "nothing but what is therein contained", which is a bit of text from stephen girard's will, in which he stipulated that the design of the building could only contain the things that he had specifically mentioned in his will... nothing extraneous would be allowed. the first design drawings that thomas walter made for this building were incredibly minimal and titled with this phrase.

for my own work, i took the phrase and translated it into numbers based on the alphabetical sequence of the letters, and then cut pieces of wood accordingly.

these pieces (running from a 1 foot length for an "a" to an 8 foot plus a 12 foot for a "t") were then painted in groups, a different color for each letter.

i then laid out all of the letters as a kind of stockpile, and then laid out the entire phrase.

i then began to build the structure, beginning with the first letter - "n" - and drilling and wiring the consecutive parts improvisationally, essentially using the letter sequence as a score towards determining what piece of wood would come next. it took two days to build, and it is roughly 16 feet tall. you can see the beautiful dome shaped skylights in some of the images, as well as the doorways from one space to the other. the last shot was taken looking down from one of the skylight windows.

some of the color patterns and painting was inspired by the sketchbook of amish deaf mute craftsman henry lapp, who lived outside of pennsylvania just around the time the building was finished, and the sound was composed using the sound of wine glasses being rubbed and struck with mallets in relation to benjamin franklin's glass armonica. the piece is essentially an architectural map or likeness of the text...

i will be out of town this coming week and airforms will most likely be silent for the next 7-10 days.

when bees have honey sweetened ears...

today a copy of lorenzo langstroth's the hive & honey bee arrived in the mail. this book, published in 1852 was considered one of the most important texts on bee-keeping at the time, and is still in print and widely used. langstroth, who lived in the philadelphia area, also devised the "movable frame hive" which revolutionized apiary hives forever. as these things always happen, i unpacked the book and happened to open it to the following text:

"that bees can hear, either by their antennae or some other organ, few will now deny, even although the sound of a gun near the hive is entirely unnoticed by them. (langstroth)

"should some alien being watch humanity during a thunderstorm, he might quite similarly decide that thunder was to us inaudible. clap might follow clap without securing any external sign of recognition; yet let a child with tiny voice but shriek for help, and all would at once be awakened to activity. so with the bee: sounds appealing to its instincts meet with immediate response, while others evoke no wasted emotion." (cheshire)

"the sound that bees produce by the vibrating of their wings is often the means of calling one another. if you place a bee hive in a very dark room, their humming will draw the scattered bees together. in vain to you cover the hive or change its place, the bees will invariably go towards the spot whence the sound comes" (collins, paris, 1875)

to prove that bees can hear is easy, but to determine the location of the organ is more difficult. small holes which were discovered on the surface of the antennae have been considered organs of hearing by lefebure (1838), and by others later. cheshire has noticed these small holes in the six or seven last articulations of the antannae: holes which become more numerous towards the end of the antannae, so that the last joint carries perhaps twenty. he, also, considers these as the organs of hearing, especially because they are larger in the drones, who may need to distinguish the sounds of the queen's wings (the queens and the drones, in flight, each have a peculiar and easily distinguishable sound). on this question, prof. cook and his beekeeper's guide says:

"no apiarist has failed to notice the effect of various sounds made by the bees upon their comrades of the hive, and how contagious are the sharp note of anger, the low hum of fear, and the pleasant tone of a swarm as they commence to enter their new home. now, weather insects take note of these vibrations as we recognize pitch, or whether they just distinguish the tremor, i think no one knows".

it's interesting how much of this book is a kind of montage of various histories of bee study with every paragraph coming from a different source. one should try to read it as if each a different voice. since i know nothing about bees technically, i have no idea if these ideas from the early 1900's are accurate or not, but the language and ideas certainly seem poetic and beautiful.

nothing but what is therein contained...

thomas walter's original design for founder's hall at girard college was based on stephen girard's incredibly detailed requirements for the building as stated in girard's will. walter's first first drawings are extremely minimal, and titled "nothing but what is therein contained". the phrase refers to the fact that these initial designs basically followed the stipulations of girard's will, and nothing was added that wasn't mentioned in the will. i wonder how the structure would've looked had it been built following these original plans. the outside of the final design shows more of walter's grand greek influences than girard might have wished, but much of girard's original ideas were followed on the inside.

the four dome shaped rooms on the top floor are acoustic wonders, and during my performances the past few nights i was able to use acoustic objects without amplification and to blend them with the electronic sounds at a relatively close volume. the ways sound travels around the space is pretty extraordinary.

while the installation in the archive worked in relation to the contents of that space (which also had a very different response to sound because of all the paper and cardboard); the two installations in the other dome rooms worked to exploit many of the acoustic characteristics of the architecture - and were approached through walter's use of the phrase "nothing but what is therein contained" in that i used only sounds and objects found in the space.

the field recordings, all made within the space, contained the natural sound of the space, which when played back in the space, essentially sounded in response to the architecture twice. in some instances you could hear things better from across the room than standing over the speaker, and in others, if your eyes were closed you had absolutely no idea where the sound was coming from. the amazing thing is that this didn't always mean muddy sound, in fact a number of sounds had an incredibly tactile presence to them.

the installations were opened to the public around 7:15 pm until the performance which started at 8. during this time, because there is no electrical lighting in the space, the room went from evening's soft light to near darkness, and after the performance, around 8:45 only the small camping lanterns to light the space. the performance and the installations felt very much as soundtracks to the moving of light to darkness...

biblical proportions...

thomas ustick walter was one of america's most important architect's of the early to mid 1800's, and played a major role in the founding of the AIA (american institute of architects). walter designed the iconic u.s. capitol dome, as well as the 1843 girard school for orphans - which is largely considered his greatest achievement, and was the most expensive building project in america before the civil war.

most of walter's designs are in a slightly over the top greek revival style, and indeed many of his works of the mid 1800's are hybrid masterpieces of early american and greek designs.

while doing research on walter's work, i came across some very strange architectural drawings he did as teaching aids for a sunday school class he taught for much of his life.

this image of solomon's temple, was based entirely on descriptions from the bible, and compares the scale of the temple with two popular and well known buildings of the time. it's a wonderfully odd and modern looking building that seems totally out of character with most of walter's work, reminding me a bit of some early 20th century italian architectural experiments - the overbearing towers of sant'elia and the austerity of terragni.