Spiros Papadopoulos

Web: www.escapelab.net

Architect prof. Thessaly University Volos Greece

Farewell: an interactive soundscape
The Project was presented at the “Enclosures – Pass-throughs” event on the 21st of June 2019 at Thessaloniki Concert Hall.

A limit, a confrontation, a farewell. Nature and culture are at a breath away, they touch each other through the fence’s porches, while among them there are aroused thunders, sounds, screams and echoes of air; It is a composed sound protest, an embodied demonstration, a loud detachment towards a new condition of cohabitation.

The project is conceived for the demolition of the fence around Thessaloniki Concert Hall as a sound protest with an interactive  
mechanism in order to provide a changing and challenging soundscape. The scene is the open, corrupted fence on the coastal front of the Concert Hall. Upon this deteriorated body, mechanical devices (engine starter relays) are attached and produce an acute metallic sound, while the motion detection sensors activate the sound narratives. The project is structured in three clusters. The fence is the living scene. The relays controlled by arduino microprocessors – the percussion – are the “instruments” that perform the farewell ode, and the visitors, the human bodies, are the multiple interpreters that activate – through motion sensors – and perform this interactive sound work. Their movement triggers different patterns of pre-recorded manifestations or soundscapes and mechanical rhythms that oscillate between noise and harmony. The sound composition alternates in two areas: initially on the skin of the fence and later it is transmitted through speakers to the main outdoor piazza of the Concert Hall.

EscapeLab is a research laboratory of the Department of Architecture  of the University of Thessaly, which aims to explore the interactions  between physical and digital reality. It promotes relevant research  studies focusing on hybrid landscapes, installations and digital  narratives using cutting-edge technologies.