Workshop upon invitation by the Polish Association of Architecture Students (OSSA), part of the event “Vision” October 13-21 2018, in Łodz, Poland, with the participation of spatial audio composer and sound artist Gerriet K. Sharma in the first half of the workshop.

This workshop including its curriculum, process, and outcomes are documented extensively in the JAR paper:

Beyond the Visual – Workshop brief
This workshop intends to explore architectural sensibilities beyond the “Visual” that the event title suggests. Starting from acoustic field experiments, participants will be called to analyze the -emergent- sonic dimension of the built environment. Developing an awareness of the essential role that sound plays in our perception and cognition of space, we will experiment with an architectural composition that uses sound objects as building material. Contrary to the conceptual sphere of architecture which excludes such phenomena, we propose an approach intended to deepen the understanding of the non-visual aesthetics embedded in architecture. Introducing readings from various disciplines and working with both temporal and spatial digital media, the workshop intends to experiment with the spatiotemporal production of our lived environments, and eventually develop such prototypes in the virtual reality medium.

Workshop process, outcomes, and documentation

The workshop began with readings and listening exercises for developing sensibilities on sonic aspects of spatial cognition. It continued speculative design exercises of spaces and environments heard during blindfolded listening sessions of the spatial audio piece ‘grrawe‘ (Gerriet K. Sharma). The final project was a 10-minute VR experience consisting of 8 different spatiotemporal VR environments originating in sketches by different workshop participants performed to visualize spaces ”heard’ in sections of the piece, which were transposed into Unity levels.

In the context of the workshop the public lectures “The Aesthetics of Presence in Inconstructible Spaces” I & II, by Constantinos Miltiadis and Gerriet K. Sharma, were held in the context of the OSSA event, on October 15 at EC1, Łodz.

The workshop participants held a presentation and exhibition of the workshop outcomes on Saturday, October 10, at the Art Inkubator, in Łodz.

The curriculum, bibliography, process, and outcomes of the workshop are documented in an entry in the Research Catalogue (Society for Artistic Research), published in the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), in:

• Miltiadis, Constantinos, and Gerriet K. Sharma. ‘Beyond the Visual – A Research Curriculum for Explorations in Spatiotemporal Environments’. Journal for Artistic Research, no. 24 (27 September 2021). https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/815001/815002.

A non-VR version of the experience for Windows and OSX was published on itch.io at: https://studioany.itch.io/beyond-the-visual.

Credits

Workshop participants: Kelly Babbar, Aleksandra Bartczak, Rafał Golczyk, Jakub Gondorowicz, Joanna Lipnicka, Karol Wawrzkiewicz and Maja Wrzeszcz.

OSSA 2018 Vision, Łodz 13-21.10.2018