t-ihos

Reconstruction Community participation in Unbuilt program

Reconstruction Community is participating in the "Unbuilt" program organised by SARCHA/architectural conductor in cooperation with the Byzantine and Christian museum.

In the context of this participation, Reconstruction Community will realise a workshop entitled “T- ihopoiia”, where will be presented documentation of the soundscape exploration. Visit http://www.reconstruction.gr/en/actions_dtls.php/55 for a more detailed description of the actions.

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In an urban landscape of dense structuring (and possession), the buzzing sound of the city emerges like an edifice itself and takes over its un-built sections. This leaking and de-grounded noise gravitates to empty and un-built urban places, maintaining a double, contradictory quality: it fills these void spots and therefore raises wall-resonators (T- ixeia)(1) whilst it remains an un-built, immaterial, uncreated construct. Therefore, the sonically and spatially built elements of the city are augmented, hence breaching the balance between full and empty in urban sound and space. The sound of the city has a social context. The city as a sound-box reflects the social structures produced by the claims of the several urban groups. For example, one can see the link between the meaning of “good-living” and the absence of sound (but also of movement), if one considers that the suburbs of the financially vigorous classes have been turned into “cities of sleep”, where quietness reigns. On the other hand, consumption mania (shopping therapy, massive consumption areas, etc.) is defined by places of loud noise.

Reconstruction Community will proceed in the research of urban soundscapes. This research will be analyzing their social composition and will be recording public functions and social relations in terms of the sonic structures that are been produced (in public space), so that they can rise into awareness and so that the cultural attitudes that run through these structures can be specified, with the involvement of the subjects themselves (habitants, passers-by, visitors, urban nomads, displaced habitants) towards the signification of sound.

The experimental models that will arise through participative-interactive planning (for example, designing of sonic traffic signs as a public communication code / “awareness graffiti” in urban areas’ sound gates / sonic derives and in vivo design of situational maps / conception and realization of sonic games – derisive sounds, children’s toy-guns with the sound of a compressor or a car spinning/ acoustic systems installation that will elevate drowning sounds and compress dominant sounds) will be presented in a special workshop entitled “T- ihopoiia”(2). This workshop will be interactive and open concerning the results of the up to date research and of any that might follow.

Reconstruction Community

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upper photo: Vassilis Vitsaropoulos

(1) Teihia (Greek word): walls, Iheia(Greek word): sound box, resonator
(2) Toihopoiia (Greek word): wall construction, Ihopoiia (Greek word): sound production