It is often overlooked that music is embedded in the physical world. Sound is a thoroughly physical phenomenon, the oscillation of pressure through matter—the vibration of air, water and wood. The sounds that our ears are capable of hearing oscillate between 20 and 20,000 cycles per second, with wavelengths on the human scale—from 56 feet to just fractions of an inch. In a very physical sense, our music inhabits the same spaces we do.

When sounds combine, some parts of the sound are reinforced while others are attenuated. In air, sound waves are the variation in the density of air molecules above and below the average atmospheric pressures. When these waves pass through one another, the crests and troughs of density interfere, reinforcing one another when positive densities combine with positive densities, and attenuating one another when positive densities combine with negative densities.

The walls and objects in a room reflect sound about the room. As sounds are reflected off of the objects and surfaces of a room, they recombine with their sources in constructive and destructive interference. Surfaces can also change the character of a sound. Different materials reflect sounds in different ways. Some materials reflect certain frequencies more strongly and absorb other frequencies. Others affect the orientation of waves, causing them to interact destructively with their sources.

Certain frequencies fit in certain rooms. These frequencies have wavelengths that correspond to the dimensions of the room. When these frequencies are reflected about the room, they line up with themselves, causing constructive interference that reinforces the sound. Frequencies that do not fit in a room reflect onto themselves out of phase, causing destructive interference that weakens and alters the sound.

When we experience sound in a room, we are also hearing the numerous reflections of the sound off of walls, objects and other surfaces. These reflections interact with one another, with the original sound and with other sounds in constructive and destructive interference. The shape, dimensions, angles, surfaces, objects and material of the room affect how waves travel about the room, determining its acoustic character.

These are the conditions that the artists will be working with in residency throughout early January:

Architectures of Sound, the site:

a rectangular prism, 56 feet long, 17.5 feet wide and 17.5 feet high

constructed of wood, stone and metal

built between 1865 and 1901

set in the Old American Can Factory, a six-building industrial complex

Old American Can Factory

ISSUE Project Room

ISSUE's future home