The Architecture of Sound | Shea Trahan | TEDxVermilionStreet

so I have two seemingly unrelated passions first one is architecture the second one is the power of sound the first one is my medium of expression the second one stems from a deeply held belief I have that the world as we know it is simply manifestations of vibrational frequency and I mean that on every scale this is one of the earliest images we have of the early universe NASA researchers found that out of this chaos came in organizing pattern one of the first organizing patterns to the plasma cloud it was a low-frequency tone that rippled through the plasma cloud and set into motion the creation of the galaxies and the universe as we know it today before matter existed the universe was already singing on the opposite end of the scalar spectrum string theory posits that at our most basic subatomic level we're all composed of one-dimensional strings whose vibrational frequencies define the laws of physics as humans we're not outside of this system we're interactive players in this process and we're very well tuned to do it the human ear enjoys three times more neural connections to the brain and does the eye we can detect a vibrating molecule as low as 20 beats per second or 20 Hertz all the way up to 20,000 Hertz that's an order of magnitude of a thousand times roughly ten octaves of sound that you can detect compare that against the order of magnitude of visual sight which is only two or roughly a single octave which we know is ROYGBIV so as a designer we create architectural spaces which are de facto instruments they contain sound and manipulate it that can even creates that sound so we're tasked with a very powerful tool for affecting human cognition and it was this passion that drove me in 2012 to embark on an international research fellowship seeking out buildings that manifested specific sonic phenomenon for the stated purpose of spiritual or transcendent experiences I started with resonance that's sympathetic vibrations which create amplitude and I don't know of a better pair of words than sympathetic vibrations our world could use more of it for this I traveled to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean and specifically to a 5,000 year old underground temple that was discovered under these houses in 1902 it's a three-story temple carved out of solid limestone in the Bronze Age in a particular interest to me was a space called the Oracle room archaeologists believed that this was reserved for the shaman of this religion the roof was painted in spiraling red paint which they suspect might be musical notation that we can't decipher the reason the Oracle room were having battery issues there we go the reason the Oracle room is so special is because it's a perfect resonating chamber for a specific frequency 110 Hertz what makes it a resonating chamber the dimensions of the space are an exact multiple of the wavelength of that frequency so as I stood in the space and I apologize for the lack of video the sensitivity of the sound site meant that they patted me down and I could enter with nothing so as I stood in the space and began to sing searching for that tone as soon as I hit a hundred and ten Hertz I knew it because the space came alive sound suddenly surrounded you from every direction it sounded like there were people singing with you the intensity got so strong you could feel the vibration through your body this is the tone of the hypogeum so what's happening why does it do this like I said when I start to sing my voice travels hits the wall and bounces back in synch with my remaining voice now constantly sound waves are interfering with each other and they usually muddy each other up when two waves are in perfect sync like this creates natural form of amplification called constructive interference or a standing wave that's what created the effect that I experienced so what that's the sonic equivalent of an optical illusion basically right and that's the exact question that a team of neuroscientists from UCLA asked in 2008 when they traveled to the hypogeum to study it what they found was the brain when exposed in the way the hypogeum does to that tone experiences shifts in the prefrontal cortex and creates a functioning asymmetry within the brain that's not dissimilar from the brain states of monks and meditation or transcendent experiences and so archaeologists believe that there's a possibility the shaman of this religion we're using this chamber as a literal gateway to the doors of perception if there's one critique of the hypogeum it's that as soon as you stop the sound it dissipates for this we introduced reverberation reverberation can be considered the the amount of time sound lingers in a space after the source sound is gone and for this I traveled to the baptistry of st. John and Pisa two doors down from the Leaning Tower millions of people walked by it every day and very few know what it does a typical space such as this might have a reverberation time of one to two seconds but because of the architecture of the baptistry it enjoys a verb a reverberation time between 10 and 12 seconds about to play a video the single vocalist standing in the center of the space harmonizing a three tone chord try and decipher what sound is coming out of her mouth and what sound is coming from the architecture around so if we can couple that sort of immersive reverberation with the tones of the hypogeum we could create something powerful but what's happening there why is that happening if we take a look at the baptistry in both plan and section the first thing you should notice is that in plan it's a pair of concentric circles and so as she starts to sing her vocal energy first interacts with the inner colonnade and bounces straight back to her if we lay this out on a timeline we can start to map out the reflections of acoustics within the space some of her voice travels to the exterior wall before returning back to her slightly longer travel time slightly longer reflection some of her voice it's trapped on the return trip between the outer wall and the colonnade further extending that reverberation time and this happens throughout the space in all the nooks and crannies the farthest traveling occurring heading straight up to the peak of the ceiling before returning back now keep in mind between reflection three and four reflections one two and three are repeating the process over and over again and it's this layering of sound that creates that extended reverberation time is if that wasn't enough a remodel to the building few hundred years ago added a dome which encapsulated airspace which acts as a resonating chamber holding those sympathetic vibrations and then returning them to the space even further extending that reverberation time so now we've built a language of understanding on how to use architecture to make such a powerful sonic space but how does one even begin to design that right you just starts drawing circles or something and so for me I returned to science and to sound this is a physics experiment in cymatics which is the study of sound traveling through a medium this is hundreds of years old that the knowledge of this process it's simply a steel plate mounted on to a frequency generator with salt or sand sitting atop it as the experimenters cycle through higher and higher frequencies you'll see that the sound reveals itself in formal arrangements we were able to do this dozens not hundreds of times and get out individual fingerprints each unique like a snowflake for various tones keep in mind these are two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional process and as we started to study them I could decipher general rules to their organization as frequency increases so does the complexity of the pattern you can see that the lowest frequency at the top left is much more basic than the highest frequency at the bottom right additionally every somatic pattern is symmetrical about an axis and this shouldn't be surprising because if you think about sound is traveling in all directions at the same speed and so being a branch of physics it can be defined by math and if it can be defined by math can be put into the computer and so that's exactly what I did designed an algorithm in my 3d modeling software that allows me to recreate the somatic process in real time based on frequency wavelength amplitude and then I can tell the computer identify the symmetrical axes and instead of mirroring is in 2d we start to think of orbiting for symmetry in three dimensions this allows me to now visualize the spatial configurations of each of these unique tones and manipulate them in real time apologize for the lagging computer it's pretty complex math but it's a fascinating process I can't get enough of it actually so this being said instead of dozens or hundreds of 2d prints I know how to process for iterally iteratively creating dozens or hundreds of three-dimensional spatial configurations so I began to organize them based on frequency seeking frequency based organizational patterns and thinking back to Pisa I thought why don't I start to group these things by harmonic frequencies so these are 3d prints of a harmonic triad a b-flat major to be specific what I was surprised by was that the tones that have a harmonic audible relationship also have similar formal arrangements you can also you can almost imagine form a evolving into form be evolving into form C and here's the tones that created these here's a name miner and it's creative tons in my wife's favor the C major so as we start to envision these as inhabitable space we know by finally tuning the dimensional quality of this we can achieve the frequencies that we wish and by organized layered spatial complexity just like the piece of baptistry we can create hyperresonant and hyper reverberant spaces these ideal sound baths if you will so I'm now working with the team who's envisioning these on a variety of scales from something small enough for one or two people to share some time in to sonic Exploratorium is large enough for 3 or 400 people I'm also modeling more advanced mathematical processes through it and it's opening new worlds that had not even imagined with powerful spatial and formal opportunities and how can we use these spaces well like I said there's an entertainment aspect to this and a sonic Exploratorium these could also serve as immersive sonic therapy rooms for sonic immersion therapies that already exist for PTSD depression anxiety Parkinson's Alzheimer's these would also be powerful neuro scientists neuro scientific laboratories into cognitive and sensory neuroscience to further advance our understanding of the power of sound on the brain and body but above all things this started and will always be for me a chamber for sonic meditation and a pure temple of sound thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 76,762

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Design, Architecture, Psychology, Sound

Id: R-BMF4e-1bg

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2015