I’ve just read about this installation which was exploring the relationship between the physical and the virtual space:

Constellations is a network music installation by Atau Tanaka connecting the physical space of a gallery to the imaginary space of the internet through sound and image. Visitors in the gallery navigate an onscreen universe of planets, invoking audio to stream into the gallery. The planetary system is the interface to a library of soundfiles existing on servers throughout the internet. Each planet represents a contribution from a different composer. The sounds coming from the network space resonate in the acoustical space of the gallery, connecting these two universes.

Last summer I described my experience of “playing the building”, an installation by David Byrne which was taking place in NY. When I moved to London this summer, as I was walking nearby Camden Town, I saw a big poster advertising “Playing the building”. Byrne had revived his work in the Round House, a building in Chalk Farm, close to Camden Town.

When  Aileen visited us in London, we went together - interested by this attempt to inhabit a material space allowing others to interact with it. I was also curious to see how similar and how different it will be. The concept was the same “a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of a building is converted into a giant musical instrument” (David Byrne, 2005) and people were invited to interact. Yet, the feeling was very different. The space in New York was an old factory, the infrastructure was visible. The Round House is a beautiful building, also quite “raw”. However, the “infrastructure” seems less visible and thus it did not feel so much like “playing the building” - “building space with sounds”. Moreover, the round shape of the building made the wandering through the space more difficult.

to follow up on Yasmine’s post about distributed spaces (April 5th) and her idea of “simultaneous happenings in various locations”

and just a cool project aiming to create a sense of place through sound

Really happy to have made it to the centre of the maze to experience BSWW. The space that has been built is a beautiful and comfortable space. With a wonderful soundtrack too. Al and Aileen, it’s fantastic milena

words enveloping bodies, bodies moving among, between words… in the space, through the sounds.

space shelters bodies and bodies make space visible… as well sounds make the space visible too…

I do think that the somewhat relaxed sense that developed in me in the exhibit seemed related to a sense of being in a community as well as a space. People at the show could post to the blog, the words moving through the visual area in a rhythmic fashion, the sound of voices in the background. It was like being able to work or just be, with a sense of people around you whom you could consult when you wanted to, but whose voices and words were accessible and connecting. Also the way the blog is written is welcoming.
Lynne Henderson

Hello, everyone. Anne-Laure recently invited me to join this conversation and recommended that, for my first post, I say a bit about my website, wordsinspace.net — which obviously bears a semantic similarity to the Building Space With Words project — and my relevant teaching and research. I bought the wordsinspace domain name and built a very rudimentary site six years ago to house my teaching materials and some of my early research. At the time, I was designing a new course, “Textual Form,” that I was to teach at the University of Pennsylvania; the class examined ways in which textual presentation – including how words are arranged on the space of the page, screen, landscape, etc. – offer layers of meaning in addition to those carried in the words’ denotations and connotations. Hence “words in space.” (The site’s in dire need of a redesign; in its current incarnation, it certainly doesn’t live up to the creative potential of its title!)

Much of my work examines media form and materiality and the spaces in which people make and consume media – the design of media companies’ headquarters, libraries, reading rooms, archives, pedagogical spaces, etc. Of course all are examples of words – in various formats – distributed throughout space.

A few years ago I began teaching, with my New School colleague Barry Salmon, a graduate seminar called “Sound and Space.” This class introduced me to the growing field of “sound studies” and helped me to appreciate the non-visual dimensions of texts and media reception. I began examining the sounds that media texts make, and how those sounds reverberate throughout spaces of media production and consumption. In addition, I’ve been exploring the non-audio-visual textual experience: how words, and their embodiment in books, on records, in digital form, etc., are experienced haptically, kinesthetically – and perhaps even olfactorily. This multisensory and material experience is important to consider even in regard to immaterial words in virtual spaces — and there’s some recent interesting work addressing these issues.

I look forward to the conversation and exhibition.

Hi,I just wanted to share a few thoughts I had yesterday after going to see a choreography by Pina Bausch at the BAM in Brooklyn (http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=128).I think they fit quite well in the context of the discussion Milena’s posts started today (Thanks Milena for these two detailed and rich posts that helped a lot in clarifying a certain number of concepts). Pina Bausch’s show, Bamboo Blues (which I personally loved) is not at all about the issues we discussed in this blog. Among other things, it again reminded me of the importance of materiality.However, looking at the dancers on stage, I thought of how it was the antinomy is a way to what we were discussing here. Indeed it was all about bodies and movements in space and sound. I could not help thinking of my post of  December 11 on the NY Times article on the sense of touch. Dancers on the stage through their movements (in the context of the sound track) reconstructed a shared space (on the stage). Looking at them you realize the importance of embodiment as well as of sound… It also highlights the power of non-verbal behaviors and communication.  At one point I had started looking at the role of materiality in the online forums and for diverse reasons, I did not pursue. I might now go back to the data and my notes.  I am not sure what to do with us apart that it might show some of the limits of the comparison… which does not mean that the comparison is meaningless. It just reminds us what it can / might tell us, and what it can’t / might not. Ciao,al 

Here is a cool installation that was in Lower Manhattan this summer. See photos attached. The idea is to interact with the building and use its different parts as instruments.  Instead of making things audible, or visible, or embodying virtual interactions, David Byrne is playing with the materiality of the building to make us explore the notion of space. He says “ As far as space goes, I sense that different architectural spaces “want” to have specific kinds of sounds inside them. The space creates a hole for sounds to fill, psychologically and physically—but only specific sorts of sounds seem to “fit” in each kind of space. The inherent acoustics of a room have far-reaching effects: they make you walk different and talk different. They make you feel different.”  http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/art_projects/playing_the_building/  

The Listening Roomhttp://www.stalk.net/Piano/lausanne01.htm