Point of ... by Philippe Vandal

Point of… by Philippe Vandal is a piece of work inspired and conceived from a series of readings dealing with architecture theory, hearing (in the philosophical and scientific sense) and issues surrounding certain principles of perception and listening. These readings are used as starting points. They generate different sound explorations that attempt to illustrate the theories studied under an instinctive and formal approach.
Interested in the great italian theaters from the Renaissance and, in particular, the relationship between the spectator and the stage, Vandal proposes a work which tends to encourage the participation of the listener.
When one realizes the particularity of the sound landscape, a process of analysis is almost inevitable. This landscape is constantly being defined and redefined, sometimes gradually, sometimes drastically, with elements that seem to test their own limits and possibilities. From this incessant flow of information, the artist presents his understanding of perception versus apperception notions through a generous spectrum of sounds that constantly demand to be recontextualized and re-evaluated: « our perception of the sound of the sea is said to be composed of the sounds of each single wave we hear without being aware of doing so » (ERLMANN on Leibniz).
Some passages, in that sense, reveal a trick played on our ear when a time can be observed between the disappearance of an element and the moment the impact of its absence is felt. The opposite is also true. The sounds are re-sampled, re-used and reorganized. Vandal’s approach shows a great attention to detail and a particular attention paid to the relationship between the different elements, the places they occupy and their size hierarchy: « natural scaling hierarchy influences the viewer because it facilitates the process of human cognition. We are able to perceive a complex structure easily by reducing it to a number of distinct levels of scale » (SALINGAROS).

ERLMANN, Veit (2007). Reason and Reasonnance: a history of modern aurality, New-York, Zone Books.

LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm (1765). Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain, Allemagne, Raspe.

SALINGAROS, Nikos A. (2006). A Theory of Architecture, Michael W. Mehaffy, illustré, Solingen,
Umbau-Verlag.

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