architecture of sense

Correlating artistic disciplines of architecture, music, and colour theory. 

Edwina Chen investigates "scientific humanism" where the human body is a bioelectrical machine in which the senses are defined by a narrow band of detection across the continuum of the electromagnetic spectrum from energy to matter. Her practice is defined by reduction and interpolation of theory in each discipline between each sense and the corresponding art.

The Music of Architecture turns a building into sound. Every building has a musical key and can be translated into music. This project takes a set piece of information, in this instance the blueprints of architecture, and translates them, while maintaining the proportions,  into the set spectrum which each human sense can detect, without losing any data. 

The Architecture of Music turns sound into a drawing. Every piece of music is the relationship of intervals and can be drawn on a graph. Graphic representation of the proportions of music, creating a new representation for overtone singing for composition, to become a new notation system.

The Colour of Music turns drawing into painting. Every piece of music pitch has a corresponding length and can be measured with a string or a pipe. This project takes a set piece of information, in this instance the 10 bars from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, vii. In Paradisum, D Major measures 20-30 and translates into an illuminated string sculpture, while maintaining the proportions, from sound into an object, where the length of the pipe corresponds to the colour it generates.

The Scent of Colour turns painting into scent. Every colour has a corresponding number of wavelengths per second and can be related to the number of carbons in the chain in organic chemistry of an essential oil. Perfume base of the chord progression and key of music and colour palette correlated to the carbon chain.

The Taste of Scent turns perfume into a food menu. Organic compounds which make essential oils are often edible and derived from a food source. Perfume recipes generated from colour palettes and musical chords can be fixed menus. Each perfume chord, with chord progression, while maintaining the proportions, can be served as a meal, transforming  smell into taste. 

The Touch of Taste turns food into our bodies. We are what we eat which is why families who eat together grow more alike over a lifetime, or why health demographics follow populations where geography and culture dictate food availability. How does the food we eat turn into the bodies we build?

 Traditional Chinese Medicine has food menus to relate to each organ system. Each set menu is seasonal, based on molecular carbon structure corresponding to chords, transforms taste into anatomy while maintaining the original proportions.