Purchase
Architecture of the Air
Beth Dunlop
The Sound and Light Environments of Christopher Janney
Sideshow Media, LLC
January 2007
On Sale: January 1, 2007
174 pages
ISBN: 0978814304
EAN: 9780978814304
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Christopher Janney is a musician who designs buildings, an
architect who makes music, an artist whose works invite
interaction and engagement as opposed to passive
appreciation. His big idea is, in essence, absurdly simple,
yet if taken up and widely applied could have profound and
far-reaching effects on the environments where we live, work
and play. As documented in this fascinating new book, his
Urban Musical Instruments are public installations or
constructions that double as instruments that can be played
by people in the vicinity. In Touch My Building (1998) a
giant bank garage in North Carolina gains coloured glass
panels and neon fins that trigger sound and light. Sonic
Forest is an array of 25 aluminium columns fitted with
speakers, lights and sensors that are triggered by human
interaction, the music continually changing and evolving in
response. It can be set up differently as the site demands.
These works are what public art should be - intriguing,
colourful, exciting and sensitive and responsive to the
environment they are located in. The book documents these
and other similar projects, as well as houses designed by
Janney, including his own, that make good use of coloured
glass to give the properties ever-shifting light and shade.
Each project is well-illustrated with detailed plans and
photographs, not just of the buildings but of design details
like the 'Sun-Moon Clock' which tells the time for the
rising and setting of sun and moon. As with the 'Urban
Musical Instruments', this illustrates that one of the most
interesting aspects of Janney's work is the attempt to
connect high technology with nature, to overcome the anomie
too often induced by the digital. He demands a hearing.
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