NOISE CONTROL / SOUNDING SURFACES

Au­di­to­ry im­pres­sions sig­ni­f­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence the in­ter­mo­dal per­cep­tion of space. While vi­sion is frag­men­tary, fo­cussed to catch events in front of us, om­nidi­rec­tio­n­al lis­ten­ing ren­ders pos­si­ble ori­en­ta­tion and per­cep­tion in three-di­men­sio­n­al space. Hear­ing works conti­nous­ly, we hear events that are next to us or hap­pen in the dis­tance, we can not close our ears like eyes. How plea­sur­able a space is per­ceived sub­s­tan­tial­ly de­pends on its son­ic at­mo­sphere. Vary­ing ways of us­age lead to dif­fer­ing de­mands on son­ic at­mo­spheres of spaces.

From the per­spec­tive of lis­ten­ing space can be new­ly-dis­cov­ered, new­ly-ar­ranged, new­ly-cre­at­ed. It is pos­si­ble to de­vel­op and mod­i­fy fu­ture and ex­ist­ing spaces as well as ur­ban and ar­chi­tec­tu­ral si­t­u­a­tions by son­ic de­sign ori­ent­ed on hu­man needs – func­tio­n­al­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, aes­thet­i­cal­ly sti­m­u­lat­ing, so­cial­ly ac­cept­able. Sound can be want­ed or un­want­ed, it can be pro­duced or re­duced.

On­go­ing re­search fo­cus­es on the de­vel­op­ment of a nov­el tech­nique of sound re­duc­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gards to bass fre­quen­cies, a sys­tem for public space that can be used in­side as well as out­side. De­signed as a light weight struc­ture the func­tio­n­al­i­ty of the sys­tem is ac­com­plished by a sculp­tu­ral so­lu­tion. Another ex­plo­ra­to­ry fo­cus is on the de­vel­op­ment of in­no­va­tive ma­te­rial sys­tems for sound pro­duc­tion. Com­bin­ing re­search on the macro-, mi­cro- and nano lev­el we aim to de­vel­op nov­el ma­te­rials, used for sur­faces and walls, that can pro­duce sound in the whole fe­quen­cy range.