“Concrete” is a 5 minute long recording of concrete in silence. Architectural theorist and historian Adrian Forty writes “concrete is often regarded as a dumb or stupid material, more associated with death than life.”1 This project is a rejection of this sentiment. Concrete is active and alive. For the project I wanted to capture the essence of the material, the ways it interacts with its surroundings, and the impact of its material qualities. To create the recording, I embedded a microphone into a 12” x 6” x 4” block of concrete. The microphone is hooked up to a vibration speaker playing the recorded sound back into the material. The result is the sound of silence as it filters2 through the block interacting with the resonant qualities3 of the material. “Concrete” is the recording of concrete embodying its sonic properties.
1 Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2012), 9.
2 Jean-Francois Augoyard and Henry Torgue, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds, trans. Andra McCartney and David Paquette (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005), 48.
3 Augoyard and Torgue, Sonic Experience, 99.