CHARLES DARWIN

Abstract

CHARLES DARWIN AV Performance, The Millennium Building: The Atlantic Project 2018.

Architecture for Expanded Sensory Integration

This practice-led research proposes the use of audiovisual performance to amplify the metamorphosis of reality through the modification of the architectural environment to produce densely atmospheric experiential space. Through the interplay of sound, light and the movement of space and people, a ‘dynamic architecture’ is created composed of sensual realities that subvert solid structures with interspersed paraspace fictions.

Paraspace is created when the architectural ‘host’ space come into contact with the overlaid realities of the AV performance. The ‘host’ space is reshaped by this intervention, transmitting environmental stimuli that infects the ‘host’ space and its inhabitants by the reality of another. In doing so, the hierarchy of ‘real’ space is subverted by unframing and rupturing the ‘host’ architectural conditions by creating moments of derealisation. In this way, the AV performance become impulse generators for triggering temporalized presences that affect alterations in the audience perception, mood and consciousness.

Paraspace relies on controlling environmental stimuli and the creation of hypervigilant symbiotic relationship between sensory space and behaviour. By causing sensory disruptions we can further discover the impact of architectural space and the relationship to sensory processing and reality formation.

The Atlantic Project is a pilot for a new international festival of contemporary art, which took place in public contexts and outdoor locations across Plymouth, UK, from 28 September to 21 October 2018. https://www.theatlantic.org/pages/about