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Pleasure of anticipation The idea of such a time-imperative may be unexpected and alarming. But it is based on the truth that the body is as much a futurist as the mind. We project forward the next hour, minute and second to anticipate the flow of information, and that can be a matter of life or death. In sports it is well known that our body anticipates the pitch of a baseball, the slap of a hockey puck, the serve of a tennis ball much faster than we can think about it, and the reaction is often most skilful when most brainless (or on auto-pilot). It is often said that if you ask a centipede in which order it moves its hundred legs it freezes. Quick automatic anticipation of the next microsecond is essential for walking and survival. But of course the arts and sciences depend on thinking and feeling which have a much longer time-horizon, thousands of years, where expectations are built up in the complex web of interconnected culture. That is why it is impossible to fully appreciate either Gothic architecture or Relativity Theory, without knowing something about the codes and stereotypes that lie behind these cultural forms. And that idea is alarming for an age which believes everything is transparent, or can be quickly understood, or will become more so with all-glass architecture (the fantasy of the Expressionists and so much ‘democratic architecture’ today). The implications of the time-imperative differ between the spatial-arts and time-arts, as I have mentioned, although all perception is in space-time. To reiterate, music is less perceiver-controlled than architecture because it cannot be inferred in a glance, and has to be experienced over a longer time frame before you guess how it will play out. Maybe, as with a conversation you are following, the inferences carry over about 20 seconds. The ability to follow a musical theme, or a verbal argument varies, but I remember when Information Theory and neural processing were first discussed together in the 1950s that general limits were set. The psychologist George A Miller published a famous paper called ‘The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two’. This became a formula for thinking about thinking: that you could process seven plus or minus two bits (or chunks or objects) in your short-term, or working, memory. While no universal measure of this processing is accepted, the idea of such limits is commonplace. For listening to music this attention span of ‘now’ (that is, the flow of music as perceived and anticipated in the short-term memory) will vary as one becomes excited and then bored. Forgetting bits of a composition is necessary for being elated when they later come back, as one’s auto-pilot perceives in its special thrill of recognition. The same is true in the architectural promenade, when one finally reaches the anticipated climax of seeing the Parthenon up close, and then is released into the cosmic view. But, whereas one can guess much of the whole promenade from the first view, the same is not true with the time-arts. These are more tyrannical − only their author knows the plot beforehand − and therefore music must continuously enforce new expectations, immediate goals, all the more strongly. I think Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps proves the rule. 
At the heart of the Dalian Conference Centre is a traditional horseshoe shaped auditorium with a capacity of 1,600 seats. The classic auditorium is reinterpreted for the modern era, with riotous decor and acoustically pimpled surfaces. Here there is tonality, but it is always melding; there are rhythms, but they are always morphing All perception has an element of goal-direction, as we project forward the next instant. Aristotle claimed that ‘Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for goals.’ This has its parallel in the arts which, as they unfold, generate their own goal. The time-imperative means that if our attention is not grabbed every now and then by both pattern recognition and the expectation of the new, we will not be engaged. Putting together these thoughts, and the analogy between music and architecture, leads to further conclusions. The basic means in common between the two arts consist in rhythm, harmony, emotional intensity, meaning, the reliance on stereotype (or genre) and the progression of chords (or the comparison to an architectural journey through space). Many other details and figures are shared, such as chromaticism and glissandi, the use of overtones and morphing. Architectural and musical ornament can sometimes be more important than structure, and boredom and background are necessary for both arts. But music is not for the most part background (except in shopping centres and muzak) and has no exact equivalent for the foreground flip of architecture into background urbanism. Music, as a time-art, is also much more controlling and authorial, and not meant to be experienced backwards or shift in speed with the perceiver. Countless more differences separate these two arts − utility and cost − but they are both routinely perceived as abstract arts, where form and content are one. This perception may be false from a semiotic viewpoint, because we know all communication is doubly-coded, but the experience of this illusion is no less convincing for that. READERS' COMMENTS (1)
The Architecture of Music, the Music of Architecture and the Myth of Progress Michael L. St. Hill Principal Michael L. St. Hill Architects and Planners Ltd June 2013 We know that, through evolution, things change and adapt – they don’t necessarily get better or more complex. Therefore ‘progress’, in the sense of movement to a happy place at the end of a Hollywood blockbuster, has nothing to do with life or human history. Application of these simple, fundamentals to the disciplines of architecture and music, and blocking out the Wagnerian romanticism about humankind is the key to a useful exploration of the relationships of the two hybrid sciences and arts: Music and Architecture. Music exists in time and space: Architecture exists in space and time. To my understanding music does not consist of a harmonic chord by strings and trumpets anymore than architecture in a photograph, so the idea of spending 5 or 6 pages remarking on the role of proportional relationships in sound waves and in lines making a facade is futile and says very little about music or architecture. Jencks gives away the shallowness of his analysis many times but, perhaps most tellingly, in this passage: Musicians are often taught the six basic moods, and modes, they can stress – sadness, joyfulness, fearfulness, tenderness, love and anger... No, musicians are often taught the scales, the structure of a melody and how to build one in 4, 8 or 16 bars and how to build a musical phrase into a composition – which, nowadays, amounts to nothing more than an A-A or A-B-A song form. Alas, here is the true lesson: in music and architecture we are not sailing into the ether of perpetual progress, we are, most likely, in a dark age where a very great deal of the technique of these hybrid arts and sciences has been forgotten and is no longer recognized or experienced. Then there’s the question of the actual ‘new’ and ‘groundbreaking’ in music and architecture.... In western music the last great fundamental advance was with J. S. Bach and the Well Tempered Clavier that set the tuning of scales and, hence, instruments. Some abstract advances in terms of style and expression have been made up until Late Beethoven in the Late Quartets and 9th Symphony but since then (even with Jazz and the sex driven Popular Music of our time) nothing has changed. Similarly in architecture it is true to say that the last meaningful change has been with the Corbusier, Mies and Wright generation. The rest is essentially superficial and individual style which has little relevance beyond the particular practitioner. This is obvious in music with Schoenberg and inventors of self-referential laws and regulations of composition that are irrelevant to the actual, real, contemporary music scene and, in architecture, the Ghery’s, ‘Blobmeisters’ and ‘Parameisters’ who, at the end, build the Eiffel Towers and Bilbaos – one-offs of no consequence to the general, real, daily contemporary architectural practice. Reyner Banham is correct to call Le Corbusier (or at least his generation) the last form-givers; though there may be opportunity for a new generation once the computer is properly established in the design studio. The odd, idiosyncratic use of software and techniques exclusive to the Ghery’s and Hadid’s of the world counts for little beyond the promotion of their individual personalities. Architecture and music are highly technical endeavours: learning to play the violin or piano is a far more complex endeavour than learning to drive a truck or fly an Air Bus. Writing a piece of music or (in the case of Jazz and pre literate music) improvising on a theme or given structure is a complex technical exercise first and foremost. Emotional expression is consequent and not vice versa. As architects we have it easier because of our (troubled) partnership with engineers and so we sometimes lose sight of the fact that our designs have to stand up and not leak. Musicians, even the performers, are generally closer to the fundamental structure of their art. This is an example we can take from the correlation of these arts: that our work, as architects, may be enhanced by a closer knowledge and affinity with the enabling structure – just as Jimi Hendrix, at the height of his expression, is acutely aware of the technical prerequisite of chord progressions, rhythmic synchronicity and dynamic correlation. Can there be a more pointless question than, “ Are musical chords like space?” In the end it only tells us how different literature is than music and architecture and how ineffectual and inadequate it is in trying to explicate either. Directory: 2015 2015 -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 2015 -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d 2015 -> Police Militarization 2015 -> Medical Radiography Program 2015 -> 2015 ihbb championships: hs history Bowl Round 4 – Prelims First Quarter 2015 -> Desk review yemen 2015 -> Wrtp/big step · 3841 W. 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