Echo's Embrace · 06:10:21

Report-Fort Process(2014)

Echo's Embrace: The Art of Building with Sound written by Frances Crow, is published in The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art.  

In the work Frances invokes the myth of echo to explore the relationship of reverberant sound and architectural space, mediated through the history of sound art practice.  

'This chapter seeks to bring together two relationships, the first, between science and art in the West during the period of modernity and the second between the fabric of sound-space and the rendering of Echo. Following the dis-articulation of sound-space pre-empted by Sabine’s equation for reverberation (and its adoption by the acoustic profession) I draw together the various traits of echo as mythic figure, as disembodied voice and as acoustic phenomenon to consider the re-articulation of sound-space through sound-art practice. This chapter offers to artists, acousticians, and architects an alternative mapping of the history of acoustics by drawing the reader’s attention to the work of Athanasius Kircher. I suggest that he is as much the father of the acoustic arts as Mersenne, his contemporary, is the father of the acoustic sciences.'

Abstract from Echo's Embrace: The Art of Building with Sound