Jocelyn Wolfe

While architectural design is primarily driven by visual considerations, acoustic properties of buildings have a major impact on how people experience them. Bringing together interdisciplinary expertise from industry and academia in architecture, acoustics, music performance, and research, 'Out of the auditory' investigates the current state of conceptual thinking, research and practice in aural architecture. The recognition of aural aspects of architecture is ancient, but they are re-emerging in practice and research in new ways that this innovative project will explore in an interdisciplinary collaboration. An edited scholarly publication based on a curated lecture series and an exhibition of designs are proposed outcomes of the project in its first year.

Situated in the remote highlands between Stanthorpe and Tenterfield, The Piano Mill is a unique architectural feature, homage to the musical history of outback Australia, and an outrageous musical instrument all in one. This new book of photos and essays tells the stories behind The Mill’s creation, with personal insights from the team of people involved in bringing it to life. The collaboration of architect Bruce Wolfe, researcher Jocelyn Wolfe, musicians Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson, The Piano Mill is a nationally awarded building for both music and architecture.
In 2016, the building was brought to life with the world première of “All’s Grist that Comes to the Mill.” The 50-minute work, commissioned from Australian composer Erik Griswold, employs the 16 vintage pianos that power the Mill, incorporating mass sound textures that respond to the architecture, nature-inspired soundscapes, and nostalgic fragments.
Yet the Piano Mill is more than a one-off concert venue. It is an on-going project of artistic and cultural synthesis, bringing music, design, environment and history together as a unique collaborative project.

We engage with a place in a multitude of ways, through all of the senses. We are all an extension of place, but in modern societies the visual often typifies our sense of belonging to place at the expense of other senses. The architecture of our surroundings, for example, is predominantly described in visual terms. Art and architecture are often conflated. Art in architecture is often reduced to the visual, and the integration with or application to the built form. Yet architecture gives an acoustic quality of material and space that is inseparable from the experience. Commonly, we are more touched by what we hear than what we see. How, then, do we know our musical selves through architecture? This paper discusses one way of knowing through “The Piano Mill Project”, a hybrid building and musical instrument, designed and purpose-built to house sixteen reclaimed pianos – vestiges of colonialism, post-colonialism, artistic hierarchies, and new beginnings.

The Immersive Guitar Project responds to several needs that have been identified by Lancaster et al. (2009) highlighting relations between place and performance. These needs concern a rarity of suitable, intimate spaces for acoustic performance in Australia, and an appeal for more creative solutions in the provision of such spaces which would afford novel ways of accessing performing arts experiences. The project extends innovations in performance space design commenced by Le Corbusier and Xenakis in the twentieth century wherein instrument design as well as inventive approaches to musical composition inform the built outcome. Lutz (2007) notes the richness of variation amongst the inspirations and discoveries that have come out of this connection between music and architecture. He posits that beyond acoustics and the shared ideas of compositional structure and aesthetics there is another commonality; " … the affinities that are made possible between the tectonics of buildings and musical instruments" (p. 169). Lutz's argument and illustrations are building blocks for this project but the motivation for taking audiences into what is essentially a big guitar is not only about creatively exploring possibilities at the intersection of music and architecture, but also about filling a void in audience experience, and drawing attention to the significance of acoustic instrument evolution. In this paper, we take the reader through the proposition, provide some background and rationale for the project, and briefly survey the field of architecture inspired by instrument design. Two parameters of the investigation define what might come under consideration here: that the space can be inhabited; offering a distinctive listening experience; and that the structure can be 'played', offering the invention of a new instrument, and a new performative and compositional potential. Projects like this invigorate the dialogue between music and architecture through asking exacting questions about site, form, purpose, and materials.