The modern city is a space filled with signs and sensory stimulations. Therefore if we go beyond the supremacy of the sight sense, a study of aesthetological nature on the sound characteristics of the city, and on our capacities of... more
The modern city is a space filled with signs and sensory stimulations. Therefore if we go beyond the supremacy of the sight sense, a study of aesthetological nature on the sound characteristics of the city, and on our capacities of turning them into experience through hearing, will allow us to perform a new range of analysis clearly rooted in phenomenology. Being meant as invisible and incorporeal cultural good changing due to variable factors, the sounding landscape becomes exposed to the reflections of urban aesthetics, thus helping a new "sensory" approach to city planning in order to carry on a kind of urban exploration aiming at enhancing modes of perception that a have been neglected up to now. Although this study should be necessarily compared with the analyses Murray Schafer made in his Sounding City, the guideline of the present research will embrace an aesthetological and phenomenological approach.
Throughout history, empires have deployed a vast array of strategies to promote their worldview and to control the colonized. Amongst non-violent ones, hosting public ceremonies to show off an empire’s capabilities and to enact and... more
Throughout history, empires have deployed a vast array of strategies to promote their worldview and to control the colonized. Amongst non-violent ones, hosting public ceremonies to show off an empire’s capabilities and to enact and reinforce new desired relations and identities, seemed to be especially effective. This article presents new data and interpretations on how the Inkas employed ritual architecture to manipulate the somatic experiences of the colonized. Specifically, we analyze the public space of an Inka settlement located in the North Calchaquí Valley (Argentina) in order to show how the Inkas used architecture and spatial design to impose certain sensorial modalities and to manage their sequential stimulus and intensity. In an attempt to overcome a reigning visual paradigm among this line of inquiry, we present an analysis that combines visual and acoustical data collected on site, with three-dimensional modeling of terrain, architecture, and sound propagation. Results indicate that through a careful layout design that involved the management of visual and acoustic permeability, the Inkas not only organized groups and practices, but also created different experiences for different people.
