Lofoten Open Form Pavilion of Air

Lofoten Åpen Form Paviljong av Luft
Audiowork / soundwalk accessible via Echoes app
Duration variable.
Specific installation area: 20m long x 11m wide
Located at Kunstkvarteret, Vestvågøy, Lofoten, Norway, 2023
Launch: 9-10 September 2023 as part of Lofoten Art Open

Part of the pan-European Open Form Pavilion of Air series (15 locations across 9 countries)

The Pavilion is easy to access, just:
1. Download the Echoes app
2. Grab a mobile phone & headphones
3. Download the audiowork in the app (not a browser) using the link or QR code & open while at Kunstkvarteret Lofoten

An overview of the Open Form Pavilion of Air series via RTÉ Culture (Irish NRK equivalent):
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0327/1366079-new-music-dublin-welcomes-you-to-the-open-form-pavilion-of-air/

“Lofoten Åpen Form Paviljong av Luft” (Lofoten Open Form Pavilion of Air) is a floating roof of sound extending across areas in front and behind Kunstkvarteret Lofoten, triggered by GPS and accessed via a smartphone, headphones and the echoes.xyz app. Inspired by Polish architects Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s “Open Form” architectural concept (ca. 1959), this audiowork is one of 15 locations in 9 countries in the pan-European Open Form Pavilion of Air series, using sound and site-mapping to offer a playful renewal and reframing of public space as an essential place of engagement for the community.

By walking through different zones outside Kunstkvarteret Lofoten while using your mobile phone, the Echoes app and headphones, you become a participatory listener producing a composition in real-time. Your navigation creates a unique choreography via GPS, combining and changing sounds mapped along the site outside the main building through the app. Hear this unique Arctic location and its context become transformed by the sounds forming this floating acoustic architecture, revealing an immersive, profoundly spatial and physical experience. The Pavilion has no visible presence outside the app and can only be accessed and enjoyed on-site at Kunstkvarteret Lofoten.
 

Also in the Open Form Pavilion of Air series:

Access LOFOTEN PAVILION OF AIR audiowork in Echoes app
Lublin Pavilion of Air
Prague AGENESIS Pavilion
Folldal Pavilion of Air
Bergen Pavilion of Air
Bornholm Pavilion of Air
Dublin Pavilion of Air
London Pavilion of Air
Inis Oírr Pavilion of Air
Sound Art Lab Pavilion of Air
Cobh Pavilion of Air
Piteå Pavilion of Air
Berlevåg Pavilion of Air
Berlin Pavilion of Air
Venice Pavilion of Air

Additional information - Hansen’s pavilions employing hyperbolic paraboloid in Open Form architecture:
Stockholm International Fair (1953) with Stanislaw Zamecznik and Wojciech Zamecznik [info]
Hansen-Tomaszewski (HT) structure -  Izmir (Turkey, 1955) with Lech Tomaszewski [image] 
Sao Paolo (1959) with Lech Tomaszewski & Zofia Hansen [image]

Approaches underlying Hansen’s pavilions using the logos of 'Open Form' architecture:
The Pavilions of Air parallel Hansen’s move to use the designs for the international fair pavilions as* “testing ground for designs that shifted focus from the object to ‘cognitive space’: to the individuals using them” – the modulation of the individual’s perception by the Pavilion of Air occurs at a variety of levels, among them the individual’s experience and apprehension of “space” ie location around them and its context. [* quote: Krzysztof Kosciuczuk - Frieze magazine]

Equally, as a spatial choreography through which listeners each move through on their own paths to compose their own piece through this movement, the Pavilion of Air echoes Hansen’s “pavilion for the Warsaw Autumn Music Festival (with Zofia Hansen, 1958) [which] were not only meant to expose the displayed products (or music in the case of the latter), but also turn the visitors into active participants and co-creators of their spatial experiences”. In the case of the Pavilion of Air the displayed content is the site over which the invisible roof rests without the material support of walls, only sound, air and imagination… [quote: Institute of the Present - Aleksandra Kedziorek]

Furthermore, as Hansen commented during the Team 10 meetings in 1960 “Open Form has the task of helping the individual find himself amid the collective, to make himself indispensable in the formation of his own environment,” – the Pavilion of Air aims to allow, produce or effect a realization within the individual that reframes their engagement with the location, the site and thereby society-at-large.

It would seem that society should facilitate (and not impose, as Closed Form does) the development of the individual. There needs to be a synthesis between the objective, collective, social elements, and the subjective, individual elements.” Similarly the individual sound elements of the Pavilion of Air combine and are combined by the listener’s movement to produce a gestalt effect that facilitates this shift in site-perception.