Sound Visualization: Translating Soundscape into Spatial Experience through Responsive Installation

Abstract

This thesis investigates how environmental sound can be translated into spatial experience through a responsive kinetic surface canopy. Sound is constantly present in public space but usually invisible, making it hard to sense the existence. Instead of treating sound as a acoustic information, the project explores how sound frequency can become a trigger for visible and bodily perceptible movement. The research is inspired by cymatics and Chladni plates experiments, in which sound frequency generates visible patterns and forms with physical matter. The thesis refers to spatial experience of ‘soundcube’ from Leitner in 1969 and responsive architectural interface from Michael Fox in 1967. The research combines sound recording, frequency analysis, digital modeling, and physical prototyping. Environmental sounds are collected and analyzed as relative frequency data. Meanwhile, a kinetic surface system is developed through iterative prototypes, testing how a flexible and segmented surface can produce feasible movable patterns. The principle that higher frequencies generate pattern of more complexity is applied, therefore, environmental sound frequency determines the complexity of the surface movement. The final design proposal applied this catalogue to a responsive canopy installation in public space. In this design, eight Chladni pattern are selected as visual references for catalogue of kinetic surface patterns according to their complexity. Low-frequency sound activate simpler and broader surface movements, while higherfrequency sound trigger denser and more complex patterns. Through this application, the movement triggered by sound becomes spatial experience in public space that can interact with human. The thesis contributes a design approach for translating environmental sound frequency into kinetic surface system. Through the use of Chladni patter ns and frequency-based complexity principle, sound is transformed into visible patter ns. The project positions sound visualization as an architectural process that connects c ymatic phenomena with responsive installation and spatial experience.