The Buzz
An installation in the form of furniture clusters and a live soundscape, The Buzz creates a commons for activities of slowed time and loose attention: idling, lounging, watching, or listening. The project fills sites across the UCLA landscape with forms of collective media: images, architecture, and sound. The Buzz is a collaboration by UCLA faculty and students from Architecture & Urban Design, cityLAB, Musicology, and REMAP and led by Gabriel Fries-Briggs, Dana Cuff, Tamara Levitz, and Jeff Burke. It is supported by a 2018 UCLA Arts Initiative Grant 2018 as part of the “Campus as Canvas” grant cycle. The installation will be on view at 5 sites from November 2 through December 14 with an opening event from 5:30-7:30pm at the Perloff Courtyard.
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The installation is made from images and audio sampled from campus sites. The image samples that form furniture are combined through techniques of vision normally experienced by a single observer—phone panoramas, VR environments, and aerial drone cameras. The image-as-furniture renders these techniques as social amenities. The soundscape is a live composition, actively combining field recordings, live feedback of the environment, and a generative music that changes over the course of the day, week, and month.
This research seeks to reinvigorate the discourse of media environments by shifting the focus away from the vertical surface of buildings toward the horizontal landscape of the city and the collective media that frames our experiences of it. The project furnishes that landscape as a buzzing commons, a gathering place with architectural elements for sitting, talking, and listening.
Project Credits
Project Leads: Yiran Chen, Michael Pickoff, Gus Wendel
Sound Production: Jeff, Burke, Blair Subbaraman, Yasmine El-Tayeb
Sound Composition: Kevin Corrigan, Joe Rihn
Furniture Design: Aubrey Bauer, Dongxiao Cheng, Noor Jarrah, Xihan Lyu, Nichole Tortorici, Lingjie Wu, Ning Zhu
| Project Type: | Installation |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Gabriel Fries-Briggs Dana Cuff Jeff Burke Tamara Levitz |
| Collaborators: | UCLA Architecture & Urban Design REMAP cityLAB UCLA Musicology |
| Timeline: | 2018 |
| Themes: | Campus-as-Campus |