art in the public realm
Robert Curgenven, 2023
Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA
A floating acoustic architecture, playfully reframing public space as an essential community engagement through sound & site mapping. Accessed by smartphone, headphones & echoes.xyz app, the Pavilion is located outside the Serpentine Gallery,. Drawing on Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s Open Form architectural concept it is one of 15 in a series including Venice, Berlin, Dublin, Bergen and Arctic Norway.
Lancaster Gate, Hyde Park Corner, Knightsbridge
Paddington
148, 274, 390, 94
Bike stands are throughout Park. Cycle hire docking: Serpentine Gallery Nth & Sth, Knightsbridge Stn, Hyde Park Cnr Stn, Lancaster Gate.
Download Echoes on your phone https://explore.echoes.xyz Download audiowork via QR code in app (not a browser). Use headphones/earbuds.
London Open Form Pavilion of Air is a floating acoustic architecture, triggered by GPS and accessed via a smartphone, headphones and the echoes.xyz app. One of 15 locations in 9 countries in the pan-European Open Form Pavilion of Air series https://www.recordedfields.net/installations/open-form-pavilion-of-air/ inspired by Polish architects Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s “Open Form” architectural concept, it uses sound and site-mapping to offer a playful renewal and reframing of public space as an essential place of engagement for the community.
The Pavilion's area takes the form of a 160 x 160 metre arrow pointing west to Ireland & the sunset. Invisibly occupying part of the Gardens, itself once a King’s playground, the work's concept echoes & reframes the fading colonial notion of a "... vast [British] empire on which the sun never sets" (the words of British colonial administrator Earl George Macartney in his "An Account of Ireland in 1773 by a Late Chief Secretary of that Kingdom").
By walking through different zones in the specific area by the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens 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 in the Gardens through the app. Hear the park and its context become transformed by the many 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.
To access it - download the Echoes app https://explore.echoes.xyz/ then download the audiowork in the echoes app (not a browser) via link https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/LjFLJZ2MAZopyVUw or QR code & save it to your phone so its ready to open when at the location.
More details: https://www.recordedfields.net/installations/london-open-form-pavilion-of-air/
Learn more about the series and London's sister piece in Dublin https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0327/1366079-new-music-dublin-welcomes-you-to-the-open-form-pavilion-of-air/
