thought the Maya references might be of
interest. The link to the entire article is provided.
Along these lines, I watched of a video of
some friends climbing out of Golondrinas last night. One of them
was singing Amazing Grace around the midpoint and the reverb was
astonishing.. Two observers on the surface had distincly
different experiences - the one at the lip where the rope was
rigged heard each word of the song distinctly. The other, on the
low side, heard only a long swelling oooooooooooommmmmmmmmmm for the
duration of the song.
Nancy
Shaping Sound
Structures can be designed to
create auditory effects
By Alan Hall
One speaker at the conference who
was not at all surprised by Meseguer's findings was acoustical
consultant David Lubman of Westminster, Calif. Lubman is one of a
small but growing number of researchers who are pioneering a new
discipline that might be called "paleoacoustics" or
"archaeoacoustics." These investigators are intrigued by the
curious sound phenomena reported at many ancient sites. And, unlike
many archaeologists, they do not believe they are accidental but proof
that some ancient people had a sophisticated knowledge of acoustics
and built it into their structures.
Lubman first became intrigued by
reports of a curious echo from the Mayan pyramid of Kukulkan at
Chichen Itza, in Mexico's Yucatan region. The odd "chirped"
echo resounds from the pyramid's staircases in response to hand claps
of people standing near its base. To hear for himself, Lubman packed
up his recording gear and traveled to Chichen Itza last
January.
After studying the staircases and
analyzing his recordings and sonograms of the echoes, Lubman came back
convinced that this was no architectural freak. In his paper, Lubman
argued that the design of the staircases was
deliberate and that the echo is an ancient recording, coded in stone,
of the call of the Maya's sacred bird, the quetzal.
Like the tubes in Sempere's
sculpture, the treads of the stairs at Kukulkan consist of elements
that are repeated at regular intervals, or are "spatially
periodic." "When periodic design elements are composed of
sound reflective materials [such as stone], and if certain other
conditions are met, odd echoes or other strange acoustical effects may
result," says Lubman. He contends that the oddly narrow steps
with abnormally high risers (an illogical configuration for people
whose descendants are of short stature) were built to voice the call
of the sacred bird.
Other investigators have noticed the
relationship between structure and sound in many ancient sites. Steven
Waller, for one, made a seminal observation while admiring Neolithic
cave art in Spain--the paintings seemed to be placed at locations
where there were strong acoustical resonances. He and others have
since identified hundreds of such sites around the world. "Human
uses for sound, no less than the other perceptual modalities, must
surely have shaped human habitations in many ways not yet considered,"
says Lubman.
Unfortunately, in the modern world
such acoustical effects are unusually considered unwanted artifacts
caused by an architect's failure to consider acoustics. Even when
acoustics are considered to be paramount, there have been
glitches--such as the concert hall in New York's Lincoln Center that
raised an outcry in 1962 and was eventually gutted and reconstructed
at great expense.
So maybe modern architects, who are
mainly concerned with the visual impact of their work, should borrow a
page from the artists and ancients to create environments that
apprehend an equally important human sense--hearing. The next time you
are in the lobby of a building or facing a grand staircase, clap your
hands.
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