Alexandra Wieck
My focus as a designer lies in creating sensory experiences rooted in time and place. Especially in our visual, digital times, I believe a holistic sensory landscape is crucial to our mental and physical well-being.
In this context, I try to incorporate elements of play, as I believe that allowing people to have a somewhat self-steered, open-ended experience is what allows them to ‘make sense’ of the world around them.
Sounds of Soil
Future Experiences
‘making the invisible visible’
“Especially in the context of regeneration, when looking at ‘Wicked Problems’, the ‘wicked’ element to them is often just a lack of not even knowledge, but of experience – a lack of visibility or tactility. “
Sounds of Soil is a project aimed at the sensory mediation and accessibility of scientific data to a non-scientifically-versed general public. Drawing on concepts such as Citizen-Science and Experiential Knowledge, it tries to bridge the gap between knowledge and understanding of our Ecosystem by involving people in the exploration, monitoring, and diagnosis of our environment’s condition’.
The sound sculptures are found in ‘transitionary spaces’ – intersections of the realms of human and eco-system – like parks, gardens, and urban wasteland, where, in similar fashion to stethoscopes, they allow the listener to discover and listen into the earth. A sensory window to the lands lifecycle and health, this blend of scientific data stream and intervention is not just supposed to facilitate local monitoring of a community’s soil’s health, but also to instigate awareness, curiosity, and empathy about our green others on both a cultural and individual level.
Soundshells
Soundshells
My self-initiated project is an interrogation into our relationship to in-situ soundscapes. It investigates how resonant bodies could be used to reengineer, distort and tune into our sonic environments, especially the ones we often choose to block out via electroacoustics, and it explores how the noises around us could be augmented to be more pleasurable and engageable to the individual.
“Not only can music silence us, but it can also change our ways of listening, turning us into a passive witness rather than a participant and creator of sound.”
Functioning somewhere in between instrument, sensory extension, and acoustic space, Soundshells create a new soundscape from the pre-existing one – one that is different, more accessible and enjoyable, but not entirely alienated or separate from the original one – like a kind of acoustic headphone. But unlike the individual echo chambers normal headphones create, by remediating spatial acoustics, they invite not only to experience but also to partake and create a recreational auditive experience rooted in time and place – like a sonic flâneur.
Aiming to facilitate interaction with in situ soundscapes, they try to find a middle ground between awareness of our surroundings and pleasurability of noise, prompting us to once again become the active listener, orchestrator and the creator of sound.
Local Citizenship
In our speculative future world of 2032, Glasgow has been divided into six self-governing districts, enabling citizens to enhance their districts individually and ultimately build a stronger city when united. Autonomy is a crucial aspect of our future world, granting communities the authority to make collaborative decisions on resource allocation within their local areas. This empowers them with a voice and the ability to improve the overall quality of life for all citizens.
The exhibition challenges participants to negotiate and work together in order to determine the most effective distribution of resources, aiming to achieve equilibrium among the six districts. In designing the exhibit, our primary objective was to create an immersive experience that sparks action and fosters engaging conversations. By inviting active participation, we seek to inspire dialogue and encourage visitors to consider the importance of resource allocation for the city’s sustainable growth and collective well-being.
