As part of the recent University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study conference, the Peter Wall Institute unveiled I Hear You Say, an installation that translates sound waves into furniture.
Designed by AFJD – the studio of Amber Frid-Jimenez and Joe Dahmen, the installation is made from post-consumer recycled EPS (expanded polystyrene) with a hard coating, the installation is a large-scale visualization of the word “Ah” that functions as site-specific seating on the terrace of the Peter Wall Institute, located on the University of British Columbia’s picturesque campus in Vancouver.
“Contemporary linguists speculate that the way we communicate relies on auditory cues and gestures in addition to the conventional meaning of words,” says the design duo.
I Hear You Say is located on the terrace at the Peter Wall Institute and is open to the public. The Institute invites visitors to recline on the installation and converse while contemplating English Bay and the Coast Mountains beyond.
Amber Frid-Jimenez is an associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and Joe Dahmen is an assistant professor at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Trained at MIT, the duo designs intimate and urban-scale installations with materials as diverse as rammed earth, micro-algae, and computer code. Along with Matthew Soules Architecture, AFJD designed Pop Rocks (see Canadian Architect, June 2013) an urban installation that used recycled materials to transform in 2012 a prominent city block in downtown Vancouver into a soft landscape, a project that was repeated earlier this year on the UBC campus.
Design and production assistance for I Hear You Say was provided by Ashley Eusebio.
For more information, please visit www.afjdstudio.net.