Elements

2015
Speakers, Weather Station, Electronics

Elements is a site-specific permanent installation in the lobby of a new Microsoft Building in Redmond, WA, designed by Boora Architects. This piece musically activates the interior space of the lobby by utilizing the weather conditions directly outside.  To achieve this effect, a weather station, mounted onto the roof of the building, continuously captures changes in the weather.  The resulting data stream, containing wind speed, temperature, precipitation, and sunlight, is instantly interpreted by software, which subsequently triggers musical sounds that playback through around one hundred speakers mounted into the lobby's ceiling.  In this way, the continually shifting nature of weather at the site is represented in real-time by a constantly changing musical composition. This representative gesture sonically engages the lobby space as a threshold between built and natural environments, inviting building users to experience a musical connection between inside and out.