LORENZO BRUSCI’S SOUND PHILOSOPHY
Lorenzo Brusci is undoubtedly one of the more interesting and captivating thinkers and critics of art appreciation and modern culture. He has become known for his deeply original work on sound-experience, music, architecture and related landscape spaces. Brusci has also developed theories that challenge the established conception of sound.
Born in 1966, Brusci studied Philosophy and Philosophy of Music at the Florence and Siena University. Since the late 1990s, he has experimented with the most abstract of theoretical conventions – how sound can be experienced intellectually and within measureable parameters. “Landscape knows no size or style,” he iterated, “unlike music that allows one to construct shapes using imaginative architecture.”
Addressing the 15th edition of The Garden Show & Spring Festival, which took place at the Beirut Hippodrome, Brusci spoke for more than half an hour without notes and then fielded questions from an enthralled audience. According to Brusci, a sonic landscape design is made from the essence of silence. Silence is like the blank screen onto which ideas are projected. All emerging sounds are defined by silence; even words erupt from a base of wordlessness, and music can be contained in a vacuum. “Lorenzo makes you hear the silence within the sound of a song,” explained Micheline Wehbe, a member of the Order of Architects and Engineers, an organization that researches his ideas.
His ideas concerning sonic gardens are widely praised. The theory assumes that sound has the power to create architecture in places devoid of substance. Brusci believes that the experience of sound on the individual is truly transcendent. The mind responds to sound by creating shapes and other mental conditions and these have an emotional impact on the individual. Thus, sound gardens can trigger emotional responses from listeners and bring about a positive balance in their moods. Sound has the ability to transform spatial experiences, no matter the geographical location.