Stairs tuned in a spiral of perfect fifths
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Through altering the tension of the wire stair banisters, the stair case at g39 has been transformed into a musical instrument. Each of the 7 wires has been tuned to one of the 7 different notes in a Pythagorean scale.
Pythagoras is credited for being the father of musical understanding as we know it. He established there was a mathematical reason for consonant sounds and thus developed a scale system using these simple fractions and formulae. Pythagoras believed in a ‘universal truth’ based on simple maths and that honoring these equations through geometry, astronomy and music would bring you closer to divinity.
Pythagoras called seven a perfect number, making it the basis for his interest in the sounds of celestial bodies known as "music of the spheres." Each note of the scale corresponds to each of the 7 planets.
The notes of the stair case use the resonant frequency of the stair posts as the base note, or tonic, and increase by a ‘perfect fifth’ for each ascending string. This system of note generation developed by Pythagoras, (adding a perfect fifth on the base note, then adding a perfect fifth above that and so on) proved problematic within music, as it starts an infinite spiral of note generation, leading to the development of tempered tuning systems.
