Gutterspace Adeline (2026)

︎  SOUND ART︎ SITE SPECIFIC︎ INSTALLATION ︎ INSTRUMENT

︎  Master Thesis
︎  University of Applied Arts Vienna
︎  PSK, Österreichische Postsparkasse, Vienna
︎  23.01-1.02.2026

   ︎© Rosita Cent

︎Site Specific Instrument
︎Liminal Spaces Architecture
︎Audio Visual Performance
︎Conceptual Sculptures

SR031 (Seminarraum 31) in the P.S.K. serves as the experimental component of this research. Formally, I refer to it as SRQ31, but I call it Adeline.

Adeline is an ordinary seminar room in the P.S.K., victim of dry architectural norms, it is passive, and does not actively shape experience, but rather accommodates whatever is imposed upon it. An office. With modular flooring, gray carpeting, lightweight drywall partitions, an aluminum grid ceiling, and eight LED office lamps hanging down, with their cold bright light. A typical backroom. Impersonal.

The result is not a fixed installation, but a temporary state in which the room becomes an instrument. Rather than introducing an external object, I operate within the in-between, the gutterspace of the architecture situated between sound, light, and visual articulation.

Gutterspace is a room; Adeline is an instrument. Playing for the in-between of architecture, culture, identity, and reason. Walls echo fiction, liminality, memory and bass. My salute to the PSK (Österreichische Postsparkasse) will be resonant.

Gutterspace

Trespassing is the methodology ofthe art work of this thesis: trespassing the P.S.K. The act of entering, observing, and using the building while it was under renovation constitutes both a spatial and conceptual form of trespass. To work with this condition is to engage the building as an active participant. In this context, hacking and trespassing refer to acts of engagement that challenge established norms of use and perception.

The intention is not to produce
disturbance but to collaborate with
the space, with the means to
activate it.

To resonate with it one last time before I leave Angewandte. Transform the static into dynamic, producing a temporary fiction through which the building’s latent systems, its physical and symbolic nervous structures, can be observed and momentarily reanimated.

Gutterspace Adeline

︎  Written component of master project. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Institute of Fine Arts and Media.

︎  Chapters:

︎ “MAYBE ON EARTH MAYBE IN THE FUTURE”LIMINAL SPACES

︎ “I HAVE BEEN HERE 60 YEARS AND I AM STILL NOT BORED”

︎ P.S.K.

︎ THE BACKROOMS

︎ “EVERYWHERE AT THE END OF TIME”

︎ TRESPASSING

︎ SRQ31  ADELINE

︎ I WAS NEVER ALONE

This thesis finds itself in a threshold. It looks at architecture not as a fixed object but as a presence that reveals itself when it is incomplete, suspended or transgressed.

Through theoretical research, narrative writing and personal experience. I examine the concept of liminality as both an architectural phenomenon and a feeling. This written component looks into architecture theory, anthropology, internet culture, game studies, hauntology and music. The research investigates in-between spaces: non-places, infrastructural voids, megastructures, and spaces of trespass. These environments; corridors, construction sites, abandoned buildings, office backrooms, and digital labyrinths, are characterized by repetition, ambiguity, and a vulnerable sense of identity. Rather than treating these qualities as deficits, the thesis reads them as sites of heightened perception, exploration and imaginative conception. Central to the work is the Österreichische Postsparkasse1 (P.S.K.) in Vienna, once a bank and now our University. Here we lived its renovation and final transition. Through acts of observation, spatial trespassing and speculative engagement, the building is approached as an active participant rather than a mere container. The Seminar room 31, renamed Adeline, will function both as a case study and an instrument: a passive architectural interior reactivated through narrative, sound and performative intervention. In this thesis music and sound are treated as spatial agents, capable of activating architectural presence. In my work, music is always a central topic; it becomes a way to bring virtuality into reality, to translate the immaterial into something spatial and experiential. This approach ultimately led me to transform the seminar room 31 itself into an instrument.