TETRAKTYS
Sound Installation by Jens Brand
Exhibition Opening: November 24, 2016, 7–9 p.m.
Exhibition Dates: November 25, 2016 – January 15, 2017 Opening Hours: Thursday through Monday: 1–7 p.m. Performance Times: 1–6:30 p.m., on the half hour and on the hour - Free admission
Four automated aerial drones make up the sound installation “TETRAKTYS,” which the Berlin-based artist Jens Brand developed specifically for the Project Space of the Schering Stiftung. “TETRAKTYS” refers to the Music of the Spheres, which is based on the ancient idea that the movement of celestial bodies generates sounds that produce a harmony.
The ideas of a world based on simple numerical proportions and of the unity of art and science continued to fascinate people until well into the modern era. “TETRAKTYS” plays with these interpretive contexts in subtle and ironic ways. Brand’s humming model of the spheres is generated with the aid of devices that are normally employed in entirely different contexts. The aerial drones, which form the corners of a virtual tetrahedron in space, function as sound generators of a mechanical model of the sky. Their simple chord structures, based on fifths, create changing sound surfaces that, as humming “spheres,” accompany the continually changing spatial constellations of the “celestial bodies.”
“TETRAKTYS” is part of a Jens Brand’s series of experiments with “world machines” – artistic and scientific models designed to challenge aspects of reality and to explain cosmological phenomena. Brand sees his devices and installations such as “G-Player” (2004), “Small World Machine” (2011) or “Space/Site Work II” (2013) as distinctive metaphors about the appropriation of space through sound or of sound through its spatial context. The installation “TETRAKTYS,” too, investigates this tension, going far back into the history of art and science.“TETRAKTYS” is part of “resonating spaces,” a series of events organized by singuhr — projekte that investigates the topic of “space and sound” from a variety of artistic perspectives. At the same time, the exhibition is a satellite project of the group show “entre límites / zwischen grenzen” organized by singuhr — projekte at Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien (November 26, 2016 – January 15, 2017, Mariannenplatz 2, open daily 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.) and featuring new sound installations by a total of ten Mexican and German artists.
