musicXart
Abacus Sound Sculpture
Sculptural translation of Pierre Boulez's serial music composition Structures 1a for two pianos (1951).
Furniture Design
The Abacus Sound Sculpture laid the foundation for a furniture series, of which the following projects should be mentioned:
- Triptych Sofa
- MWS-1a: Conceptual CD shelving system.
Paintings
Two paintings representing Part I and Part II of Structures 1a (Pierre Boulez), respectively. The paintings incorporate significant references to the Abacus Sound Sculpture and the furniture series:
- In My Sofa (Structures 1a, Sections 1-5, Part I)
- Fargo Street (Structures 1a, Sections 6-11, Part II)
2nd Life - 1st Dream
A virtual world growing out of a 3D-visualization of the Fargo Street painting.
musicXart is an extensive Gesamtkunstwerk exploring how ideas originating in music may unfold across sculpture, furniture design, painting and virtual architecture.
The project began in the late 1990s with Abacus Sound Sculpture, an investigation into whether the methodological principles of early total serialism could be translated into visual art. Rather than illustrating music, the ambition was to explore whether a comparable generative process could exist outside the musical medium.
This initial investigation gradually expanded into other disciplines. The sound sculpture laid the foundation for furniture design, paintings and, eventually, the virtual world 2nd Life – 1st Dream. Although the later works increasingly moved away from strict serial procedures, they all originate from the same artistic enquiry.
Rather than representing separate projects, the four works presented here describe successive chapters of one continuous artistic investigation. Each project grows out of the previous one, gradually transforming a rigorous translation methodology into an increasingly personal artistic language, where music, painting, design, architecture, and personal and cultural references become interconnected.
The result is not a collection of independent works, but an evolving artistic universe in which each project both concludes one line of investigation and opens the next.
Readers interested in the theoretical background are invited to read: