This work was the sound design for the exhibition "Ware Schönheit" in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.
The organizer, the museum der dinge / Werkbundarchiv, exhibited a large collection of objects under the question: what happens to things when they get transmuted into goods or commodities?
8 different rooms were configured, each of them showing another aspect of the "thing" and its relations.
The title "Ware Schönheit" is a hard to translate play on words: "Ware" (commodity, ware) sounds like "wahre" (true) and "Schönheit" means beauty - so it is something between "true beauty" and "merchandised beauty" or "the goods of beauty".
Sergey Khanukaev and I designed the soundscapes for 4 of the 8 rooms: Raum 4 - entzeichnen ("designing"), Raum 5 - maskieren ("masking"), Raum 6 - stilisieren ("stylize"), Raum 8 - tauschen ("exchanging"). These soundscapes were rather collages with background noises to support special atmospheres according to the topics of the gallery spaces.
The main work was the development of the sound concept for a very large room: Raum 7 - bemustern ("giving samples"), where a big cube was hanging from the ceiling which served as a 4-fold video projection screen. The video (artwork: Ingrid Jebram, programming: Winfried Gerling and Marcus Ramershoven) was a choreography of patterns taken from a variety of older pattern collection books (see below). The sound for this room was organized in 27 8-channel soundtracks running synchronously to the 4-screen video. The eight speakers were located in the corners of the room so that they formed an audio cube corresponding to the video cube.
Read more on the concept of this exhibition (in german only): ware schönheit - eine zeitreise
| Sound tracks for the cube in room 7 ("bemustern"): | |
| Der Ornamentist: | |
| Formenwelt aus dem Naturreiche: | |
| Die Pflanze in Kunst und Gewerbe: | |
| Architekturverzierungen: | |
| Sterne: | |
| Japanische Schablonendrucke: | |
| Répertoire du Gout Moderne: | |