morning line quanta, 2011

Carsten Nicolai, 2008 © sebastian mayer, AEIOU
Commissions
Collection

Multi-channel audio work encoded for 47 channel The Morning Line Sound System
Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary


morning line quanta relates to the fundamental idea of the pavilion: constructing a representation of the universe. The composition draws on the research into the sun’s corona and the solar wind undertaken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project undertaken by NASA and ESA that examines the properties of light. The composition’s structure is derived from formal patterns of organization that emerge in the solar wind. morning line quanta is based on the arrangement of smallest particles of sound, so-called acoustic quanta. In 1947, Dennis Gábor, who went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of holography, wrote about acoustic quanta as the equivalent of Einstein’s light quanta, the smallest units of light. Acoustic quanta are sound impulses that can be used as a musical material.


*1965 in Karl-marx-stadt, Germany | Living and working in Berlin and Chemnitz, Germany