Sound on the 4th Floor

About

Sound, music and rhythm are omnipresent in the 20th century and contemporary art. Representatives of Bauhaus and Classical Modernism conceive picture series according to musical principles of form with theme and variation or accompany their artistic designs with sound poems and instrumental choreographies. Concrete and constructive art contain formal inspirations that lend a visual translation to the musical variations of the fugue, the concept of counterpoint or the chord combinations of jazz. Comparable musical references can be found in the Neo Geo art of the 1980s, while other artists simultaneously integrate excerpts of musical scores directly into their pictures. Musical material has been present in multimedia art in many ways since around 1990: Collages with record covers, videos based on everyday sound elements or accompanied by commissioned compositions, further sculptures that vary the forms of musical instruments or places of language and finally computer-generated beats, sounds and frequencies that are audibly underlaid or purely abstractly implemented in order to activate the imagination of the viewer.