Symphony for Accidental Encounters
Tony Maslic / George Marcou
The work which was made for Schauraum is a commentary on the hybridization of analog and digital domains, on the ceaseless meshing of physical and virtual environments, new forms of communication and the trans-formative states they engender.
The work is posing questions rather than answers about a Technology-dominated future. It attempts a playful loop between our physical and virtual environments by transforming the beloved piano into a carrier of signals both physical and virtual. The piano’s fusion with technology, a perpetual evolutionary process, is recorded in the work as a single frame of its ephemeral state that also signifies its incompleteness.
The installation re-appropriates a discarded upright piano, its internal ‘harp’, the heart of the piano that forms the aesthetic base from which a new hybrid interactive instrument is created bridging the past with the present.
The reborn and transient hybrid object re-assumes its sound generating role as it breaks with the past and redefines multi-layered soundscapes. The layers of the soundscapes depend on the actual physical presence of the ‘visitor’ in the gallery and cannot exist without it.
The ‘visitor’, conscious or not, becomes a participant in the performance of the instrument. It is triggered by the visitor’s proximity, who voluntarily or not, takes part and controls a very personal and always unique sound composition.
The passive passerby becomes the active musician. A role which could trigger and invite the ‘visitor’ to start a dialogue with the instrument. An abstract form of communication with an inanimate object responsive to the encounter with the ‘visitor’, reactive, contrasting the isolated characteristics of a showroom.
This necessary transformation of the once purely physical ethereal object also acts as a metaphor for a very possible cyborg dominated future, a future that will be defined by technology and the disappearing borders between two worlds.
Tony Maslic (SRB/NLD) has been working in a multitude of various media and disciplines. Throughout his work he has explored the relationship of space with politics, social economics, psychology, urbanism, pre- and post war social conflicts, violence, propaganda, cultural identity, group behavior, consumerism and effects of Capitalism.
George Marcou (CYP) is an Architect involved in Architectural projects of various scales, both local (Cyprus) and international, whilst exploring diverse forms of digital technologies and their applications in Art, Architecture and Industrial Design.
Niki Passath (AUT) Collaborator
Video and Sound – Images of Installation – Process / Sketches and models