544/544 (up/down)

Installation at the Pulverturm Oldenburg, Schloßwall

544/544 (up/down) by Thomas Mohr is a fascinating visualization of the organ music written by the Hamburg-based conceptual artist and composer Hanne Darboven (1941–2009).

In Mohr’s work, Darboven’s suggestive but mathematically exacting music, which is based on the translation of numbers into tones, is likewise transferred mathematically and conceptually to the architecture of the St. Petri Church in Hamburg, where Darboven’s music was recorded.

The video is based on 1,528 digital photographs, of which 544 represent each of the church’s steps up to the spire, and 544 each step down again. In the montage the images are animated to the music: one initially sees 4 images alongside one another, and then 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 144 right up to a seemingly infinite reproduction of images in images. One sees a staccato-like animation of the photographs in each one of the progressively smaller individual images. All together they produce a complex interpretation of music and architecture that is as overwhelming visually as it is acoustically.

Curated by Edit Molnár & Marcel Schwierin.