Well-Tempered Hygrometer. Stretching Materials as a Sound Installation

The artist Anna Kubelik and the musician Oliver Schmid were invited by »Object Space Agency« to exhibit and perform the sculptural installation »Wohl-Temperiertes Hygrometer« in the Objekt Labor. The sound sculpture consists of wooden boxes arranged next to each other on the floor. In addition, four thousand individual elements float in the air, cut from ash and pine wood, filed, drilled, punched and held together with horsehair, aluminium and lead weights. The unstable sculpture is a geometric and material interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's well-tempered piano. The entire construction is not only a humidity measuring device, as the name suggests in reference to the hygrograph, but it changes depending on the weather or the number of people in the room. This can be experienced when the sculpture is also used as an unstable performance instrument that reacts to the humidity, which also happens acoustically differently depending on the situation. The musician Oliver Schmid plays vibrating rhythms on the instrument at the opening and several times during the exhibition.