“Somnium" “Somnium"
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video installation "Somnium" belongs to the series of works
entitled “Hidden Melody” and inspired
by the Pythagorean idea of harmonic relation between macrocosm and
microcosm of our universe. Believing that the matter of the world is music,
Pythagoras divided it into Musica Mundana (later known as Music of Spheres)
and Musica Humana (music of human body). Since then Harmonia Mundi
recognised as Great Theme has been inspiring both art and science evolving
according to changes in our perception of the world and its understanding.
One of the crucial figure in bridging ancient and modern knowledge was
mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. It was him who elaborated :Music
of Spheres” along with his famous physical laws concerning the movement
of planets. The title of the project “Somnium” (the latin word for “Dream”)
comes from the last text written by Johannes Kepler being in fact first
science fiction novel. For
our project, the beginning point was Kepler’s “Music of Spheres”,
which was performed on a theremin (the instrument using radio waves as the
source of tones). The choice of instrument was dictated by increasing role
of radiotechnology in gathering data about our universe (i.e. radio
telescopes). These simple tones and structures of sounds form the
initialisation that grows into the complexity of both visuals and
soundscape for the installation. In
my “Somnium”, the planets don not circulate around the Sun - the
scanned human head moving through the undefined space replaces the „centre”.
There are 2 simultaneous video pieces, each being exactly 8min. 31 sec long - which is the light distance between the Sun and the Earth. Soundtrack was
elaborated by Dave Lawrance.
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