Skip to content

Strunofonia 3.0

12.12-15.12 Thu-Sun

Lab / Instalacja / Wystawa

Struno­fo­nia 3.0 is an inter­ac­tive sound-and-string instal­la­tion for 12 string instru­ments:
Hun­gar­i­an zither, crwth, Nor­we­gian zither, bowed psaltery, Chi­nese dul­cimer (yangqin), auto­harp, kin­nor lyre, con­cert zither, Hawai­ian gui­tar, guzheng, val­i­ha and sarangi.

Accord­ing to string the­o­ry in physics, every object in the uni­verse — all mat­ter — is made of very tiny strings. They are so small that we can­not per­ceive them, yet their vibra­tions can be observed in the form of mass, grav­i­ty and mag­net­ic force. 

So the dif­fer­ence between a human, a tree or a stone lies only in the arrange­ment of the strings and the nature of their vibra­tions. A vibrat­ing string is an object in which the laws of physics find their per­fect embodiment.

Struno­fo­nia 3.0 is an inter­ac­tive sound-and-string instal­la­tion for 12 string instru­ments: Hun­gar­i­an zither, crwth, Nor­we­gian zither, bowed psaltery, Chi­nese dul­cimer (yangqin), auto­harp, kin­nor lyre, con­cert zither, Hawai­ian gui­tar, guzheng, val­i­ha and saran­gi. These are instru­ments from dif­fer­ent parts of the world, most­ly folk. Some are wide­ly dis­trib­uted with­in spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al spheres (guzheng — Chi­na, saran­gi — India, val­i­ha — Mada­gas­car), while oth­ers have for var­i­ous rea­sons become extinct instru­ments (zithers or the crwth — a bowed lyre pop­u­lar in Wales in the 17th cen­tu­ry). Some have roots in antiq­ui­ty (kin­nor lyre, guzheng), while oth­ers were cre­at­ed recent­ly (Hawai­ian gui­tar, bowed psaltery, auto­harp — a key­board zither).

In Struno­fo­nia, these chor­do­phones are used detached from their asso­ci­at­ed musi­cal tra­di­tions and per­for­mance prac­tices; they serve as sub­jects for sound exper­i­ments, and their unusu­al res­o­nances and for­mants pro­vide an addi­tion­al tim­bral dimen­sion. The son­ic core of the instal­la­tion is formed by sev­er­al thou­sand sam­ples record­ed on these instru­ments using var­i­ous sound-pro­duc­tion meth­ods, prepa­ra­tions, and close micro­phone placement.

All of the instru­ments can be played, and sounds pro­duced by vis­i­tors become part of the son­ic tex­ture fill­ing the space of Struno­fo­nia, enter­ing

into inter­ac­tion with sam­ples con­trolled by spe­cial­ly designed soft­ware. For organ­ised groups there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet the cre­ator of the instal­la­tion on site, who will talk about the instru­ments and

demon­strate play­ing tech­niques. The instal­la­tion is aimed at both adults and chil­dren, both those who make music and those who sim­ply expe­ri­ence it.

The exhi­bi­tion is accom­pa­nied by the con­cert “Muzy­ka strun”, which opens the exhi­bi­tion at Hash­tag Lab. The exhi­bi­tion can be vis­it­ed between 10:00 and 19:00.

The Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is co-financed by the Cap­i­tal City of War­saw.
The media patron of the Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is POLMIC​.PL.

Co-financed from the funds of the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage drawn from the Cul­ture Pro­mo­tion Fund — a state ear­marked fund — with­in the pro­gramme “Com­po­si­tion­al Com­mis­sions”, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance.

Tickets

Free Entry

Upcoming

Event Calendar →