Frozen music, 19:14 min, DV PAL Video (16:9), 2008

"Arthur Schopenhauer once said that architecture is frozen music. There seems to be a relationship between architecture and music" -are the first words of this essayistic short film.

A female narrator talks about the connection between architecture and music. There is talk about certain music genres, portable mp3-players, modern industrial society, architectural history, sound art and acoustics. But in the end, it all comes down to film.

For the visualization pictures, cut rhythmically to a ratio of 5:4, of concrete-slab-buildings (in Berlin) are shown. The 5/4 meter is regularly used in Jazz. This implies two possible references. On one hand, there is a strong connection between Jazz and modern cities. The origin of concrete-slab-buildings can be found, amongst others, in the art and architecture of "Bauhaus". On the other hand, the 5/4 meter also implies a connection to film-history for the first sound film in history was "The Jazzsinger" (1924), a Yiddish Musical, which deals with the conflict between tradition and modernity by means of a father-son relationship.

The sound, composed by Manuel Knapp, is woven into the audio and visual structure and results in an even stronger connection between the two.

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This film was part of the project Schallplatte-Plattenbau.

 

this work has been shown at:

# 51 Zero International Moving Image and Contemporary Art Festival 2019 in Canterbury and Rochester/UK (2019)

# Experimentelle Tendenzen in der Architektur (experimental tendencies in architecture) by ORTE Architekturnetzwerk Niederösterreich, Austria (2009)