Lemniscate / ∞

“Lemniscate /∞ is a unique collaboration between the artist Jorinde Voigt and composers Patric Catani and Chris Imler.

The lemniscate is a basic mechanism of infinity. A lemniscate or “ribbon” that chases itself in a figure of eight describes a repeated, unending journey with no bounds.

Jorinde Voigt draws structures energised by real and imagined possibilities in order to investigate the finite boundaries of systems. She frames and qualifies these investigations using spatiotemporal data, information on speed, volume, and an overlaying of sequences. Her notations embrace the notion that elements of equal value co-exist within logics and proportions of their own.

The lemniscate’s form is derived from an ellipse, a figure in which the sum of all distances to two fixed points remains a constant. The French philosopher Descartes turned these spatial observations into the fundamental principles behind his Cartesian system of thought, which saw a link between algebra and geometry. Voigt’s earlier drawn notations were reminiscent of equations, and her current work has developed to propose a highly inventive form of ‘situational geometry’, where patterns of cultural behaviour are related to geographical properties of space. As Cartesian thinking has influenced not only mathematics but also the science of map drawing, for the Lemniscate project Voigt’s drawings or ‘scores’ have left the paper and begun to materialise in space and time.

In 2008, following Jorinde Voigt’s concept, composers Patric Catani and Chris Imler developed the “lazy 8” of the infinity motif into an acoustic “cluster” at the Watermill-Center, NYC, a laboratory for performance art. The looped composition, comprising 16 sections, winds around 7 points realised using a multi-channel arrangement of 6 loudspeakers and thus describes the shape of a lemnsicate with pure sound.

Catani and Imler created the moving musical structures with synthesized and live recorded material (field recordings), building up rhythmic and fragile melodic structures that move and dissolve in a sort of swarm behaviour. (In a similar way to Voigt’s drawings).

It was important to the artists to create music and compositions that could be split into their separate elements rather than the dry, synthesized granular soundscapes that are usually employed in this sort of context.

Standing at the centre of this work, the effect is that of a constructed geometric form – sensed but not seen, and entirely physical in its scale (the cluster of sound existing between floor and head height). The Lemniscate composition centres on Catani and Imler’s structural break-up of a tonal construction as the various layers shift and chase each other around a physical space.

To enable home-listening, the multi-channel installation has been downmixed by the artists into a stereo version.

Tracklisting

1. – 16. Lemniscate 01 – 16

http://www.jorindevoigt.com

http://www.catani-music.de

http://www.sonig.com