on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
*They certainly are staying busy.
Feral File and Bitmark are pleased to announce the platform’s eighth exhibition, and first solo exhibition, featuring nine sound works by the electronic music composer Jan St. Werner. This audio-only exhibition puts sound at the forefront, positioning it at the same level as visual work within the framework of digital art. The individual compositions and complete sets will be made available to collectors as editioned NFTs. Each composition will be released as an edition of 90, with each priced at 110 USDC, and the 60 complete sets available are priced at 990 USDC.
Jan St. Werner on Polyarrythmia:
“Polyarrythmia is an album or an exhibition or a selection of pieces, or maybe just a narrative in sound. None of the compositions have a strict metronome; there is no click or clock. The album as a whole has these interlocking peaks, micro-moments and movements, and then larger arcs, which meet and then disperse. To me that is very much what rhythm is, thus the name Polyarrythmia.”
“The compositions were mastered to be as present and intense as possible. The actual files that people download when they collect will provide the maximum resolution that people will be able to play back. I’m happy for listeners to experience the compositions separately, but to me, Polyarrythmia is a set, it’s a narrative as a whole. The pieces were all constructed in relation to each other, based on a visionary brain space, let’s call it. I was thinking, how far can I let these things drift off? How much space can I give it to unfold and go its own way? When I draw it back, that’s what becomes an individual composition or a piece.”
“Polyarrythmia could be a musical. The whole record has this cabaret connotation, with the sounds doing odd things, stepping up or doing a weird little trick, or waving its hand and having a mustache or something. I also perceive it symphonically, an orchestra of unknown instruments. After all, maybe we still have to figure out what sound is. Maybe it helps to reconsider that idea. Hopefully some people will experience this exhibition not just as sound-based, but as something physical as well, a reconsideration of perceptual signal flow.”
About Jan St. Werner
Jan St. Werner is an artist and electronic music composer based in Berlin. Widely recognized as one half of the electronic music group Mouse on Mars, he has also pursued a solo career creating sound works under his own name as well as Lithops, Noisemashinetapes, and Neuter River. Starting in the mid-1990s as part of Cologne’s A-Musik collective, St. Werner has released a steady stream of records both as a solo artist and with Mouse on Mars. He has collaborated with Oval’s Markus Popp as Microstoria and contributes music for installations and films by visual artist Rosa Barba. During the 2000s Werner acted as the artistic director for STEIM, the Dutch Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music. In 2013 St. Werner released Blaze Colour Burn, the first of a series of experimental recordings called the Fiepblatter Catalogue. St. Werner realized sound interventions and installations in art spaces such as the ICA London, documenta Athen and Kassel, Kunsthalle Duesselorf, HKW Berlin, Lenbachhaus Munich. Werner has been a visiting Professor at MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) in 2016 & 2017, served as Professor for Dynamic Acoustic Research (DAF) at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg between 2017 and 2021 and was a visiting Professor for Sound and Performance at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. He is currently Artist in House at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany.