Description
Rhythm was the structural core of Peter Vogel's sound sculptures: influenced by minimal music, he wired polyrhythmic figures directly into hand-soldered circuits of photocells, transistors, and small loudspeakers. When a viewer's shadow crosses the sensors, the circuit's rhythmic patterns start, layer, and shift—each encounter producing a new variation within the bounds the artist composed into the hardware itself. Vogel (1937–2017), who came to art from physics and brain research in Freiburg, explored this territory in closely related documented works such as the Rhythmic Sounds wall pieces of 1996 and 1999.
Sources: https://www.bitforms.art/artwork/rhythmic-sounds · https://www.petervogel-heritage.de/en/rhythmic-sounds-1-2/ · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Vogel_(artist)
Acquired from DAM Gallery, Berlin, in November 2017, in a single purchase with the two other Vogel sculptures and two Manfred Mohr P-120 plotter drawings (PION.2017.001 and PION.2017.002).
Photographed on the workbench: a narrow ladder-like armature carrying a single loudspeaker near one end. Identified from DAM Gallery's offer sheet of 27 November 2017, which pictures this work under the title Rythmic Variation.