Proximity Music is a joint exhibition program initiated by iii and Rewire. It seeks to connect music, architecture, technology, ritual, and play through sensory experiences.
Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy explores how chaos and entropy act as both forces of creation and catalysts for change. Drawing inspiration from the second law of thermodynamics, where entropy signifies the inevitable drift towards disorder, the exhibition delves into the consequences of these forces on our environment, socio-political systems, and human interactions.
In a time of rapid and unprecedented technological development – where interactions between humans and technology raise urgent questions around control – this exhibition embraces and examines chaos and chance in both natural and societal contexts. Arranged in a geometrical pattern or alternate system, Zimoun’s architecturally-minded platforms of sound exceed the boundaries of control as soon as they are activated – playing with the fragile boundary between order and disorder. Organism+Excitable Chaos by Navid Navab, is a kinetic installation that explores the turbulent relationship between sound and movement. The frenetic motion of a robotically controlled triple pendulum drives the century-old Organism, a programmed and prepared pipe organ, dismantling the instrument’s conventional tonality.
Throughout Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy, artists urge the audience to question the ways in which technology oscillates between being a tool for creation and an agent of destruction. Taking ideas and inspiration from the knowledge of generations past, these works invite visitors to reorient themselves within the uncertainty that defines our time. In N-Polytope (Behaviors of Light and Sound After Xenakis) by Chris Salter and Marije Baalman, they reimagine Iannis Xenakis’s pioneering Polytopes, fusing sound, light, and architecture to create an immersive experience that simulates the unpredictability of nature. This work links Xenakis’s historical innovations to contemporary instability, reflecting on how artificial and natural systems now intertwine. Fluid Anatomy by Ioana Vreme Moser further investigates this theme, using mid-twentieth-century liquid computer technologies to create a dynamic, transparent sound installation that responds to environmental conditions.
The works presented at Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy explore the potential for growth and transformation that emerges from the moments of chaos and collapse. Amidst the rapid integration of technology, the exhibition explores people’s growing disconnection from the environment and considers ways that people might reconnect to those around them. Coralie Vogelaar’s installation Interpersonal Biofeedback Apparatus Encoding Cardiac Fluctuations invites visitors to explore their body’s rhythms by placing a sensor on their earlobes, sonifying their heart rate variability (HRV) in a symbiotic relationship between physical and emotional states. While science often dismisses small variations in heart rate as irrelevant, this piece explores the “noise” that is usually filtered out. Mud and Sticky Band by Natalia (Nika) Sorzano looks deeper into the potential of what is too often overlooked; by blending tree trunks, rocks, ceramics, and pop-culture waste, this sculptural sound installation examines how texture, shape, and space interact in constructing desire, viewing this state of mind as a collective, eco-socially mediated experience. In Warnings in Waiting by Aura Satz, siren compositions by over 20 contemporary musicians respond to the question: “Does an alarm have to be alarming?” The work reflects on our growing alarm fatigue in an age of intersecting human-made and ecological disasters.
Taking the complex and ephemeral relationships between disorder, chance, and creation as its starting point, Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy invites the audience to consider and questions their own personal and collective experiences of these topics – offering those who visit an opportunity to embrace the unforeseen.