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Gowen Contemporary

Gallery:
Grand-Rue 23
CH 1204 Genève

Registered office:
Place du Grand-Mézel 2-4
CH 1204 Geneva

E. info@gowencontemporary.com
T. +41(0)22 700 30 68

NICK LAESSING
Spatial Harmonics and Voice Figures
5 JULY – 11 AUGUST 2007

scroll down for exhibition images

For his first exhibition at ARQUEBUSE, Nick Laessing will construct a site-specific harmonograph based on the dimensions of the gallery space, and exhibit an Eidophone in the downstairs ‘La Cabine’ space. This will become the centerpiece of a Voice Figures performance by the vocalist and project collaborator Esmeralda Conde Ruiz on the evening on Thursday 5 July.

Laessing searches for answers to unproven scientific phenomena, such as the possibility of free energy, and the harmonics that exist in the world at large. For example, in 2004 Laessing constructed The place of the material world in the universe is that of an exquisitely beautiful precipitate or varied cloud-work in the universal aether, essentially a ‘free energy’ generator based on the US patent no.6545444 B2, filed in 2003 by the inventor John Bedini. Constructed in clear Perspex and brass, it is a machine built for utopic possibilities, claiming the ability to charge a bank of batteries by supplying more power to the batteries than is required to keep it running.

For this exhibition Nick will construct a site-specific harmonograph, extrapolated from the 19th century invention that formed the basis of modern musical harmonic theory, and which supported Pythagoras’ discovery 2500 years ago that all nature consists of harmony arising from certain simple numbers. Several pendulums will be set within a framework of wooden beams and joists, placed according to the gallery’s architectural space. Laessing’s intricate installation will produce graphite drawings specific to the harmonics of the space, and the moment in time when it was made. This will be the second in what the artist hopes to become a series: the first mapped his studio in September 2005.

In Voice Figures Laessing draws on the endeavors of Margaret Watts Hughes, who in 1885 invented the eidophone to translate the vibrations of her voice into patterns on a glycerin-coated elastic membrane. Sound is simply a disturbance of mechanical energy, and in each performance the projection of the voice into the instrument causes an aural disturbance. On hitting certain notes and harmonies, the powder or liquid placed on the latex surface is agitated into pronounced, almost magical, patterns and images. In Laessing’s Eidophone domestic plastic tubing, steel tripods and latex membranes are combined to create a performative sculpture on which various materials in powder and liquid form are experimented with as an investigation into this phenomena.

Nick Laessing’s investigations and constructions hint at the potentialities of our world, and resuscitates utopian possibilities