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ARTWORK: CEVDET EREK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2016

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Extract

The solo exhibition ‘Week’ was conceived for the sky-lit gallery on the upper floor of the Kunsthalle Basel in 2012. At the very centre of the gallery space a mono-block of loudspeakers was playing 7, a visual representation of which was notated for the brochure of the exhibition. 7 is constructed from two versions of an acoustic bass drum sample, which acts as a minimal ‘audio-diagram’ representing the ever-repeating cycle of the seven days of the week. The piece was constructed using a scale of 1:86400 (24 hours × 60 minutes × 60 seconds); in other words, a second refers to a day in ‘real time’. The bass drum sample sounds on each second, creating a steady beat with a tempo of 60 bpm which, for some visitors, is a direct reminder of certain types of electronic dance music. On top of the beat, a computer-generated voice recites the days of the week in English, one day per second. Occasionally, the voice switches to counting the days without specific names: ‘day, day, day … ’. The audio piece used the vocabulary and acoustic characteristics of minimal electronic music in order to represent a temporal unit, by using the means of time itself, whilst the visual representation (notation) was used as an aid to describe the simple idea behind the sonic counterpart.

Type
ARTWORK
Information
Tempo , Volume 70 , Issue 278 , October 2016 , pp. 84 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Notation for Week (2012)

The solo exhibition ‘Week’ was conceived for the sky-lit gallery on the upper floor of the Kunsthalle Basel in 2012. At the very centre of the gallery space a mono-block of loudspeakers was playing 7, a visual representation of which was notated for the brochure of the exhibition. 7 is constructed from two versions of an acoustic bass drum sample, which acts as a minimal ‘audio-diagram’ representing the ever-repeating cycle of the seven days of the week. The piece was constructed using a scale of 1:86400 (24 hours × 60 minutes × 60 seconds); in other words, a second refers to a day in ‘real time’. The bass drum sample sounds on each second, creating a steady beat with a tempo of 60 bpm which, for some visitors, is a direct reminder of certain types of electronic dance music. On top of the beat, a computer-generated voice recites the days of the week in English, one day per second. Occasionally, the voice switches to counting the days without specific names: ‘day, day, day … ’. The audio piece used the vocabulary and acoustic characteristics of minimal electronic music in order to represent a temporal unit, by using the means of time itself, whilst the visual representation (notation) was used as an aid to describe the simple idea behind the sonic counterpart.

Cevdet Erek, 6.6.2016, İstanbul.