In collaboration with Martin Carlé

The signs of Ancient Greek music notation are replaced by a set of expressive cat faces and are transferred into a 3D environment. With the help of modern simulation technology, the interval ratios of different ancient modes of music have been reconstructed and used as proportions for Synthetic Sculptures. The 3D sculptures embody mathematical operation animals. The limbs of there bodies move exactly according to the melodic progression of the Ancient Greek music fragments. For the first time in the history of music notation, the ethical character of a key gets exposed. The Cat-Notation liberates the essence of ancient Greek music from the prison of representation and reveals the miracle of modulation to us as we experience the alternation of expressively differentiated scales within the same melody through the morphing of one animals into the other. They show how the reliable laws of beauty that exist in the concurrence of music, mathematics and time do now reincarnate in sculpture.

“TK News – 4 Cat Notation” video:

“So this is what the Germans have been up to.”
Financial Times, 2. August 2008.

The Cat-Notation exhibition took place at the COMA-Gallery parallel to the project NOTATION by the Academy of Arts Berlin and formed a special part of this show at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. It has also been presented at the “Absolut Jena”, Zeiss Planetarium, Jena.