Extensions by Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri.
Site-specific sound installation.
Materials: wood, steel, motor, aluminum
Installed in the Unterer Hirschgang of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, as part of the group exhibition, Horch!/Listen!
Year 2013

Sounds are entangled. They come from and travel around a variety of bodies. Continuous and liquid, sounds do not necessarily arrive at presumed destinations. Embodied and imagined, their physical and imaginary connotations are intimately different. Even if sounds are habituated within the material culture of hearing and listening, they remain contingent, as they also mingle with one another. Sounds simultaneously change and are changed by their immediate physical environment. Such contingency can potentially draw our attention to what gets unnoticed, unseen and unheard.
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri’s Extensions realizes this potential while marking the inaudible sounds in an invisible space. Installed in the “Unterer Hirschgang” the work points at seven locations. In each location, a steel wire that is connected to a special mechanical device acoustically activates an invisible surface. This configuration invites us to attentively hear and see the production of sound, the movement of the wire between the surface and the mechanical device. The seven locations vibrate both individually and together. Their spectrum of frequencies become audible both in their own marked zone and in dialogue with one another. They together turn the “Unterer Hirschgang” into a sounding body. Extensions then awakens the “Unterer Hirschgang” to a resonant space. text: Dr. Zeynep Bulut