Abstract art baffles some, enchants others, but for over 100 years has been at the heart of modern culture and design. Paintings are full of shapes, curves and colours but what makes a piece of art pleasing to watch?
As a part of the Sound of Data project for Esch 2022, Hugo Parlier and Bruno Teheux, two mathematicians at the University of Luxembourg, embarked on a project to explore how artists achieve harmony, balance and beauty by their use of elementary geometric shapes. To do this, they decided to get the crowd involved. And from this idea, the ReShape project was born: an adventure that spans continents, disciplines and senses.
To grab the crowd’s creative pulse, Bruno and Hugo created “stations” where visitors are guided to create their own compositions by using their fingers on tablets. These stations were placed in a variety of locations including schools, at the Abbaye de Neïmunster, the Rotondes, the Rockhal, the Cultural Center of Dudelange, the Luxembourg Science Center and our very own Learning Center. In addition, multiple stations were made available on the Luxembourg pavilion at the Expo in March as part of the ReCreate exhibition. The stations drew an impressive number of visitors. With over 20000 drawings collected, visitors spent a combined time of over 600 hours (which is roughly a full month!) exploring the immersive journey proposed by Bruno and Hugo.
You might be asking yourself what any of this has to do with sound? While it might take years for the mathematicians to sort through and analyse the result of this collective effort, the data was given to musicians to turn it into yet another form of art: music!
Curious as to what thousands of triangles, pixels, and curves might sound like? Hester Bolle, Thomas Evans and Mike von der Nahmer are currently sonifying and composing music based on this intriguing geometric and artistic data. In the meanwhile, Bruno and Hugo are creating visuals to illustrate this multi-sensorial project (you can preview some of these here). These compositions will be showcased during the Sound of Data final show on December 3 at the Rockhal.
And now that you know all of this, grab your tickets and make sure you don’t miss out at what is sure to be an extraordinary show.