sine anima

mechanical sine wave generator
2008

In sine anima, Fegerl offers a mechanically generated, artificial sound continuum, strikingly simple in terms of its aesthetic structure. A motor-run mechanical sound generator attempts to produce a pure tone of persistent volume and pitch, a constant, “infinite” sound. Yet the acoustic element is not the only significant level of the piece. Sound, as an aesthetic event, is juxtaposed with its semiotic translation: the graphic representation of the pure tone, with its sinusoidal waveshape, creates one half of the infinity symbol “∞”. Fegerl explores the transition from one medium into another, from the semiotic into the realm of objects and back again. She enquires into the role of mediality in the process of perception; mediality is not understood as distance or dissociation from an authentically experienceable reality, but rather as a “mediosphere” or “stage for enactment” (Inszenierungsbühne).2 Perception and medium are indissociable. Mediatisation is the condition for perception’s reflection on itself, from which follows the question of the observer’s standpoint.

Text: David Komary, Asynchronous Ciruits, Galerie Stadtpark Krems, 2008

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