Mozart Dissolution (Mozart Minute 08)

Briefly put, Mozart Dissolution is the displacement of Mozart´s silhouette by a graphic representation of what is presumably his most popular work, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik." At first various forms of the silhouette are replaced gradually by a translation of the music in a graphic element. To be precise, the first ten bars of Mozart´s works flow over the composer´s silhouette in the form of a graphic element, specifically lines with jagged edges, also known as waveforms. These wavy lines, which represent an optical translation of music, can be found as soundtracks on film strips. Therefore Mozart Dissolution plays with optical traces of sound, and not only on a visual level. The sound is produced by means of a hand-drawn sound line scratched-onto a 16mm film strip, the intention being to reproduce the original waveforms of the Mozart work as closely as possible. A completely different, synthetically generated sound was the result.

(S. A. F.)