MOSCONI, DAVIDE - Sezione aurea/Sezione ritmica

"Sezione aurea (dedicated to the artist daughter Tantra) was conceived at her birth in 1971 and started in 2000 thanks to the solicitations of Gabriele Bonomo and the good will of the Milanese record producer Emanuele Carcano. The work was born of an old desire of Davide Mosconi: make a music which will be always different at each playing, however without altering its constituent elements. Other works based on the same premise are Musica del Paradiso for the tower in the park in Hiroshima, and Opera Rotta for the La Scala theater. The first section of Sezione aurea with the title Sezione ritmica (i.e. Rhythmic Section) makes use of at least three turntables and monophonic amplifiers where the loudspeakers are placed in semicircle around the listeners. The discs themselves are mute (in the sense of having no recorded sound) but with lines traced on their surfaces by means of various pointed objects thus producing a variety of sounds. These signs are different for each face of the three records and generate a rhythmic cage with eight combinatorial possibilities never the same, just because it will never be possible to start the records in the same way. It is the same in the visual field when two graphic lenses are superimposed and moved against each other (the moiree effect). Ten signs are used to mark the records, which correspond to the five sides of a pentagram and those of a five-pointed star, inscribed in a circle of equal diameter to that of the disc; plus two radiating lines: one on a vertex of the star and the other on a vertex of the internal pentagram. The golden section of a circle takes on both algebraically and arrhythmically the property of the dominant geometry of the pentacle (associated with the Pythagorean tradition). The star-form of the pentagram is symbolic either of creative love or the beauty of harmony and of health (from Matila C. Ghykas The Golden Section, ed. Gallimard 1931). Each record of the Sezione ritmica 6LP box has been individually laser-etched at Fad Lab in Qatar over a period of 3 years. The whole process to release this edition took 14 years. An edition of 35 numbered copies is now available in a silk-screened box with diagrams and full liner notes. The world premiere of the installation with 6 record players has been presented during the Art Fair in Brussels this past April. The edition will be officially available for sale for the first time at ArtBasel on June 18th, 2014. Several installations are planned throughout 2015." - Alga Marghen.