Is there anyone who has never enthused over a starry night sky? is remote image symbolises some unattainable s p a c e – t i m e in which many of us would like to immerse themselves. Yet when we look from afar, we can only see light dots. The human mind has for ages connected them to create geometric patterns known as constellations. Earthlings see the distance between the various starry dots—components of each constellation—as smaller or bigger intervals. Intervals are also differences between pitches, known to human auditory perception. They can be visualised as a line connecting two different points. Such virtual lines emerge in the imagination of performers (playing, singing, or listening), as they try to consciously link the sounds they generate even at the early stages of learning music. In music, these intervals have their names, one of them being a ninth, which spans a musical octave and a second. 

Basic geometrical concepts like lines and dots can be found in nature, in science, in visual arts, and in music. Here is a poetic and, at the same time, mathematical installation inspired by the geometry of constellations, linking real, visible lines with a virtual geometry of sounds, wrapping the Praga Museum of Warsaw in light and sound. The geometry of the “starry graphics” generated by nature became an inspiration to create an artistic space–time. Geometry governs both physical phenomena existing in nature, and objects and events from the sphere of art seemingly very distant from mathematics. Despite having been inspired by detailed observations of nature and shaped by the principles of geometry, the installation can be perceived emotionally, intuitively thanks to its medium: light—with which Mirosław Filonik has been working for years—and Tadeusz Sudnik’s original music. Is there anyone who has never been strangely fascinated with a live bonfire or flames in a replace? New research in modern art shows that neon signs are some of the most popular materials of contemporary art works. The reason lies most likely in the typically human, atavistic need to “follow the light,” to remain as close to a fire as possible, to reduce one’s fear of the world thanks to light. It is an extraordinary game and a lesson for the imagination of a child as well as that of an “adult” (is there a difference?). What will music made up of light sound like? What story will be told by this installation combining light and sound? 

Anna Kierkosz