Syn Chron

Carsten Nicolai brings art, architecture, and music together in one inventive project. syn chron documents artist and musician Carsten Nicolai’s eponymous project―in analog form as a book and in digital form on an included DVD. The centerpiece of syn chron is a mobile space that simultaneously serves as a body for transmitting acoustics, a resonant room, and projection surface. This space, which was constructed by Werner Sobek, is a crystalline architectonic structure whose translucent, synthetic skin is a medium for sonic and optic impulses. Electronic music composed by Nicolai generates projections of modulated light that are triggered by lasers. Visitors can enter the structure and experience it from the outside. Nicolai has presented many concerts in this installation, including those at the New National Gallery in Berlin, at Ycam in Yamaguchi, and at biennials in Berne and Singapore. This book showcases syn chron in a rich selection of images and texts. The included DVD features supplementary audio and video material. One of Germany’s most famous contemporary artists, Carsten Nicolai has been working at the intersection between art and science since the early 1990s. In the books Grid Index, Moiré Index, and cyclo. id, he successfully documented fundamental visual and sonic structures.