Speculations towards the Orthonormal
artists residency

Exhibition,installation and concert performance.

"Speculations towards the Orthonormal" was an exhibition created during a three week residency at LEW1, Neue Künstlerkolonie Darmstadt. Grounded in speculative artistic research, the duo investigated anachronisms of systems and technologies alongside visual and acoustic phenomena. Retracing those lineages,evolutions and innovations,it slowly became clear that certain perceptions of how we understand the world from learned conventions of another time,when applied to the now,becomes something else.

Each week concluded with an Open Studio, where they shared their research and evolving output to the public,culminating in an evening of sonic pleasures. For each occasion,a vinyl collector was invited to curate records in response to alpha_alpha’s speculation of “0-bpm”. Needless to say,there were three unique events!
The subsequent research & development topics were narrowed down and presented as a small,curated selection. Computer science,systems of perspective,and sensory phenomena manifest as spatial interventions composed of video,light,lasers,and sound. An ensemble of projections,installations,and prints activated the space on multiple levels. A response to the unique architecture of the building...the space was reconfigured with new works as an evolving sonic and environmental intervention.
At the heart of the project was an exploration of machine learning and neural networks. Inspired by the mathematical processes used to determine the "Line of Best Fit"—the orthonormal—the exhibition unfolds as an open space for association where science and fiction,signal and noise,intertwine. The presentation merges historical references,theoretical models,and speculative inquiries.
video still: ‘When is a line not a line’, by alpha_alpha, 2025
In Euclidean geometry,it is also said that a straight line is a line that "lies evenly with the points on itself" and that a straight line is the shortest path between any two points on it. In architectural drawings,lines could be said to have a direction (usually) when an arrowhead is applied. In Machine Learning and Neural Networks it might be said that orthogonal vectors have a time. The film ‘When is a line,not a line’ speculates around these themes.
On the evening of the third and last event,alpha_alpha invited sound artist blackbody_radiation to perform live within the installation. An improvised visual intervention,composed of found materials and anachronistic technologies,accompanied the soundscape. The boundaries between physical and digital perception were blurred,the result was not a closed narrative,but an invitation to speculate towards the orthonormal.

Merch available:
Concert CD-R | Sweatshirt | T-shirt



thanks to ‘Wir für Kultur’ for support

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