New Rooms [Helga
de la Motte-Haber]: In Rolf Julius' works, sections of landscape, walls,
and rooms are acoustically elaborated, emphasized, and transformed; yellow and
black sounds, small sounds, and sounds "way up above" play a role.
Rooms display new dimensions, and at the same time sounds call their characteristics
into consciousness. The peripheral perception of size and brightness becomes
clear perception in the artistically determined system of coordinates. In listening
to a window or a wall, distance becomes subjectively clear, closeness and distance
gain presence. The rooms are no longer merely geometrically measured, but become
spaces of experience. Julius has sometimes used this step forward from quotidian
perception in quietly shifting layers of sound to create still rooms, even if
they may be located in a loud site of heavy traffic. When one directs one's
attention to the minimal changes in the sounds, the noise disappears or is pushed
to the edge of awareness. Such concentration creates calmness. It makes a space
of contemplation possible. Julius has invoked the image of an "acoustic
hole" to describe this step forward from loud surroundings through meditation
in his quiet sounds. The protective zone of calm, where one can dig in, changes
the formats of the surroundings. The sounds turn rooms into sites that can be
measured subjectively.
[Excerpt/translation from:
Helga de la Motte-Haber: »Musik für die Augen«, in: SMALL MUSIC
(GRAU), eds. Bernd Schulz and Hans Gercke, Heidelberg: Kehrer 1995, pp.13–14.]
Musik weit entfernt (Detail), 2005, Installation, Berlinische Galerie, Foto © Rolf Julius
