Niet Stil celebrates the impossibility of stillness through mechanized, noise-producing heirlooms tied to abundance and mortality. Its components are built from found objects resembling those depicted in early Dutch still-life paintings, where displays of wealth quietly register decay.
The sculptures operate as an autonomous musical ensemble, where visual and sonic elements converge in a bricolage of handmade forms, domestic décor, artificial food displays, metallic hardware, and vintage analog electronics. Their motion unsettles any sense of stillness or completion, setting materials into flux so that change registers as both sound and form—a catalyst for transformation and renewal.
When I began experiencing tinnitus, the very notion of silence was fundamentally altered. Silence became occupied by faint—and at times piercing—clusters of persistent ringing. Unlike a device, this auditory condition cannot be switched off or paused; it is continuous and involuntary. While the eyes can close, taking a break from visual stimuli, the ears remain perpetually open—always sensing, always hearing. This condition has informed my engagement with sound as both a physical and pathological phenomenon, shaping my work’s investigation of perception, agency, and the inescapable presence of auditory experience.
The installation operates as a mechanical synthesizer, comprising an interconnected system where all components function interdependently within a self-contained framework, driven by mechanical inputs and outputs. Proximity sensors, positioned near slowly rotating, irregular, handmade forms, scan their surfaces like a CD player’s laser head. These surfaces vary between smooth, visually guided patterns and textured irregularities. The sensors capture and transmit dynamic data, modulating synthesizers and triggering electromechanical speaker valves, gongs, bells, and tines. By merging electronic randomness with mechanical imperfection, the system generates continuously evolving sounds and movements that shift in response to the spectator’s presence within its range.
Niet Stil, contains acoustic, spatial, immersive, and improvisational elements that all happen at once and in different places throughout. It cannot be fully captured in video or audio format. It must be experienced in person.
