Install

PUSHTONE

Sonic sculpture
Shown at group show Polyphonic views
September 2025

The notification tones of our devices, or those of others, trigger various auto-emotional reactions, from excitement and joy to dread. On some level, this work seeks to disconnect these pavlovian responses, through shifting the context and frequency of these sounds into something almost alive, buzzing with an unexpected musicality.
The notification tone also seems to have invaded and carved something else out of our daily lives, replacing the background noises of the world with a new prescient lack of sound, loudly existing only as anticipation of the notification: the empty absence of a message or update - only calmed by an inevitable chime.
Sometimes while shopping or making love we may find we have accidentally freed ourselves of this existential confusion that we pay for and carry with us at all times, but then, dingding.

Text from Victor, Konrad -

Polyphonic Views, explores the abstract potential of performance in the absence of a physical act. The exhibition brings together 36 artists, each presented through a unique installation, forming a parcours of immersive encounters across the brutalist expanse of the Shedhalle at Funkhaus Berlin. The exhibition is part of this year’s Spatial Festival, a pioneering celebration of the Spatial Arts that treats space itself as a medium, using sound as the gateway to immersive, collective experience, with performances, installations, and technologies that dissolve the boundaries between audience and artwork.

Juxtaposing the productions of Spatial, each work presented in ›Polyphonic Views‹ serves as residue, vessel, or echo, whether bearing the physical imprint of a past gesture, implicating the viewer into an interpretive encounter, or acting out its own subtle choreography through substance and form. Together, they compose a landscape where performance is everywhere and nowhere, distributed across materials, minds, and moments, reevaluating what it means to witness and to be present.

The exhibition gives form to a layered, resonant experience that reflects the many voices of contemporary practice. It runs for three weeks, accompanied by a series of live events and activations in collaboration with Monom, in a space where echoes of the past meet the pulse of the future.

Exhibiting artists:

Genesis P-Orridge, Liang Fu, Ross Alexander Payne, Nik Nowak, Felix Kiessling, Roberto Rivadeneira Hermann Nitsch, James Leyland Kirby, Richie Culver, Kieran Leach, Olaf Metzel, Allen Golder Carpenter, Joshua Tarelle, Reid Mauricio, Alejo, Lukas Heerich, Mathis Altmann, Irving Ramó, Anastasia Shivrina, Julian Charrière, Marcus Nelson, Amrita Dhillon, Cornel Brudascu, Anne de Vries, Christian Jankowski, Lea Bouton Rafa Silvares, Tobias Spichtig, Philip McHugh Johannes Seluga, Ivan Seal, Ju Young Kim, Anna Uddenberg, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Emmanuel Massillon, Alexei Cerrone, Julius von Bismarck, Gozié Ojini, Hannah Rose Stewart, Rob Blake, Anide..

ROB BLAKE

WORK / CV / ABOUT

Works and Projects

PUSHTONE

Other people’s stories