John Aslanidis: Sonic Network No. 13

Overview

Melbourne-based artist John Aslanidis has created an eye- and ear-bending series of works, miraculously merging line, colour and sound to send you spiralling through a warpy psychedelic matrix of infinities.

Hosted by Gallery 9 as part of Art Month, Sonic Network no. 13 comprises 14 paintings spread over five rooms and is accompanied by a responsive and generative sound composition by his Berlin-based collaborator Brian May.

Like walking from the bright outdoors into a dark room, it takes a while for your ears to adjust to May's omnipresent sound. It's hard to tell where it's coming from (an old Mac computer audio interface software hooked up to a subwoofer and some serious speakers in room 3). It feels like it's coming from everywhere. It feels like it's coming from inside your own head. Then you realise you are in your own head and your thoughts are a series of concentric circles like little planets riding on slinky orbits.

In real life, the paintings do something that their internet photograph counterparts don't achieve. They move. The circles push against each other, throbbing alive, like atoms under a microscope, forcing your eye muscles to relax. Because there is no perspective — each circle is equally flat and overlaps to the point where you can't tell where one begins and the next ends — there is no focus point.

What makes it even cooler is that these visual circular patterns are actually a secret language that corresponds to the patterns of sound you're listening to. The artists took a mathematical approach to achieve this effect: May used the structural elements within the paintings, the circular forms and colour, to represent the tonal language — a series of sine waves generated through an audio interface. The result is symbiotic. The paintings look like the music and the music sounds like the paintings, so it feels like you're looking at sound and listening to colour.

An entire room is dedicated to the largest work in the series, Sonic Network no. 13 and generates the most engulfing experience. If you stand in front of it long enough, you'll probably have a spiritual epiphany.