Zimoun

As its formalist title suggests, this immersive sound installation by Swiss artist Zimoun is compound of 168 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls and a massive wall of cardboard boxes. The large amount of balls touching the cardboard creates a dense landscape of sound. In a way, the immense overload of sonic stimuli could be a metaphor for us being bombed by an endless stream of data everyday, although the artist himself puts emphasis on the purely sensory experience. By combining simple components with architectural sizes, Zimoun has become one of best-known contemporary sound artists.

Using simple and functional components, Swiss artist Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena in Zimoun's minimalist constructions effortlessly reverberates.