PHARUS

Velbert, April 16, 2015 – Today, St. Mary's Cathedral in Neviges was the site of an artistic expedition. Peter Hölscher and Ronald Gaube, practitioners of a cross-media technique they call "area composing", focused on different perspectives and varying light conditions at the pilgrimage church designed by the architect Gottfried Böhm. With cameras, microphones and recording equipment, the two artists captured the distinctive elements, shapes, colors, and acoustic atmosphere around the cathedral, and combined them into an area-composed media portrait.

Area Composing

The harvest from one day was more than a thousand individual photographs with long exposures and over four hours of sound recording – enough material for the planned installation. Hölscher processed his photos into a liquid image – a sequence of images, familiar views and surprising details which flow together in an interplay of colors and shapes. Gaube used excerpts from his sound recordings, and added parts played by classical instruments as well as electronic music structures to create a soundscape. Image and sound composition finally merge to the area composing called PHARUS (lat. Lighthouse). PHARUS shows four stages of a trip or pilgrimage to the Mariendom - an artistic portrait of the cathedral that sharpens the senses for the magic of this place.

THE RETURN

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Mariendom Neviges, PHARUS will return to its place of origin, making the fascinating church building shine in a completely new light. The performance of the video sound installation on 8, 9 and 11 November 2018 will be the highlight of the anniversary celebrations and will inspire numerous people of all confessions.

The rear wall of the sancutary with its hight of more than 20 meters transforms into a powerful projection surface for the luminous images, which slowly flow together. The specially composed soundtrack expands the visual experience by the emotional power of the sound world. Thus, the viewers and listeners fully immerse into the installation and develop a personal relationship to this spiritual place out of their impressions and associations. With PHARUS, the Mariendom becomes a unique meeting place between man and cathedral, but also between the visitors themselves, who can exchange their experiences of this installation after the performance.

UNEARTHING HIDDEN LAYERS

"Almost any area is suitable for a media-enhanced portrait like this," says Peter Hölscher, who has created liquid images of many buildings in Germany and abroad. Whether the Elevador de Santa Justa in Lisbon, the headquarters of E.ON in Düsseldorf or the old city center of Hannoversch Münden – the artists were able to discover the unique characteristics of each location and bring out the inherent magic of each site. As a preliminary step, the area composers research the historical and architectural background and include it in the concept for each building. Acoustic documents from the history of the site as well as musical references to people and locations, which are related to the building, complement the momentary on-site impressions.

EXPEDITION – COMPOSITION – INSTALLATION

"A special sense of tension emerges when an area-composed work comes back to where it originated," says Ronald Gaube. This is what happened in Hannoversch Münden, for example, when the savings bank commissioned a portrait of the city for its newly designed administration center in order to position itself as a local player. Working in collaboration with the builder and the architectural firm, the area-composing project was conceptualized as a spatial installation. This installation was presented on three giant screens in the waiting area of the foyer, with staggered start times, and broadcast on an integrated surround sound system. Due to the staggered start of images and sounds, observers took in new impressions of their city on every visit to the savings bank, becoming the conductors of their own associations.

DEVELOPING IDEAS

Hölscher and Gaube give deliberate emphasis to integrating the perceptions of residents, observers and daily users within their concepts. The media portraits express their admiration of the location in a new way. This regained consciousness of the special nature of the location becomes more widely known and thus contributes to a lasting positive perception by outsiders. Area-composed pieces are thus an important component in public relations work and offer companies, building contractors and architects a compelling tool for expressing their corporate identity, whether as a company portrait, a city portrait or an architectural biography. The portrait of the cathedral created at the initiative of the area composers will also return to Neviges after its presentation.

Dorothee Pilavas