Marina Rosenfeld

 μ (2024)

μ* is a two-channel video and sound installation shot at microscopic and quasi-microscopic scale entirely on the surface of a single dub plate, a longstanding medium in Rosenfeld’s art and music. Titled after the mathematical coefficient for friction or touch and exhibited on two screens in ever-changing juxtapositions of sound and image, μ stages an encounter between a series of stylus-like objects and an elemental landscape in which the work of sound inscription appears continuously in progress. μ imagines the work of the stylus in this borderless, pigmented landscape as a kind of avatar in a space of quantum conditions in which music’s proto-social and material potentials overlap and collide. The sensuous topography of the recording surface seems to produce a complex tapestry of frictive sounds, scattered and distorted by the physical process of inscription.

'“[Rosenfeld’s µ] takes us deep into the infrastructure of sound through a hyper-magnification of its material conditions . . .[where the] material foundation of sound is reimagined as a rich field of both individual articulation and social encounter” (Artforum, 2024).

µ was co-commissioned by the 2024 Gwangju Biennial, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Gwangju, South Korea, and EMPAC—Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York

* ‘mu-‘