Carsten Nicolai, also known as Alva Noto, the pseudonym he uses for his musical works, is a German artist and musician, co-founder in 1994 of the independent record label Raster-Noton. His research shifts constantly between visual and sonic languages, of which he investigates the physical qualities and expressive possibilities with the aim of getting beyond the narrow confines of traditionally encoded music.

For the exhibition, Alva Noto presents his series of compositions titled HYbr:ID, offering a preview of the third chapter that has yet to be released.

This project, which began in 2021, is conceived as a new path of research in progress, marked by the simultaneous presence of heterogeneous compositional methods that converge in a set of tracks in which Noto creates aural cosmogonies that recombine geometries, dystopias, and scientific references in an oscillation between more stylized, dilated rhythms and dreamy atmospheres generated by low frequencies. The soundscape, dense with a combination of meditative and resonant tones, emanates an extensive vibration that suggests cosmic expanses.

HYBR:ID vol. 1, published in 2021, brings together the compositions commissioned for Oval, the choreographic piece directed by Richard Siegal and performed by Staatsballett Berlin in the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. HYBR:ID vol. 2, released at the end of 2023, instead features the music commissioned for the ballet Ectopia, again directed by Richard Siegal and staged by the Tanztheater Pina Bausch.

In addition to the musical element, the exhibition includes a series of drawings and graphics related to the HYBR:ID project and representative of Alva Noto’s interest in the development of new system of musical notation. 

CARSTEN NICOLAI (Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1965) is a German artist and musician based in Berlin. He belongs to a generation of artists that work in the border zones between music, art and science. In his work he attempts to overcome the separation of sensory perceptions, making scientific phenomena like frequencies of sound and light become perceptible through sight and hearing. Influenced by scientific systems of reference, Nicolai often utilizes mathematical patterns such as grids and codes, as well as error, random and self-organizing structures. His artistic research has echoes in his work as a musician, where he uses the pseudonym Alva Noto. With a strong adherence to reductionism, Alva Noto conducts his experiments in the field of electronic music by generating is own code of signs, acoustic and visual symbols. Together with Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider he is a co-founder of the label Raster-Noton, now known as Noton. Among others, his musical projects include collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ryoji Ikeda, Blixa Bargeld and Mika Vainio. He has performed in various international contexts and institutions, including: the Guggenheim in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Modern in London. In 2015, together with Ryuichi Sakamoto, he made the soundtrack for The Revenant, the film directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, nominated for a Golden Globe, the BAFTA Awards and the Critics’ Choice Award.