Paweł Kulczyński

Object Permanence
site-specific sound installation, 2014

In his sound installation, Paweł Kulczyński temporarily transforms the museum hall of the Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering into a musical instrument. To achieve this, he works with the physical phenomenon of resonance.
Using low frequencies emitted by a purpose-built sub bass speaker, he sets the objects found inside the hall in a vibrating motion – these are historical measuring instruments, cases and showcases with various apparatuses, whose function is often a mystery for the uninitiated. He creates his own aleatoric composition, whose record is not based on musical notes but on an register of frequencies that set specific artefacts and architectural elements in vibration.
The very practice of playing “with architecture” originates from the pioneering years of musical-electronic experiments. Here, for example, we can refer to Dream House by La Monte Young, or compositions by Iannis Xenakis. Each musical piece that comes into being owing to the above described method makes it necessary to work with the unique physical properties of the building and objects stored inside it.
In Paweł Kulczyński’s compositions we can also look for references to quasi-scientific experiments with telekinesis, where invisible forces set objects in motion. What is more, the installation highlights the basic characteristic of sound as a wave of energy.

Paweł Kulczyński aka Wilhelm Bras (b. 1978), lives and works in Gliwice.
Deals with open air concerts and sound installations, keen builder of analogue instruments. Enthusiast of extreme sounds. Interested in the social and spatial contexts of music, phenomenology of audiosphere and acoustics, random phenomena, conceptualism, laziness and boredom, seeming action and psychedelia.
Since 2013, under the moniker Wilhelm Bras, he has performed and recorded musical pieces where rough avant-garde tissue created with analogue synthesisers is intertwined with rhythmical dance patterns. On the album When Attitudes Become Form #1 he explores the reverberation of a giant postindustrial silo of the former concrete plant. He shows his new musical face with Lautbild, a project which appeals to a wider, club-oriented audience.
The artist performs in public space, on wastelands, in postindustrial and rural areas. Musically, he operates in the sphere of improvised electronics, electro-acoustics, power electronics, ambient and noise.
Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Affiliated for years with the Kronika Gallery in Bytom. He has performed at many festivals such as Unsound New York and Cracow, OFF, Nowa Muzyka, Rokolectiv, Phono Odensee, Sperm Praha, Plateaux and many more.
pawelkulczynski.com