Magdi Mostafa: The Surface of Spectral Scattering
May - June 2014
Townhouse Factory Space, Cairo
For his latest project, Egyptian sound artist Magdi Mostafa created a multi-channel, site-specific sound and light installation spanning six hundred square meters at the Townhouse Factory Space. The installation translates the city of Cairo into a high energy discharge system with boundaries dictated by a poetic physics of transmission, where human actors play the role of inert conduits charged by abstract, external forces of zeal and fury.
Electric currents pulse through roughly ten thousand hand-embroidered LED lights, pumped by fifteen different power centers through more than twenty-three thousand hand-soldered electric connections. Each power supply is triggered by sound waves radiating from the periphery of this field of scattered illumination. A consistent thrusting of deep frequency sound defines the sum total of the shape of light, while intermittently, the speakers transmit a parallel track of high frequencies—the aural equivalent of the sharp point of the individual LED light itself, the basic unit of the work.
This video documents the installation and offers insights into Mostafa's motives behind the project and the long process to realize it.