Vessel, 2021 

32 cymbals, exciters, sound cables
Stereo Sound

An instrument used since the Bronze Ages, the history of cymbals in Istanbul dates back to the Armenian metal master Avedis I who lived in the city during the 17th century. In 1618, he produced his first cymbals from a bronze alloy he obtained himself. Giving him the nickname “Zildjian,” the Ottoman sultan Osman II commissioned Avedis to make cymbals for the Janissary army. The manufacturing of cymbals thus launched in Istanbul later expanded to Europe and the USA following a course of events shaped by political, industrial, and cultural transformations. The recipe developed by Avedis and transmitted from father to son for generations still provides the core of traditional cymbal making in the city today. Each handmade cymbal is crafted by hammer blows; containing an implicit potential, a unique harmonic character determined by the behavior of the master who fashioned it. Vessel makes use of exciters to transfer an audio composition back to the cymbals that it was recorded with. These resonating frequencies which get hold of certain cymbals by means of contact; create an echo chamber, in which notions of identity, past, materiality, tradition, and geography become aligned and tangible. The cymbals that are part of this installation were manufactured at the Istanbul Agop factory using traditional methods and marked as scrap due to various defects that they have. When these cymbals return to the factory, they will be melted and added back to the alloy.

Vessel / Vasıta (Audio Installation, 2021)

Algorhythm (Installation, 2021)

Algorhythm, which emerged during my time at SAHA Studio following a personal physiotherapy experience, focuses on the representations of the human body in large-scale datasets compiled for artificial intelligence research. The work links images borrowed from datasets with an approach that attempts to geometrically analyze musical rhythms through body mechanics and the notion of repetition.

Visual datasets collected from online sources by data mining methods or produced within controlled environments following specific guidelines consist of images brought together in order to improve the ability of neural networks to comprehend the physical world. These images are sorted by ghost users on various cheap labor platforms and used for the development of various applications in the fields of object recognition, motion analysis, public surveillance, and synthetic image generation. In this context, the body kept under surveillance by means of security cameras, mobile phones, or medical technologies, appears as a sterile examination object whose physical features are reproduced constantly - a biometric entity that submits to the rule of mechanical rhythms.

Godfried Toussaint conceptualizes a new rhythm analysis method with an article he published in 2005. Based on the Euclidean algorithm, this approach seeks to formulate how a given number of beats can be distributed in the most even way within a defined time interval and makes use of a geometric notation that expresses time circularly. As Toussaint exemplified in his book "Geometry of Musical Rhythm" published in 2013, these “Euclidean rhythms” also overlap with the rhythmic patterns used in African, South American, and Middle Eastern music. The circular diagrams in the book can also be associated with the architectural design of the panoptic structure developed by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The circular layout of this building, which Bentham designed as a prototype for various disciplinary institutions such as schools, mental hospitals, and prisons, seems to be the embodiment of an optical fantasy in which a single guard located at the center can simultaneously observe all the prisoners on the periphery. The metaphor of the Panopticon, which is commonly used in trying to understand today's surveillance society, derives its power not from the eternal existence of a central observer, but rather from the self-control mechanism imposed on individuals by the idea of ​​being observed.

Algorhythm brings together videos edited from 3 datasets focusing on the human body, a 1287 bar rhythmic loop obtained from the permutations of 3 different rhythmic structures used by the AKA Pygmies, and a rehabilitation wheel used in the treatment of shoulder joint disorders. The installation looks for transitivities between concepts such as body, rhythm, pain, control, and surveillance.

Algorhythm (Displacements on 3 Pygmie Timelines)

"Approaching a Site of Extraction" explores the haunted interface between extraction and imagination. Using AI-generated images and a fictional narrative, it traces the enigmatic story of Edward C. Hayes, a geologist dispatched to the remote Chitawa Basin by Horizon Mine & Steel Company to lead an iron-ore survey in the 1920s. During the expedition, Hayes starts to experience physical symptoms and mind altering episodes after a controlled dynamite blast they have created near one of the encampments. Struggling to interpret these hallucinatory states scientifically, he begins to document them in his journals.

Alongside generative images that evoke historical photographs and scientific records that frame this speculative narrative, the work includes an imagined audio interview with Dr. Kaya Morgan, a contemporary geophysicist, who attempts to decipher Hayes’ extraordinary experiences through the lens of contemporary science.
The installation speculates on the utilitarian drive to dominate nature by force and the extreme pliability of human perception. It suggests that every act of extraction—mining of minerals for their economical value, or pixel level harvesting of vast datasets to feed AI algorithms—creates disruptions whose consequences extend beyond human comprehension.

Approaching a Site of Extraction (2024)

S’nek is an audio composition based on a poem written and voiced by Ece Eldek. The piece was produced for the mixtape Kaset Fanzin: Zamanın Ruhu compiled by Emirhan Esenkova to bring together original contributions by poets, visual artists, and musicians.

Poem / Voice: Ece Eldek
Audio Piece: Ege Kanar

https://www.discogs.com/Kaset-Fanzin-Zaman%C4%B1n-Ruhu/release/13084505

2018

S'nek (Ece Eldek - Ege Kanar)

Audio Piece for "Probe" Installation / APPARATUS (2019)
Arda Ertem / Ege Kanar

Ege Kanar

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