Solo exhibition Fluktuationen at Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, 2023
In collaboration with Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse
Read exhibition hand out here
Photo credit: ImDoku

Part I – Fluktuierendes Geflüster, 2023

Eight-channel sound installation, 8:32 min

Voice: Kathrine Børlit Nielsen

Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The work Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster unfolds as a fragile and vulnerable soundscape of whispers. They form a multichannel “choir” that moves into more defined moments of highly intensified expressions where the polyrhythmic and musical qualities of the impalpable voices engage and collapse with the majestic and diffusing acoustics of the great reverberant hall. The piece is constantly co-created by the listeners’ physical movement and attention in relation to the sound sources. Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster is in context with Alexander Tillegreen’s ongoing work with the phantom word illusion and is his first psychoacoustic work with whispering as a leading motive and material.

The whispering words ebb and flow between the comprehendible and impalpable. In spurts of formations, they disperse into the hall and materialize into massive blocks. In the next moment, they suddenly fade away. The whispering voices are blurred, and identity markers such as gender, age, and health, usually present in the human voice, have disappeared. Whispering may carry associations of the secretive or the intimate. As a social and communicative tool, whispering can be aimed to include a single listener while excluding others.

Part II - Water + Vælge (intermezzo), 2023
Four-channel sound installation, 2:32 min
Voices: May Lifschitz & Kathrine Børlit Nielsen
Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The acoustics and architecture have changed drastically from the main hall to the smaller cabinets. Here the voice is raised from what before was a whispering stage to a more erect and defined stage of speech. More voice characteristics seem to unfold but are still in a blur.

First, in cabinet one, the listener is presented with a more dry and systematic demonstration of the phantom word illusion. A simple panning is initially used to illustrate the original word (“water”) that then soon is “phantomized” into the simple stereo speaker setup. When composing the illusion, a two-syllable word is fractured and played through several loudspeakers in rhythmic displacements. The phantom word illusion is conditionally linked to the listener’s personal life. The listener’s situation forms the inner streams of words in the meeting with phantom words. Culture, language background, gender, and social experience are defining factors. Furthermore, the listener’s bodily movement and engagement in the space can alter the inner word stream. In this way, the listener becomes a co-creator. The gender of the voice also may become difficult to decipher, and often it is also the case that the listener may experience a blurry state and multiplicity of voices coming from each loudspeaker.

In the second cabinet, the work continues with a deconstructed and multilayered use of the phantom word illusion. Having the word “vælge” (Danish for “choose”) as the starting point of the departure, several layers of illusion are multiplied at different speeds and at different pitches, which in a short time accumulates to a mass of phantom word illusions.

Part III – Augen & choir (epilogue), 2023 

Eight-channel sound installation, 3:36 min

Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The third and final part of the cycle is also a return to the main hall, marking an architectural loop in the building and the structure of the entire composition.

The word "Augen" ("eyes" in German) introduces this final piece. This phantom word illusion was originally used as scientific stimuli in one of the interdisciplinary studies that Alexander Tillegreen conducted with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, and it has generated many multilingual meanings for participants over the course of the study. It performs as the baritone backbone of the composition while it is soon accompanied by several singing voices forming a choir. Gradually sighs, stuttering outbursts, moans and groans, and other respiratory paralinguistic sounds are introduced until an accumulative cacophony is held within a few moments. A gentle group of vibrating voices phases out the cycle.

Listening score for Fluktuierendes Geflüster (Großer Saal I), 2023

Marker on cardboard, 16 panels, 200 cm x 560 cm

The work Listening score for Fluktuierendes Geflüster (Großer Saal I) is a large horizontal drawing on cardboard panels depicting a graphic “score” representing the overall compositional structure and sound movements of the words whispered in Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster. There is a scribbly sensibility in this listening score, a porous fragility in the “imprecise” lines of the markers and pens that seems to mirror the elusive whispers and their intimacy. The different accumulations, build-ups, and different sonic intensities are also echoed in the linework. The piece also carries architectural dimensions with the modular use of repetitive forms.

Water. Fading in/panning (Kabinett 1), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

Water. Full evocation (Kabinett 1), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 105 cm.

Vælge. Fading in (Kabinett 2), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

In a series of four rectangular canvases, a yellow marker on raw hessian lays out delicate abstract lines that simultaneously seem minimalist and intricate. The monumental size of the canvases creates a bodily sensation that is opposed and translated by the airy marker. This series corresponds directly to the sound installation Part II - Water + Vælge (intermezzo) in the cabinets. Based on screenshots from sound editing software, the paintings depict sections derived from the compositions. The passages of lines denote the fading in and out of sound waves and illustrate the very nature of the phantom word illusion and how the panning, phasing, and accumulation happen. The act of translation from mouth to sound recording, to a computer program to painting, is thereby made visible.

Water. Fading in/panning (Kabinett 1), 2023

Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm

Vælge. Accumulation (Kabinett 2), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

Central vibrato voice for Augen (multi directionality), 2023

Marker and acrylic on cotton canvas, 2 paintings, 75 cm x 145 cm

Spatio-temporal score (Augen + choir), 2023

Marker and acrylic on cotton canvas, 73 cm x 273 cm

While some of the paintings are reminiscent of drawings, dry and simple in their lines, other works are more painterly and tactile. In Central vibrato voice for Augen (multi directionality), the paint has soaked into the unstretched canvas, and like a singing vibrato voice, it seems both ethereal and strong.

The work Spatio-temporal score (Augen + choir) consists of an elongated, gray frieze-like format. The purple linework seem to refer to the building’s architecture and perhaps the remembrance of the parkour itself.

Finally, in the works Hidden structure (diffusion) and Reverberation (Großer Saal II), spatial and geometrical forms materialize and create a sense of acoustic awareness.

Hidden structure (diffusion), 2023

Acrylic on hessian, 65 cm x 95 cm

Reverberation (Großer Saal II), 2023 

Acrylic on hessian, 95 cm x 70 cm

Correspondence (before thought), 2021
Six-channel sound installation with subwoofer, 6:56 min
Voice sample of Mary Vieira extracted from 1969 interview, synthesizer, field recordings 

Transcript available here

Created for the solo exhibition Upsweep Paradox at Museum FuturDome in Milan, 2022

Archival material: © International Institute of Futurist Studies

A part of Alexander Tillegreen’s practice is to create dialogues with artists’ works he finds himself connected to. The Brazilian artist Mary Vieira worked with co-creational principles - an idea that Alexander Tillegreen continuously circles when composing his sound installations where the listener often takes part in finishing the work. Correspondence (before thought) is based on archival interview material where Mary Vieira speaks of cosmic forces, natural coherency, and her thoughts on co-creation:

“A person from the audience is necessary, someone simple or educated. People need to participate to finish the work, the conditions are already there.”

Mary Vieira’s voice is rhythmic and energetic. The artwork can be perceived as an intimate dialogue between two artists, suspended in time, reflecting on common themes.

Assimilate (in words), 2015/2021
Two-channel sound installation, 6:31 min

Transcript available here
Mix and tape recorder by Mike Sheridan. Archival material: © Thomas Lopez

The investigation of language and communication takes another form in the work Assimilate (in words), where archival material in the form of a recording of Syd Barrett interviewed by Meatball Fulton (aka Thomas Lopez) in London, in August 1967, is transformed into an embodied questioning of the limits and borders of spoken language as interpersonal communication. Also featuring the psychoacoustic octave illusion, discovered by Diana Deutsch, and reworked, manipulated samples from Erik Satie’s composition Trois Sarabande (1887), the work carries friction and complexity in its use of disparate music historical references.

Group exhibition Á bruit secret - Hearing in Art at Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2023
With Kader Attia, Ursula Biemann, George Brecht, Pol Bury, Cevdet Erek, Dominique Koch, Christina Kubisch, Fortunato Depero, Marcel Duchamp, Isa Genzken, Hermann Goepfert, Rolf Julius, František Kupka, Oswaldo Maciá, Marcus Maeder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Carsten Nicolai, Emeka Ogboh, Meret Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Alexander Tillegreen, Robert Rauschenberg, Dieter Roth, Luigi Russolo, Kurt Schwitters, Jean Tinguely, Bill Viola, Jorinde Voigt, James Webb
Photo credit: Daniel Spehr
Episodic currents (phantom streams for Basel), 2023
Seven-channel sound installation with programmed LED-lights, 18:24 min
Solo exhibition Shift at O-Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022
Photo credit: Mikkel Kaldal
State I, 2022
Glass, wires, and panels, variable dimensions
Episodic currents (phantom streams for O-Overgaden), 2022
Seven-channel soundinstallation with programmed LED-lights, 18:44
Voices: May Lifschitz, Anna Drago, Kathrine Børlit Nielsen & Alexander Tillegreen
Vault (passage), 2022
Acrylic on wooden panel, 39.4 cm x 40 cm
Rythmic curcuits (towards each other, around each other), 2022
Digital print on Hahnemühle paper, 60 cm x 140 cm
Choreographic progression (distinctions), 2021
Acrylic and ball pen on wooden panel, 35 cm x 25 cm
Room plan (prelude), 2022
Acrylic and oil pastel on wooden panel, 30.5 x 36.5
Room plan (prelude), backside
Intersection (accumulation), 2021
Acrylic, oil pastel, felt tip pen, and ball pen on wooden panel, 19 cm x 20 cm
State III, 2022
Glass, wires, and panels, variable dimensions
Attention shift - stream field I - Activation mode, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm
Attention shift - stream field I - Activation mode, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm
Semantics, phonemes, words, conversation on lexical access - Attention stream field II, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm

Solo exhibition Upsweep Paradox at FuturDome, Milan, Italy, 2022 

Isisuf, International Institute of Futurist Studies. With selected works by Mary Vieira. Curated by Atto Belloli Ardessi

Photo credit: Atto Belloli Ardessi

Suspended loop (gathering), 2021
Installation, found objects from FuturDome’s apartment where Futurists gathered in the 1940’s (mirror, chandelier, stove grill, window shutter), variable dimensions

Correspondence (before thought), 2021
Sound Installation, 2 channel stereo speaker with subwoofer, 7 min loop
Voice sample of Mary Vieira extracted from 1969 interview, synthesizer, field recordings

Floor plan - prelude (spatial remembrance), 2021 

Acrylic paint on wood panel, 18 cm x 28 cm

An Isisuf curtain (spectrum), 2021 

C-print, framed, 50 cm x 50 cm

An Isisuf marble floor, meeting point by Mary Vieira (apophenia), 2021
C-print, framed, 50 cm x 50 cm

Mary Vieira: Crossing of opposite directions - 7 conditions of chromatic saturation, 1978
Silk-screen prints, 27 cm x 70 cm.

Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome

Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Mary Vieira: polyvolume: surface multidévelopable, 1966 
56,5 cm x 10,5 cm x 1,5 cm
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome

Situated states (absorption and shift), 2021 

Installation, wooden plates and mannequin heads found at FuturDome, variable dimensions

Situated states (absorption and shift), 2021 

Installation, wooden plates and mannequin heads found at FuturDome, variable dimensions

A+A (five phantom streams for FuturDome), 2021
4-channel sound installation, 13:00 min

Played in loop with Dopo. Phantom Words out of recorded voices of FuturDome staff

Dopo, 2021 

2-channel sound installation, 3:00 min

Played in loop with A+A

Graphic score (architectural echoes and mutations), 2021

Acrylic, spray paint, pencil, oil stick on raw linen, 200 cm x 65cm

Facade of FuturDome



‚Phantom Streams (Zyklus I)‘

6-channel sound installation, 

curtains, lights, bench
10 min 20. sek
Installation at 'Inhabiting basis' 

Frankfurt am Main 2020



‚Untitled (diffusers)‘

wood, paint,
variable dimensions, 

Inhabiting basis 2020



'erwartung (feld)'
Photopolymer etching on paper 

54 cm x 38 cm

Inhabiting basis 2020



'5 movements (score)’
Silkscreen on carton
70 cm x 100 cm



’Wanderer’ 

Aquatint etching
50 cm x 35 cm 

Inhabiting basis 2020

Inhabiting basis catalogue text


Out of a dense field of voices, streams of words materialize, then disappear; fade away or become entwined, forming new structures. What is being heard is affected by the positioning and movement of the listener in the space. The voices flicker, alternating between concrete and abstract, male and female. It is a dynamic and continuously reactive process, a listening experience that resists being repeated. Instead, Alexander Tillegreen‘s sound installation Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) opens up an acoustic space that addresses the act of listening itself as an activity that is never fully conscious or controllable and can only be described subjectively and individually. By means of seriality, Tillegreen uses a specific technique of voice recording, editing and a spatial multi speaker setup, to evoke an immersive experience in which the real is destabilized with illusory elements in the listener‘s mind. In this way, language is experienced as something that is not simply there but that must be filtered and interpreted out of a mass of acoustic information. The work thus takes a phenomenon from music psychology as its starting point in order to address the question of how language is perceived. So-called “phantom words” may have the potential to create auditory illusions in the listener and expand the original meaning of a source word to the extent of hearing other words and even whole sentences that are not there. The material used for the sound composition and its artistic arrangement was developed through interdisciplinary research conducted in dialogue with scientists and sound technicians at the Max Planck Institute including an ongoing laboratory study on psychoacoustics. Tillegreen’s work plays with the fact that the act of listening does not merely involve the reception of acoustic signals but that the incoming information and the understanding and attribution of meaning to it largely depend on the listener’s individual experiences, expectations, language background and cultural and subjective situatedness. The idea of a mental archive determined by a dynamic state that is not fixed on a certain system of order informs both Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) and the sculptural work Untitled(diffusor). The seriality of this work’s minimalist objects reflects the rhythmic and repetitive characteristics of the sound piece, while its compartments evoke the image of an archive. Its cellular structure produces a subtle shadow-play, the complex tonalities which are dependent on the viewer’s movements through the room, thus echoing the variable listening experience of Phantom Streams (Zyklus I). Tillegreen’s graphic prints function similarly as visual reflections of different modes of and states related to sound and to listening. Together with his objects they constitute Tillegreen‘s ongoing investigation into the connections between the visual, the sculptural, and the auditory.



Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich) 2017

Museum für moderne Kunst Frankfurt

2-channel sound installation.

Audiofile (8 min loop) 

Silkscreen print

'Vierkantrohre Serie D' (1967) 

by Charlotte Posenenske 

borrowed from the MMK collection, 

reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Stimme', 2017

100 cm x 60 cm
Silkscreen on canvas



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 

Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich), 2017 combines two sound sources: White noise as used in private and public spaces to mask distracting and unwanted sounds and to provide privacy. The piece also contains voice samples of the inner monologues of the protagonist Eleanor Lance from the 1963 feature film The Haunting by Robert Wise. "As part of the installation a configuration of Charlotte Posenenske‘s Vierkantrohre Serie D (1967) isin included. Posenenske‘s work was often shown in contexts of working environments and public spaces in which white noise and sound masking was also used. The ‚Vierkantrrohre‘ functions like a modular system, analogues for the artist to a musical score, open to interpretation. Adapting to the spaces they are in, merging with the architecture they are becoming almost invisible while still maintaining a strong sculptural presence. In this way Posenenske‘s objects reminds of the impact sound and white noise has on acoustic environments. On a material level there seems to be a synaesthetic relationship between the sound and the objects both carrying metallic qualities in timbre and surface."



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



‚before character (score)‘

Etching on paper
75 cm x 45 cm (framed)

About Certain Soups, combines two modes of temporality, an immersive sound installation and a soup. The exhibition title is taken from the eponymous section in the book The Art of Cu- isine: a compilation of essays, illustrations, recipes and research done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s view, every artistic expression should be accompanied by some culinary festivity, itself announced by a drawing, a lithograph, and an elaborate menu. He was as well convinced that cookery is an art. Along with the serving of the soup a new sound piece is being shown in the alte- red exhibition space, which is shrouded in atmospheric light. Parallelogram (2018) is a piece that explores compositional seriality through sine waves, combined with segments of constructed Shepard tones. These were used in diverse ways in music history, ranging from the compositions of Baroque masters to recent electronic dance music. The tones in Parallelogram are consisting of a superposition of sine waves as well but separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately, in real, does not get no higher or lower.



'space in between', Agnes Maybach Köln, 2015
Solo exhibition curated by Jana Baumann. 
Along with the film works “Electronic Moon 2” (1966)
by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (
1925) by Walter Ruttmann.



'cabin fever (six chapters)‘ , 2015

4 channel sound installation

11 min 12 sec audio loop, 2015
transparent prints (variable dimensions)




Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (1925) 

by Walter Ruttmann



Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik 



'cabin fever (six chapters)' 2015 consists of an
audio sequence and a series of six transparent prints,
each representing chapters in an unfolding narrative form.
The sound sources include field and studio recordings,
synthesized modulations, computer voices,
text bits as well as singing human voices.
'Delve' is a stylistically tight and confrontational meeting between body and film. The young Danish artist Alexander Tillegreen's short film begins as a flashing double projection of a close-up of a red lamp, which develops into other images of abstract and figurative elements as the work progresses. Are we subjected to infrared light treatment, a heat lamp, a night club or the red lights of the red light district at night? The answer is not one, but all of them, as the film's visual side and the pace of the editing subtly creates a wealth of associations of different situations. In the interaction with the oscillating soundscapes of the soundtrack, 'Delve' develops into a multi-sensory film experience, which gives ones body an auditory and visual electric charge, and does so in such an intense and fascinating way, that the film's oscillations stay with you after the conclusion of this short but highly tangible work. If you happen to suffer from the very rare photosensitive epilepsy, you should refrain from exposing yourself to Tillegreen's dizzying cinematic sensorium. Screening as a part of the compilation 'Danish Artists Film/Video'. text by Curator Mads Mikkelsen
Solo exhibition Fluktuationen at Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, 2023
In collaboration with Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse
Read exhibition hand out here
Photo credit: ImDoku

Part I – Fluktuierendes Geflüster, 2023

Eight-channel sound installation, 8:32 min

Voice: Kathrine Børlit Nielsen

Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The work Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster unfolds as a fragile and vulnerable soundscape of whispers. They form a multichannel “choir” that moves into more defined moments of highly intensified expressions where the polyrhythmic and musical qualities of the impalpable voices engage and collapse with the majestic and diffusing acoustics of the great reverberant hall. The piece is constantly co-created by the listeners’ physical movement and attention in relation to the sound sources. Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster is in context with Alexander Tillegreen’s ongoing work with the phantom word illusion and is his first psychoacoustic work with whispering as a leading motive and material.

The whispering words ebb and flow between the comprehendible and impalpable. In spurts of formations, they disperse into the hall and materialize into massive blocks. In the next moment, they suddenly fade away. The whispering voices are blurred, and identity markers such as gender, age, and health, usually present in the human voice, have disappeared. Whispering may carry associations of the secretive or the intimate. As a social and communicative tool, whispering can be aimed to include a single listener while excluding others.

Part II - Water + Vælge (intermezzo), 2023
Four-channel sound installation, 2:32 min
Voices: May Lifschitz & Kathrine Børlit Nielsen
Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The acoustics and architecture have changed drastically from the main hall to the smaller cabinets. Here the voice is raised from what before was a whispering stage to a more erect and defined stage of speech. More voice characteristics seem to unfold but are still in a blur.

First, in cabinet one, the listener is presented with a more dry and systematic demonstration of the phantom word illusion. A simple panning is initially used to illustrate the original word (“water”) that then soon is “phantomized” into the simple stereo speaker setup. When composing the illusion, a two-syllable word is fractured and played through several loudspeakers in rhythmic displacements. The phantom word illusion is conditionally linked to the listener’s personal life. The listener’s situation forms the inner streams of words in the meeting with phantom words. Culture, language background, gender, and social experience are defining factors. Furthermore, the listener’s bodily movement and engagement in the space can alter the inner word stream. In this way, the listener becomes a co-creator. The gender of the voice also may become difficult to decipher, and often it is also the case that the listener may experience a blurry state and multiplicity of voices coming from each loudspeaker.

In the second cabinet, the work continues with a deconstructed and multilayered use of the phantom word illusion. Having the word “vælge” (Danish for “choose”) as the starting point of the departure, several layers of illusion are multiplied at different speeds and at different pitches, which in a short time accumulates to a mass of phantom word illusions.

Part III – Augen & choir (epilogue), 2023 

Eight-channel sound installation, 3:36 min

Commissioned by Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstädter Ferienkurse

The third and final part of the cycle is also a return to the main hall, marking an architectural loop in the building and the structure of the entire composition.

The word "Augen" ("eyes" in German) introduces this final piece. This phantom word illusion was originally used as scientific stimuli in one of the interdisciplinary studies that Alexander Tillegreen conducted with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, and it has generated many multilingual meanings for participants over the course of the study. It performs as the baritone backbone of the composition while it is soon accompanied by several singing voices forming a choir. Gradually sighs, stuttering outbursts, moans and groans, and other respiratory paralinguistic sounds are introduced until an accumulative cacophony is held within a few moments. A gentle group of vibrating voices phases out the cycle.

Listening score for Fluktuierendes Geflüster (Großer Saal I), 2023

Marker on cardboard, 16 panels, 200 cm x 560 cm

The work Listening score for Fluktuierendes Geflüster (Großer Saal I) is a large horizontal drawing on cardboard panels depicting a graphic “score” representing the overall compositional structure and sound movements of the words whispered in Part I - Fluktuierendes Geflüster. There is a scribbly sensibility in this listening score, a porous fragility in the “imprecise” lines of the markers and pens that seems to mirror the elusive whispers and their intimacy. The different accumulations, build-ups, and different sonic intensities are also echoed in the linework. The piece also carries architectural dimensions with the modular use of repetitive forms.

Water. Fading in/panning (Kabinett 1), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

Water. Full evocation (Kabinett 1), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 105 cm.

Vælge. Fading in (Kabinett 2), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

In a series of four rectangular canvases, a yellow marker on raw hessian lays out delicate abstract lines that simultaneously seem minimalist and intricate. The monumental size of the canvases creates a bodily sensation that is opposed and translated by the airy marker. This series corresponds directly to the sound installation Part II - Water + Vælge (intermezzo) in the cabinets. Based on screenshots from sound editing software, the paintings depict sections derived from the compositions. The passages of lines denote the fading in and out of sound waves and illustrate the very nature of the phantom word illusion and how the panning, phasing, and accumulation happen. The act of translation from mouth to sound recording, to a computer program to painting, is thereby made visible.

Water. Fading in/panning (Kabinett 1), 2023

Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm

Vælge. Accumulation (Kabinett 2), 2023. Marker on hessian, 200 cm x 115 cm.

Central vibrato voice for Augen (multi directionality), 2023

Marker and acrylic on cotton canvas, 2 paintings, 75 cm x 145 cm

Spatio-temporal score (Augen + choir), 2023

Marker and acrylic on cotton canvas, 73 cm x 273 cm

While some of the paintings are reminiscent of drawings, dry and simple in their lines, other works are more painterly and tactile. In Central vibrato voice for Augen (multi directionality), the paint has soaked into the unstretched canvas, and like a singing vibrato voice, it seems both ethereal and strong.

The work Spatio-temporal score (Augen + choir) consists of an elongated, gray frieze-like format. The purple linework seem to refer to the building’s architecture and perhaps the remembrance of the parkour itself.

Finally, in the works Hidden structure (diffusion) and Reverberation (Großer Saal II), spatial and geometrical forms materialize and create a sense of acoustic awareness.

Hidden structure (diffusion), 2023

Acrylic on hessian, 65 cm x 95 cm

Reverberation (Großer Saal II), 2023 

Acrylic on hessian, 95 cm x 70 cm

Correspondence (before thought), 2021
Six-channel sound installation with subwoofer, 6:56 min
Voice sample of Mary Vieira extracted from 1969 interview, synthesizer, field recordings 

Transcript available here

Created for the solo exhibition Upsweep Paradox at Museum FuturDome in Milan, 2022

Archival material: © International Institute of Futurist Studies

A part of Alexander Tillegreen’s practice is to create dialogues with artists’ works he finds himself connected to. The Brazilian artist Mary Vieira worked with co-creational principles - an idea that Alexander Tillegreen continuously circles when composing his sound installations where the listener often takes part in finishing the work. Correspondence (before thought) is based on archival interview material where Mary Vieira speaks of cosmic forces, natural coherency, and her thoughts on co-creation:

“A person from the audience is necessary, someone simple or educated. People need to participate to finish the work, the conditions are already there.”

Mary Vieira’s voice is rhythmic and energetic. The artwork can be perceived as an intimate dialogue between two artists, suspended in time, reflecting on common themes.

Assimilate (in words), 2015/2021
Two-channel sound installation, 6:31 min

Transcript available here
Mix and tape recorder by Mike Sheridan. Archival material: © Thomas Lopez

The investigation of language and communication takes another form in the work Assimilate (in words), where archival material in the form of a recording of Syd Barrett interviewed by Meatball Fulton (aka Thomas Lopez) in London, in August 1967, is transformed into an embodied questioning of the limits and borders of spoken language as interpersonal communication. Also featuring the psychoacoustic octave illusion, discovered by Diana Deutsch, and reworked, manipulated samples from Erik Satie’s composition Trois Sarabande (1887), the work carries friction and complexity in its use of disparate music historical references.

Group exhibition Á bruit secret - Hearing in Art at Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2023
With Kader Attia, Ursula Biemann, George Brecht, Pol Bury, Cevdet Erek, Dominique Koch, Christina Kubisch, Fortunato Depero, Marcel Duchamp, Isa Genzken, Hermann Goepfert, Rolf Julius, František Kupka, Oswaldo Maciá, Marcus Maeder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Carsten Nicolai, Emeka Ogboh, Meret Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Alexander Tillegreen, Robert Rauschenberg, Dieter Roth, Luigi Russolo, Kurt Schwitters, Jean Tinguely, Bill Viola, Jorinde Voigt, James Webb
Photo credit: Daniel Spehr
Episodic currents (phantom streams for Basel), 2023
Seven-channel sound installation with programmed LED-lights, 18:24 min
Solo exhibition Shift at O-Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022
Photo credit: Mikkel Kaldal
State I, 2022
Glass, wires, and panels, variable dimensions
Episodic currents (phantom streams for O-Overgaden), 2022
Seven-channel soundinstallation with programmed LED-lights, 18:44
Voices: May Lifschitz, Anna Drago, Kathrine Børlit Nielsen & Alexander Tillegreen
Vault (passage), 2022
Acrylic on wooden panel, 39.4 cm x 40 cm
Rythmic curcuits (towards each other, around each other), 2022
Digital print on Hahnemühle paper, 60 cm x 140 cm
Choreographic progression (distinctions), 2021
Acrylic and ball pen on wooden panel, 35 cm x 25 cm
Room plan (prelude), 2022
Acrylic and oil pastel on wooden panel, 30.5 x 36.5
Room plan (prelude), backside
Intersection (accumulation), 2021
Acrylic, oil pastel, felt tip pen, and ball pen on wooden panel, 19 cm x 20 cm
State III, 2022
Glass, wires, and panels, variable dimensions
Attention shift - stream field I - Activation mode, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm
Attention shift - stream field I - Activation mode, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm
Semantics, phonemes, words, conversation on lexical access - Attention stream field II, 2020
Etching on paper, 38 cm x 107 cm

Solo exhibition Upsweep Paradox at FuturDome, Milan, Italy, 2022 

Isisuf, International Institute of Futurist Studies. With selected works by Mary Vieira. Curated by Atto Belloli Ardessi

Photo credit: Atto Belloli Ardessi

Suspended loop (gathering), 2021
Installation, found objects from FuturDome’s apartment where Futurists gathered in the 1940’s (mirror, chandelier, stove grill, window shutter), variable dimensions

Correspondence (before thought), 2021
Sound Installation, 2 channel stereo speaker with subwoofer, 7 min loop
Voice sample of Mary Vieira extracted from 1969 interview, synthesizer, field recordings

Floor plan - prelude (spatial remembrance), 2021 

Acrylic paint on wood panel, 18 cm x 28 cm

An Isisuf curtain (spectrum), 2021 

C-print, framed, 50 cm x 50 cm

An Isisuf marble floor, meeting point by Mary Vieira (apophenia), 2021
C-print, framed, 50 cm x 50 cm

Mary Vieira: Crossing of opposite directions - 7 conditions of chromatic saturation, 1978
Silk-screen prints, 27 cm x 70 cm.

Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome

Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Mary Vieira: polyvolume: surface multidévelopable, 1966 
56,5 cm x 10,5 cm x 1,5 cm
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome
Courtesy: Isisuf FuturDome

Situated states (absorption and shift), 2021 

Installation, wooden plates and mannequin heads found at FuturDome, variable dimensions

Situated states (absorption and shift), 2021 

Installation, wooden plates and mannequin heads found at FuturDome, variable dimensions

A+A (five phantom streams for FuturDome), 2021
4-channel sound installation, 13:00 min

Played in loop with Dopo. Phantom Words out of recorded voices of FuturDome staff

Dopo, 2021 

2-channel sound installation, 3:00 min

Played in loop with A+A

Graphic score (architectural echoes and mutations), 2021

Acrylic, spray paint, pencil, oil stick on raw linen, 200 cm x 65cm

Facade of FuturDome



‚Phantom Streams (Zyklus I)‘

6-channel sound installation, 

curtains, lights, bench
10 min 20. sek
Installation at 'Inhabiting basis' 

Frankfurt am Main 2020



‚Untitled (diffusers)‘

wood, paint,
variable dimensions, 

Inhabiting basis 2020



'erwartung (feld)'
Photopolymer etching on paper 

54 cm x 38 cm

Inhabiting basis 2020



'5 movements (score)’
Silkscreen on carton
70 cm x 100 cm



’Wanderer’ 

Aquatint etching
50 cm x 35 cm 

Inhabiting basis 2020

Inhabiting basis catalogue text


Out of a dense field of voices, streams of words materialize, then disappear; fade away or become entwined, forming new structures. What is being heard is affected by the positioning and movement of the listener in the space. The voices flicker, alternating between concrete and abstract, male and female. It is a dynamic and continuously reactive process, a listening experience that resists being repeated. Instead, Alexander Tillegreen‘s sound installation Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) opens up an acoustic space that addresses the act of listening itself as an activity that is never fully conscious or controllable and can only be described subjectively and individually. By means of seriality, Tillegreen uses a specific technique of voice recording, editing and a spatial multi speaker setup, to evoke an immersive experience in which the real is destabilized with illusory elements in the listener‘s mind. In this way, language is experienced as something that is not simply there but that must be filtered and interpreted out of a mass of acoustic information. The work thus takes a phenomenon from music psychology as its starting point in order to address the question of how language is perceived. So-called “phantom words” may have the potential to create auditory illusions in the listener and expand the original meaning of a source word to the extent of hearing other words and even whole sentences that are not there. The material used for the sound composition and its artistic arrangement was developed through interdisciplinary research conducted in dialogue with scientists and sound technicians at the Max Planck Institute including an ongoing laboratory study on psychoacoustics. Tillegreen’s work plays with the fact that the act of listening does not merely involve the reception of acoustic signals but that the incoming information and the understanding and attribution of meaning to it largely depend on the listener’s individual experiences, expectations, language background and cultural and subjective situatedness. The idea of a mental archive determined by a dynamic state that is not fixed on a certain system of order informs both Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) and the sculptural work Untitled(diffusor). The seriality of this work’s minimalist objects reflects the rhythmic and repetitive characteristics of the sound piece, while its compartments evoke the image of an archive. Its cellular structure produces a subtle shadow-play, the complex tonalities which are dependent on the viewer’s movements through the room, thus echoing the variable listening experience of Phantom Streams (Zyklus I). Tillegreen’s graphic prints function similarly as visual reflections of different modes of and states related to sound and to listening. Together with his objects they constitute Tillegreen‘s ongoing investigation into the connections between the visual, the sculptural, and the auditory.



Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich) 2017

Museum für moderne Kunst Frankfurt

2-channel sound installation.

Audiofile (8 min loop) 

Silkscreen print

'Vierkantrohre Serie D' (1967) 

by Charlotte Posenenske 

borrowed from the MMK collection, 

reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Stimme', 2017

100 cm x 60 cm
Silkscreen on canvas



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 

Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich), 2017 combines two sound sources: White noise as used in private and public spaces to mask distracting and unwanted sounds and to provide privacy. The piece also contains voice samples of the inner monologues of the protagonist Eleanor Lance from the 1963 feature film The Haunting by Robert Wise. "As part of the installation a configuration of Charlotte Posenenske‘s Vierkantrohre Serie D (1967) isin included. Posenenske‘s work was often shown in contexts of working environments and public spaces in which white noise and sound masking was also used. The ‚Vierkantrrohre‘ functions like a modular system, analogues for the artist to a musical score, open to interpretation. Adapting to the spaces they are in, merging with the architecture they are becoming almost invisible while still maintaining a strong sculptural presence. In this way Posenenske‘s objects reminds of the impact sound and white noise has on acoustic environments. On a material level there seems to be a synaesthetic relationship between the sound and the objects both carrying metallic qualities in timbre and surface."



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



‚before character (score)‘

Etching on paper
75 cm x 45 cm (framed)

About Certain Soups, combines two modes of temporality, an immersive sound installation and a soup. The exhibition title is taken from the eponymous section in the book The Art of Cu- isine: a compilation of essays, illustrations, recipes and research done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s view, every artistic expression should be accompanied by some culinary festivity, itself announced by a drawing, a lithograph, and an elaborate menu. He was as well convinced that cookery is an art. Along with the serving of the soup a new sound piece is being shown in the alte- red exhibition space, which is shrouded in atmospheric light. Parallelogram (2018) is a piece that explores compositional seriality through sine waves, combined with segments of constructed Shepard tones. These were used in diverse ways in music history, ranging from the compositions of Baroque masters to recent electronic dance music. The tones in Parallelogram are consisting of a superposition of sine waves as well but separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately, in real, does not get no higher or lower.



'space in between', Agnes Maybach Köln, 2015
Solo exhibition curated by Jana Baumann. 
Along with the film works “Electronic Moon 2” (1966)
by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (
1925) by Walter Ruttmann.



'cabin fever (six chapters)‘ , 2015

4 channel sound installation

11 min 12 sec audio loop, 2015
transparent prints (variable dimensions)




Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (1925) 

by Walter Ruttmann



Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik 



'cabin fever (six chapters)' 2015 consists of an
audio sequence and a series of six transparent prints,
each representing chapters in an unfolding narrative form.
The sound sources include field and studio recordings,
synthesized modulations, computer voices,
text bits as well as singing human voices.
'Delve' is a stylistically tight and confrontational meeting between body and film. The young Danish artist Alexander Tillegreen's short film begins as a flashing double projection of a close-up of a red lamp, which develops into other images of abstract and figurative elements as the work progresses. Are we subjected to infrared light treatment, a heat lamp, a night club or the red lights of the red light district at night? The answer is not one, but all of them, as the film's visual side and the pace of the editing subtly creates a wealth of associations of different situations. In the interaction with the oscillating soundscapes of the soundtrack, 'Delve' develops into a multi-sensory film experience, which gives ones body an auditory and visual electric charge, and does so in such an intense and fascinating way, that the film's oscillations stay with you after the conclusion of this short but highly tangible work. If you happen to suffer from the very rare photosensitive epilepsy, you should refrain from exposing yourself to Tillegreen's dizzying cinematic sensorium. Screening as a part of the compilation 'Danish Artists Film/Video'. text by Curator Mads Mikkelsen