State of mind

I am exhibiting eight ceramic vessels in such a way that they give the impression of floating in the room. The eight are set up in a circle because the number eight describes all directions in the space and because it means infinity and wholeness.

The work entitled “State of mind” is a creative ceramic project; a contemporary interaction event which unites ceramics, music and craft with old traditions and contemporary technology.

The Pleterje ‘štimanice’ stimulated me to create clay vessels and use them as an instrument of art and music. I try to evoke various emotional states within the viewer by selected art image and subtle light which reveal diverse states of mind. It is important that the vessels are arranged in the room in such a way that the maximum sound effect is achieved. From each vessel a different music comes which combines into a complex composition only by listening in the middle of the room. With my friend Lado Jakša we have drawn out the main body of the sounds from the clay instruments I created for this project. Thanks to the understanding and support of Mr Jovo Grobovšek we have been allowed and encouraged to record the music material in the very Pleterje church from where the inspiration comes. The film which accompanies the event shows all the phases of the project realisation.

Because truly spiritual power defines a man and it is often hidden in the ‘vessel’ of his
interior, and it breaks through only with difficulty to breathe freely, speak and be heard. That
is why I decided to connect an idea of a man and of a vessel, his ‘pot’, his ‘state of mind’ in
various shades and shapes.

During working on a potter’s wheel, soft clay is changing under the fingers’ pressure into the
desired form. The vessel grows and becomes, in a certain way, alive. The creation, which I
love and I see as the birth of my child, is born. For my vessel I wish to give the same as to my
child, the best and most beautiful I can, and what the technology and imagination allow.

Like this the idea to name the vessel ‘STATE OF MIND’, the essence which we attribute to
people was born, which defines us and at the same time gives the possibility of cognition and
free thought.

In such a manner the vessels I exhibit were conceived. Primevally, they carry within
themselves an artistic expression, a musician and friend Lado Jakša added a sound soul to
them. Together we offer our comprehension of the essence, the state of mind which, hidden in
the vessel, waits for its accomplishment.

A pot as an element of the project represents a form, an essence is given to it by content
which is not necessarily visible to the eyes. Each of my vessels carries its own art and musical
message, which needs to be discovered with a mindful eye, seen, heard and experienced and
like this make our sensations conscious.

The vessels are placed into a mystic place, conjured up by the lighting, the interactive floor
of the Gallery and an unusual way of displaying, since they are hanging down from the
gallery ceiling. The sound is given to them in such a way that each of eight vessels separately
produces its own musical content, and an harmonious whole is experienced in the center of
the space. Eight vessels, eight directions, eight frames of mind, eight art and sound messages
– because the number eight means an infinity and describes every direction in the space.

Welcome to my world

Carthusian liturgy, since the beginnings of the monastic order in 11th. Century,
has preserved the singing in unison of Gregorian chant without any instrumental
accompaniment and in a church room without equipment or audience.
As such, the order’s rules demanded for Holy Trinity Church, Pleterje Carthusian
Monastery, consecrated in 1420, that the builders place štimanice for the balance
of sonority in the space. Clay vessels, set in the walls seemingly in disorder
have a noticeable significance regulating the echo of the sound waves of the
monks singing in unison, where the most impressive among daily prayers is the
magnificent Midnight Divine Office. These kinds of sound vessels are known from
churches in Europe and also in some in Slovenia, yet in Pleterje church, within the
pure proportions of Carthusian architecture, they become a little more noticable
and interesting.

Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (ZVKDS) 

Jovo Grobovšek

University graduated engineer of architecture
Counsellor to assistant director for conservation

Območna
enota Novo mesto
Skalickega ulica 1
8000 Novo mesto  

Telephone: + 386 7 393 15 64
+ 386 41 36 75 40

Email: jovo.grobovsek@zvkds.si

We can imagine how the masters of the old architecture have carefully listened to the ‘breathing’ of
sounds in the space which they had created, how does it sound and resonate, at which places there is
more or less of it, how the aliquot tones and the shades of the sound colours radiate in the room.

Singers were moving around it and testing all these acoustic shades, and by adding the clay vessels,
štimanice, trying to improve even more this ambient sonority. They were looking for suitable places
in the upper parts of the walls and built them in where their effect was the greatest.

Here the master of clay modelling Igor Bahor found an inspiration for his new creative vision. For this
exhibition he pictured the resonance of sounds of his dedicated clay vessels and other clay ‘musical
and sound instruments’ as a ‘STATE OF MIND’, as a resonance of our internal mental states , in
an ambience, thoughtfuly dedicated to art, sound and light. Some of his vessels formally derive
from exact copies of Pleterje štimanice, others are pure artistic creations that with special apertures,
mouthpieces and ‘acoustic’ structure of their surfaces enable the creation of heterogeneous music
resonances, echoes, rhythms, from soft smoothly ‘sliding’ tones up to dynamic ‘shakes’ and trembling,
from low bass ostinatos to light, high noises, sighs and expirations … as the acoustic ambience, where
the music was created, ‘breathes’.

The space of Pleterje church offers its spiritual acoustics openly to music, above all to that which is
born in the ambience itself, which listens to it, responds to it and allows itself to be drawn into its
inspiring and almost infinite echo.

During making music in this place the sonorous colour reaches almost every tiny corner of the
exciting Gothic architecture, its screams multiply into the cascades of tones travelling through the
space and intertwine like some magical contour lines whose density and dynamic are changing
according to the direction and inclination of the sonorous column created by a musician.

Chords and harmonies floating in the air are born by the sequence of long tunes, with repeating the
rhythmic patterns and synchronic movements of the musician through the room, the whole ambience
is aroused in the repeated trembling and at the end, long after the sound finishing it lands as an
sonorous comet somewhere ‘above’. Every inhalation, every expiration and even a tiny breath spreads
around the miraculous acoustic space as a silk membrane which colours itself with subtle shades of the
aliquot tones.

Like this, the musician with his magic musical instrument or with his voice finds himself in an
iridescent kaleidoscope of sounds which inspire him from moment to moment for new musical
movements, the acoustic of the room returns them back and he responds spontaneously anew to them.
Every violent provocation of sonorous radiations without listening to the acoustic of the space and co-
oscillation with it, is here condemned to a chaotic soullessness or dull soundlessness. The listening
to the room itself and simultaneous hearing of himself allows the musician an experience of joy of a
direct sonorous-ambient creative inspiration.

In this way, the visionary clay musical instrument, the musician, the magical place, its acoustic logos
and the inventive spirit of all creators flow into one.

Lado Jakša

(Click on image to enlarge it.)