M M M: W A S _ 0 1, 1 – 6 6 Partiturmeter (2 0 2 5)
MMM:
Mathia*s Lenz
, Maja Osojnik
& Matija Schellander, Guest: Špela Mastnak
The first edition – consisting of an exhibition, performative and musical presentations, accompanying lectures and workshops – was extremely well received by both, the audience and experts. Announced by Falter as one of the highlights of Wien Modern, the MMM team is delighted with the two-day recording by ORF/Ö1 under the direction of Martin Leitner and the wonderful programme by Susanna Niedermayr on Ö1 Zeitton Radio, as well as the report by Barbara Pichler on ORF/SAT3.
The response encourages us to develop an artistic format that is unusual, interdisciplinary and has a lasting impact, both in terms of its concept and the experience it offers.
The project combines contemporary music, performative art, philosophical reflection and practices of listening, reading and translating in a way that has rarely been realised in this form before. The exhibition also included workshops for classes from three Viennese universities, MUK, MDW and TU Architecture Class.
We view the entire project as a long-term artistic research endeavour and would like to continue it over the next ten years through new collaborations, different spatial and institutional contexts, international presentations, and continuous further development of the score and the overarching concept.
The first Edition of the Project WAS____01 was created in co-production with Mamka Records, Festival Wien Modern, Association Engelsharfen+Teufelsgeigen in cooperation with Art Space Ve.Sch. The project was kindly supported by SKE-Fonds, BMWKMS and Skica Wien, as well as Wien Modern. (Photos: Exhibition – Samuel Schaab, Live performance – Lorenz Seidler, eSeL)
P R O J E C T D E S C R I P T I O N S U M M A R Y
In 2025, the Year of the Wood Snake – a symbol of transformation and insight – the first 66 metres of a graphic sound score will be created, accompanied by a 66-minute composition. This score artistically documents traces of time and invites us to think about music beyond the traditional notation system. It winds its way through the exhibition space like a snake, encompassing it completely and leaving a space in the middle for performances.
The score is created in advance using linocut, cyanotype and acetone printing techniques and is continuously added to during the exhibition – both in performances and by the audience. As a collective, growing diary, it combines image, sound and text into a dynamic structure. Integrated audio tapes can be activated with specially developed readers, creating an ever-changing spatial soundscape.
The work raises questions about communication and sharpens our perception of sound, time and space. It challenges us to refocus our attention and read the score at our own pace. The interaction of image, sound and movement creates a synaesthetic experience that is constantly transforming – a kind of listening practice that trains conscious listening and allows us to experience changes in the soundscape.
The score continues to be written during the performances. The leitmotif ‘skin’ plays a central role here: as an interface between inside and outside, as a sensory organ for touch. By touching, pressing, scratching and deforming materials such as paper, balloons or foil, a micro acoustic landscape is created in which the boundaries between action and perception become blurred.
With each performance, the score continues to grow – as an open, evolving work. In 2035, it will reach its full length, and in 2036, it will be cut into 100 unique pieces and released as a limited edition vinyl record.
T h e o b j e c t i v e o f t h e p r o j e c t
The project investigates how a visual score can be understood as an open, multimodal system and translated into different artistic formats. The focus is on the question of the “original” and possible transfers between image, sound, performance, and space.
T h e s t a r t i n g m a t e r i a l a n d m e t h o d o l o g i c a l a p p r o a c h
Based on a 66-meter-long mixed media score by Maja Osojnik (collage, drawing, photography, cyanotype), a complex of works is created that combines different readings and levels of interpretation. The project follows four central practices:
Listening – tonal analysis and interpretation
Reading – visual and structural exploration of the score
Translation – Transfer between visual, auditory, and performative levels
Communication – Interaction between performers, space, and audience
These four levels form the basis for the development of several types of work.
T h e E x p e r i e n c e i n t h e P r o j e c t
In the course of developing this project, the fundamental question arose as to whether an “original” exists in the compositional process and which methodological approaches enable us to approximate it. In particular, the focus was on the practices of reading, listening, translating, and communicating. These four guiding principles proved to be analytical and at the same time productive axes along which the work was continuously structured and expanded.
This conceptual framework gave rise to a work that allows for multiple versions that are both interdependent and autonomous. Within the framework of WAS___01, selected manifestations of this diversity were realized on the basis of the first 66 meters of the score.
Maja Osojnik’s original score, created using mixed media techniques, forms the first compositional manifestation. The combination of collage, drawing, and photography is brought together by cyanotype printing to form a unified, visually coherent work that also serves as the starting point for further translation processes.
The second version, an electronic composition by Matija Schellander and Maja Osojnik, understands the score as a system that can be interpreted sonically. The integration of analog and digital sound sources creates an audible interpretation that forms an independent level within the logic of the work.
In a third phase of development, the score was expanded both visually and aurally: using varied printing techniques in relief and intaglio printing, as well as through the integration of audio tapes that transform and continue the pictorial motifs.
In this context, Mathia*s Lenz created tape versions at different speeds and developed specific reading devices that enable a performative engagement in which visitors and musicians actively intervene in the interpretation process. The score grew to a length of 66 meters in its repetitive yet continuously changing pictorial form.
Another version is realized in a live concert performance by the MMM collective with guest musician and percussionist Špela Mastnak. The score is transformed into a spatial-dramaturgical structure in which acoustic objects, everyday materials, musical instruments, and mobile loudspeakers form an installative sound event, complemented by a poetic-associative narrative level. The deliberate placement and movement of instruments and loudspeakers, as well as the interactions of the musicians performing in the space, create a lively topographical form of the score.
The fifth form of realization took the form of a sound exhibition. Fragments of the electronic composition were transmitted to small loudspeakers and distributed spatially via an acousmatic sound control system. The resulting installation enables simultaneous, non-linear modes of reading and perception and, through repetitive musical sequences of varying lengths, creates a continuously transforming sound field—a spatial atmosphere in constant flux.
Accompanying workshops were held with students from MUK, MDW (ELAK), and TU Vienna (architecture), in which different interpretation and reading strategies were tested and further developed. These discussions confirmed the openness and ambiguity of the score as a relational, processual system.
H a n s – J ü r g e n H a u p t m a n n, a r t i s t, c u r a t o r
WHAT_(german: WAS_) the hell is happening to me here, as I listen to these sounds? I have exactly 66 meters of time to think about it. A kind of Route 66 that leads deep into one’s own interior, but also to the outermost — into demonic territory, as Dr. Faustus knows all too well. For whoever listens to music is, literally, possessed by it. Sound allows no distance; it is intrusive, omnipresent. And once unleashed, it vigorously shakes the boundaries of what feels all too familia
WAS_ is also the title of the composition that was premiered in November 2025 at the Ve.Sch art space and that prompted the opening question. Notably, the title deliberately omits a question mark— so anyone hoping for answers was bound to be disappointed that evening. The motto was rather: the journey is the destination. The piece is based on a 66-meter-long graphic score that winds through the exhibition space in loops and seemingly endless trajectories, crossing and recrossing itself while carrying expansive, intricately branching traces of different printing techniques and material applications. A labyrinth of manifold* possibilities—a rhizome, as Deleuze would say—btw: happy birthday Gilles Deleuze! (He would have turned 100 in 2025.) So why not ask him straight away what else comes to mind? “The properly musical content of music is plied by becomings-woman, becomings-child, becomings-animal; however, it tends, under all sorts of influences having to do also with the instruments, to become progressively more molecular in a kind of cosmic lapping through which the inaudible makes itself heard and the imperceptible appears as such: no longer the songbird, but the sound molecule.” 1 Well. As already said: it’s not always about answers. Still, following the cited trail could prove interesting. And it somehow seems as though the ‘four-headed’ trio MMM had something similar in mind: the individual musicians — Mathias Lenz, Maja Osojnik, and Matija Schellander—joined by percussionist Špela Mastnak (MMM and M — coincidence?) — set out on their own paths through the diagrammatic meandering of the score, encountering one another along the way in different configurations of condensations and layers, intersections and omissions, gestures and echoes of gestures, and other modulations of space and time. What emerges is a play of intensities that stretches the score like a membrane between order and chaos, probing for cracks and turbulences in order to open pathways from the simmering virtual* into our rapt attention: chaosmosis*. Every billow of air wrests a sonic event from the supposed nothingness between the listeners, lurking in the void, ready to bring the interstices crashing down. In the process, the boundaries between subjects and objects and half-things are thoroughly scrambled. “Why should our bodies end at the skin…?” Donna Haraway once asked. If we became cyborgs that evening, it was because our antennas had been retuned to subtle frequencies. Every event de-limits us and reassembles us anew (or differently)—cutting together/apart, as the physicist Karen Barad calls those intra-actions that produce our reality as a habitable space (a collapse of the wave function, as quantum mechanics laconically puts it).
Barad is convinced that it is this cut within an original and elementary connectedness that makes the separation into subject and object possible in the first place—and thus also generates the habitual illusion that one stands at the edge of a world, at a distance, able to grasp it and lay hands on it without being grasped oneself. That’s what happens when you understand the maneuver only halfway: cutting together/apart—in good Viennese terms: if you pull things apart, you also have to pull yourself together! (Wer sich auseindersetzt, muss sich auch zusammenreißen!)
Fortunately, there are events that can shake such bad habits, that can make separations collapse once again. (One is tempted to speak, in a quantum-mechanical inversion, of a collapse of the thing-function.) It is among the special qualities of successful music that it can achieve this from time to time. As an echo of an elementary mutual entanglement, it may also be a rather good exercise in an expanded form of mindfulneess. Not that music would need that. But in times of multiple crises on the scale of hyperobjects² (climate being only the most prominent example), it may even be the art form of the moment! A molecular memory of togetherness that begins with listening together? Admittedly, that sounds a bit grandiose. But at least it’s a start!
After all, the trio MMM has resolved to add another 66 meters to the score every year. WHAT_ else will they uncover along the way? One is right to be curious. In any case, it’s worth following their trail …
1The quoted passage from 1000 Plateaus: Memoirs of a Sorcerer, III 2 Timothy Morton uses this term to describe phenomena that transcend conventional dimensions of space, time and dualistic attempts at categorisation according to the nature/culture paradigm, but nevertheless have a tangible impact on our world and thus necessitate responsible action.
A u d i e n c e f e e d b a c k / r e s p o n s e
WAS___ unfolds an openness that is defined not by specifications but by movement: networks of lines, layers of traces and sound potentials lie side by side and intertwine without imposing anything on each other. The installation appears like a single large instrument, an interior space that one enters like the belly of a whale. Those who move within it stand in the middle of the sound body and become a resonance chamber themselves – acoustically and physically, but also as a reflective mass. The bar reinforces this openness: resonating at a low threshold without losing its artistic independence. Nothing is excluded or demarcated. MMM receive without directing, inviting their audience onto a shared stage where music, space and social interaction embrace. Christoph Meier, Artist
It was wonderfully unconventional and surprising. I imagined what it might be like inside authors’ heads, and I think the piece reflected that really well for me: effervescent, thoughtful, layered sound sources – all at once – a little crazy, but magnificent – lovingly woven and emotional. The piece seemed very courageous overall, especially with elements such as the mutual rhythmic tapping on the performers’ bottoms, the gradual peeling away, and the final ‘moulting’. I find Osojnik’s approach with the graphic score super exciting, and of course the possibility of playing the score directly with Mathia*s Lenz’s specially built devices was very appealing. I also always find it very nice when diffuse sound sources are used; the many speakers are great. The moment when Matija Schellander closed the door and the sound was abruptly cut off was both concise and humorous in its simplicity – a brief, unexpected but effective intervention. I can well imagine that the concept would also work in a very large exhibition space, where there is more room for the exhibited score, but also for the performance. Ursula Winterauer, Ventil Records
MMM is a journey, a reading and expression in a single moment, a constant flow through notation. This winds its way along the walls like a Babylonian archive, which initially has no beginning and no end, and whose reading or translation into sound leads to total absorption. The four musicians and performers walk through these surrounding signs and transform them into sounds with great precision and, at the same time, a kind of detachment. What is written down is not a corset; rather, it creates the freedom to do what is to arise in the moment, while still adhering to the text. One could say: the musicians are the composition. Reading and inventing have become one. The tape recorder’s read/write head has transferred itself to the room. You can sense a high resolution in the sound: the sounds condense and dissolve with astonishing virtuosity from one image to the next. And these images release a very coherent dramaturgy that skilfully moves from intangible shimmering to the concrete bodies of the three performers. And when a phase of serious music swells, it is soon replaced by a humorous process. The space will grow, the years will increase, the composition will overcome the horizon. Samuel Schaab, Artist
I highly recommend the performance of MMM_ at ve.sch.kunstverein as part of the wienmodern festival. The collective MMM, composed of Maja Osojnik, Matija Schellander & Mathia*s Lenz, reinforced by percussionist Špela Mastnak, perform the piece “WAS___01 / Partiturmeter 1-66”. It is an acoustic & visual piece based on 66 metres (!!!) of graphic score – screen prints mixed with collages of magnetic tape – that is truly a fascinating experience. Sometimes I chose to watch what the performers/musicians were doing, but mostly I closed my eyes and enjoyed the surrounding sounds… letting myself be surprised by the plethora of interwoven synthetic and acoustic sounds that often mix so well it is almost impossible to distinguish them from one another. All in all, it is a well-balanced performance that I think anyone who is open to experiencing unorthodox sounds will enjoy. Clemens Radauer, Jazzfestival Saalfelden, Cultural and social anthropologist
What I particularly liked about the project was that I had the impression of participating in a process that was at a certain point on the day of my visit and could have different characteristics before and after. I experienced it as a zoom-in on a larger whole that has many facets that I cannot grasp, and there is also this obvious limitation of a representation with selected means, or rather that not everything can be represented at all. It is probably a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, which for me does not unfold primarily in terms of sound, but rather as a community performance or embedded in a certain mindset of DIY culture, etc. I was particularly struck by the excessiveness of certain aspects, the sheer quantity of things, including the 33 layers of onion costumes, and the fact that these were performed so wonderfully without pretension. I found this subordination to the overall concept very successful. I can imagine further development in many ways – in any case, I did not perceive the whole thing primarily as a musical performance, not even as media art, despite the many tapes. There is something activist, defiant about it, something that also expresses a nevertheless/nevertheless, in the sense that it just has to be done, regardless of systemic difficulties. I would like to see the remaining 594 metres approached with a great deal of freedom and curiosity, also oriented towards the respective situation, and as a utopian project that one undertakes, but which also has the freedom to fail – hopefully not as a huge burden that has to be dealt with. Thomas Grill, Sound researcher
As someone who works with space and walls myself, the exhibition led me to fundamental questions about the relationship between drawing and sound. The various levels – sound installation, graphic paper strips and the participatory use of sound heads – could have stood alone. It was precisely their overlapping that created an intense spatial experience for me. Particularly striking was the realisation that parts of the drawings consist of audio tapes and can be heard directly from the work. For me, this interplay of material line and stored sound refers to an ‘in-between’ that is conveyed both visually and acoustically. The sounds act as a medium for what is difficult to name when seen. I wondered whether I would like to make my own drawings audible and what interpretations this would give rise to. The work shows that image and sound can form an equal structure that can only be experienced through movement in space. This walking activates perception, thinking and imagination – an aspect that seems particularly important to me. Brigitte Mahlknecht, Artist (exhibition visitor)
Recordings links:
1/ Original electronic Score
https://on.soundcloud.com/PqRoMTF9zqAkSWeiZT
2/ Live Recording Performance
https://on.soundcloud.com/xAo1K0ueJur9DESFVZ
3/ the programme on Ö1 radio, where we also talk about the play with Susanna Niedermayr.
https://on.soundcloud.com/t0JiD6IYhHx9HdWZR
