Koloman Wagner

MW : Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

KW : I am a 32-year-old artist from Regensburg/ Germany. Currently I work at the intersection of sculpture and composition, exploring the interplay of spatial shapes and sound based on physical principles.

MW : How did your interest in art begin?

KW : I cannot remember a time without art. From my early childhood on the Canary Islands and in Germany, I was surrounded by art. My mother, a passionate musician, introduced me not only to music but also to drawing and painting. Through my father, I learned how to shape and work with wood. He created large-scale objects and installations, which inspired me a lot. While still at school, I received a scholarship to an art academy. After this experience, however, I studied physics. I was fascinated by the fact that there are things I don't understand. During my subsequent doctoral studies, I developed my current artistic approach, which is deeply rooted in my experiences with the natural sciences.

MW : Can you talk a bit about your sculpture practice and the woodworking processes you employ?

KW : In my work, I experiment with form as an interdisciplinary principle. I translate motion sequences, sound and music into spatial structures, which manifest in wooden sculptures. My sculptures emerge by stacking geometric elements that I grind to continuous curved bands. Through curved stacking highly complex structures can be realized – structures that would be hardly possible using traditional techniques. In this approach wood is primarily used as an additive medium, which is also fundamentally different from conventional wood sculpting. This method allows me to create free-form sculptures but also enables the realization of calculated structures.

MW : What role does materiality—particularly wood (pine and spruce)—play in your process, and have you explored other materials?

KW : Wood is a sustainable, natural material. Its ease of processing and advantageous material properties drew me to pine and spruce wood. I work also with lime wood, larch wood or stone pine wood. An important factor of wood is its layered structure, which comes out when being sanded. The grain and inner wood structure reflects the layering process. Other materials, such as stone or bone have similar structures. So far, I have mainly worked with wood. Recently, I have begun to experiment with marble, and I am looking forward to explore further materials.

MW : What initially inspired you to explore the intersection of music, physics, and sculpture in your practice?

KW : Initially, I worked on movement sequences which led to my first ideas of building curved bands out of wooden blocks. The idea was to use multiple tilted wood blocks, which are stacked and glued together. Each block is characterized by three angles that define the curvature of the ribbon along the three spatial directions. To better visualize the angle sequences, I began to plot them as function of the element number. These functions already have some similarities to musical notation. Then I noticed that the three angles often correlated in specific ways. Similar to counterpoint, a Baroque composing technique, I observed opposing lines, overlaps, and suspensions. I realized that the spatial forms described by these functions followed the same principles as melodies in music. This was the point where music and sound came into play. In order to combine these two disciplines on a quantitative level also physics came into play. I started to develop a computer algorithm that translates musical notes into spatial structures based on space-time transformations and sound wave physics. One of my first projects was interpreting Johann Sebastian Bach’s piano fugue BWV 846 as a sculpture. I was immediately overwhelmed by the spatial structures that emerged. Conversely, I also began transforming simple objects into sound and music. My first musical composition was the sonification of a Möbius strip, which I arranged as a piano piece. Hearing what a geometric object, such as a Möbius strip sounds like was a completely new experience!

MW : Can you explain your process of converting melodies into spatial forms—what challenges arise in this transformation?

KW : At the heart of the conversion process is a self-developed Python algorithm that translates 3D curved lines and surfaces into musical notes—and vice versa. The algorithm is based on a physical model which is rooted in sound wave physics and space-time transformations. The process works as follows: The 3D surface of an object is described by a one-dimensional line, where each point on the line corresponds to a point in time. The curvature diameters along this line correspond to the physical
wavelengths of a sound wave. This results in a temporal sequence of frequencies. A higher pitch corresponds to a larger curvature, and transposing a melody up by one octave corresponds to scaling the structure down by a factor of two. Importantly, the algorithm is structure-preserving. For example, a melody built from harmonic intervals is reflected in harmonic proportions, and an acoustic dissonance corresponds to a spatial tension. The challenge lies in the mathematical implementation of the space-time conversion. Mapping a one-dimensional line into a three-dimensional structure requires several assumptions which I had to handle with. In the current version of the algorithm these challenges are solved, and I can handle most objects and melodies which I am interested in.

MW : How do you determine which musical compositions or geometric objects to translate into sculptures or sound?

KW : In Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, counterpoint captured my interest, while in Arvo Pärt’s compositions, it is the use of pauses, and in Schönberg’s work, the dissonances. On the object side, I currently focus on geometric forms or freely designed sculptures. My aim is to adapt concepts which are originally developed for music and explore them in sculpture and vice versa. Next to the previously mentioned correspondence between intervals and proportions, there are more complex structural analogies including the correspondence between transposition and size scaling or between sentence structure and topological elements such as loops and splittings. The other way round, during the creation of a sculpture, sculptural concepts such as statics, length proportions or size scaling play a key role for the design. The transformation process allows to adapt and explore an object's center of gravity, topology or compactness in the context of sound and music. I want to explore these ideas, and the choice of which musical composition or object I consider is rooted in these ideas.

MW : Your work engages with space-time as a structure—how do you see this idea manifesting visually and sonically in your installations?

KW : On the one hand, space-time is a mathematical concept in which time is described as an additional spatial dimension, allowing spatial and temporal structures to be transformed into one another. It can be seen as a tool to connect sculpture and music on a structural level. On the other hand, space-time becomes an artistic medium. My sculptures and compositions are manifestations of universal space-time forms, and they demonstrate how music and sculpture can merge to a unified artistic expression. The shapes and melodies that a visitor experiences through my installations are pointing to a greater principle that leads us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. This principle cannot be fully grasped rationally, but art allows us to intuitively sense it.

MW : Do you see your work as a form of synesthesia, where sound and form merge into a unified sensory experience?

KW : When I present my sculptures with music, the sound is typically played through headphones or speakers. Although sound and spatial form are two perspectives at the same four-dimensional space-time object, for us, they remain distinct entities. The temporal experience of viewing the sculptures differs from that of listening to the music. You may listen to the music while simultaneously engaging with the sculpture, or you may first see the sculpture and then listen to the music. My installations differ from what we typically associate with an audiovisual work, where sound and visual shapes share the same time scales. In my installations the music does not serve as a mere background or reinforcement of the sculptures but reveals a complementary aspect. The connection lies on a deeper level. But yes, I would definitely see my work as a form of synesthesia.

MW : Do you see your work contributing to a broader understanding of universal structures in art, science, and music?

KW : My work demonstrates how form can be understood as a universal principle that connects different disciplines in the arts. While such synesthetic ideas go back to antiquity, they became particularly important at the beginning of the 20th century and have retained this significance to the present day. My approach draws primarily on ideas from early modernism. In principle, I follow a synesthetic tradition, much like Wassily, Kandinsky or Paul Klee. However, I use computers and physics as additional tools, allowing for a deeper exploration of form as an interdisciplinary principle. I think the exciting thing about my approach is that it is based on a complex mathematical system that goes far beyond the geometric and approaches the organic. I believe that this approach has the potential to unite the arts in a way that has never been done before. I am convinced that one day, the boundaries between sculptors, composers, and choreographers will dissolve, allowing us to perceive form, sound, and movement as facets of a single artistic language. This opens new ways of experiencing and
understanding the fundamental structures that shape our reality.

( This interview was conducted by Material Works ( MW ) in the spring of 2025 )

>Koloman Wagner


>@koloman.wagner