Roth's works can 'be allegories of models, as is the case with his Pixelsex works, which also encompass aura calculata. And they can, like the light works, draw attention to how little we know about our perception and our constructions of reality.'
Helga de la Motte (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik)
Without a conductor and without a score, complex sound patterns emerge in aura calculata, which are anything but random: whereas in a classical composition, the cues of a performer are specified according to certain formal principles as a temporal sequence of notes, the sounding activity of organ pipes (or loudspeakers) in aura calculata follows a spatial-sculptural approach.
Sound network The acoustic bodies arranged in a circle represent the simplest form of a network, in which, similar to a Mexican wave, the activity of their immediate neighbours determines whether they play and light up in the next time step or just remain off.
Depending on how active the respective organ pipe has been in its previous states, a column of water inside the pipe rises or falls. This changes not only the pitch of the tones excited by the wind (Latin: aura), which are far beyond any musical scale, but also their respective timbre.
Aura calculata is one of four work cycles by Tim Otto Roth in which sounds are organised and moved differently in space by means of the so called 'sound pixels' – luminous speaker sculptures with a custom made electronics designed by his studio imachination labs.
