Hungarian artist Zsanett Szirmay dares a balancing act in her art, connecting the most diverse art forms and cultures with an unimagined lightness. Her most recent project Soundweaving 7 – Pergamon Edition coincides with the reopening of the carpet halls in the Museum für Islamische Kunst.

For the exhibition Szirmay developed works that reinterpret individual carpet patterns from the museum’s collection. She carefully dissected the designs, sometimes breaking them down into single lines and dots, before skillfully recombining them with composer and musician Daniel Vikukel into tones, tonal sequences and melodies. The artist then transfered the patterns onto narrow punch cards to be played by small music boxes, thus allowing the tones not only to be heard but also seen and comprehended. Visitors are invited to operate the music boxes in the exhibition themselves. In this way, the patterns of Persian, Turkish and Spanish carpets simultaneously ring out at different locations throughout the exhibition, blending into a multicultural carpet of sound.

The sound installation is accompanied by floor-to-ceiling cloth banners on which the punch card patterns have been reproduced in enlarged form, transforming the carpet patterns into a play of light and shadow that lend the exhibition an unexpected magic.