Sator Rotas evolves like an organic process, like cell division. Small motifs consisting of sinus waves split up into smaller and smaller parts. A field is thus built up of extremely compact sounds, of noises—until maximum compactness is reached.Yet something else is repeatedly added: there is static.

The title stems from ancient number and letter mysticism.
It involves a “magical square”: The title Sator Rotas is a play on the various approaches to the contradiction, to which we owe our existence.
At the end of the last century, representatives from science and religions came closer together again. Especially because science is concerned with increasingly specialized problems, it runs into epistemological boundaries: what is perception? Will it never be possible to reconcile the different models for explaining reality? Representatives from different faiths seek proof of God, for example in the Tora, which is full of codes encrypted in a secret language. Similar to those of logic.What is peculiar about these squares is that regardless of how they are turned and twisted, they only refer to themselves.The world in ruins (cf. Dürer’s Melancolia, among others).This one means:“The creator of the spheres holds the work in his hands.”Yet this sentence in a magical square—a contradiction: for regardless of the interpretation of its contents, the square retains its logical regularity. Eco, Deleuze and Luhmann were not the first to do away with the notion of authorship.
The material for the piece was successively developed in different cities under quadrophonic conditions. The spatiality resulting from this process is an integral component.

Marcus Schmickler (D), born 1968, graduated from secondary school in 1988 in Cologne. Studied from 1993-1999 at the Music College, Cologne, with Prof. H. U. Humpert (electronic composition) and with Prof. J. Fritsch (composition).