FELDMAN: Patterns in a Chromatic Field | The Practice of Attention

“My music lives in silence,” composer Morton Feldman once said. We invite you to discover his work on January 30 at Paliesius Manor—through both sound and image.

Morton Feldman’s piece “Patterns in a Chromatic Field” (“Raštai spalvų lauke”, 1981) is one of the artist’s most significant late works, composed for cello and piano. Lasting approximately 90 minutes, the composition is woven from subtle, slowly shifting sonic patterns whose repetitions are never identical. Feldman’s creative principle, known as “crippled symmetry”—a logic of imperfect symmetry inspired by the structures of Oriental rugs—becomes a metaphor for the flow of time, attention, and human imprecision.

In the audiovisual work “Patterns in a Chromatic Field | Dėmesio praktika,” Feldman’s creative principles are approached not as a mere imitation of sound or image, but as a way of thinking rooted in slowness, micro-variations, and repetition without climax. This logic is transposed into today’s context—the “chromatic field” of screens, notifications, and algorithms, where our attention is constantly fragmented.

How do we keep listening when sound fades into the background? How do we hold our gaze when it is continually interrupted?

The work emphasizes the importance of the ecology of attention—here, attention functions as a perceptual field and an instrument of reflection.