Felippe Moraes
Harmonices Mundi, 2017
Vídeo HD, color
13’38’’

The video Harmonices Mundi (2017), by Felippe Moraes, investigates the ancient idea of the music of the spheres, a philosophical concept proposing the existence of a mathematical harmony governing the cosmos. The work was developed during an artist residency in Iran and draws on the theories formulated by astronomer Johannes Kepler in the treatise of the same name, published in the 17th century.

In the treatise Harmonices Mundi, Kepler sought to demonstrate that planetary orbits obey proportional relations comparable to musical intervals. Based on the distance and speed of the planets known in his time, the scientist deduced correspondences between pitch and orbital motion.

According to this formulation, planets closer to the Sun would produce higher-pitched sounds, while those moving faster would generate quicker rhythms. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury thus come to compose a kind of cosmological score based on celestial dynamics.

The video translates these relations between astronomy and music into a sonic progression that gradually builds until culminating in the simultaneous performance of all the planets by the Iranian band Bomrani. By turning astronomical data into musical structure, the work brings together science, cosmology and aesthetic experience, evoking the ancient intuition that the universe can be understood as a system of harmonic proportions.

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