To Hear the Form, to See the Sound: “The Voice of Matter” in Artistic Language

This article analyzes artistic practices of the 20th and 21st centuries through the prism of a processual understanding of artistic form. Using the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Alvar Aalto, and Sergei Filatov as examples, it explores the concept of “the voice of matter” as an analytical category describing situations in which the artistic element, material, space, or acoustic environment begin to participate in the emergence of form and the organization of perception. It is shown that in these practices, artistic form is understood not as the realization of a predetermined image, but as the result of the interrelationship between the artistic element, material, environment, technology, and perception. In Kandinsky's painting, the autonomization of the artistic element and the convergence of visual composition with musical organization are analyzed. In Aalto's architecture, space is considered as an acoustically and bodily experienced environment, where material and perception participate in the formation of architectural experience. Sergei Filatov's sound art explores the processual nature of sound form, emerging through resonance, vibration, and the technological mediation of acoustic processes. Methodologically, the article combines a phenomenological approach to perception with an interdisciplinary analysis of visual, architectural, and sound practices. It concludes that the concept of "the voice of matter" allows us to describe the shift in artistic thinking in the 20th and 21st centuries, in which the artistic element, material, technology, space, and perception all begin to participate in the emergence of artistic form.