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Sound Installation |
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born 1965 in Mönchengladbach, Germany Art Projects: Exhibitions: |
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'Sound Tubes' 'Glockenklangglocken' |
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| 'Graphophonie' - A Tribute
to Moholy-Nagy Sound installation with record for two digital players and electronically manipulated record player sounds Laszlo Moholy-Nagy speculated in 1923 on the possibility of transferring graphical structure courses on a record in order to reach new sounds, sounds that were never heard before. Even if this procedure proved not to be realizable, Moholy-Nagy nevertheless voiced substantial thoughts on the nature of this sound medium as a surface to be inscribed. In principle the storage of sounds on a record is inscription in the original sense. The analogue sound information is input with a graver on a sound medium, which then is used in turn as a matrix for duplication. The storage of acoustic information on a record thus does not differentiate fundamentally from the process of writing. The manual inscription of a record is therefore essentially possible. The character that has been carved, scratched or embossed on the surface, the grapheme, mutates on a record to a graphon. The possibility of surface deformation, making the storage of information on a record at all possible, led to the abolition of the latter, as we today know. The carrier surface has also always been unprotected towards further damage. Record fetishists still bemoan the passing of these traces, a scratched record did indeed also provide information on the unique history of its use. Actually a scratch is the most immediate inscription of a record, the unintentional damage as a constant new inscription of the medium. Graphons of wear and tear, that can be made to ring. |
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| 'orbis mechanicae' or
the musical box game Stereophonic sound installation for mechanical musical boxes and eight players 'orbis mechanicae' is an acoustic, literary work on the historical role of the machine. While the room is filled with spherical music originating from the electronically and manually manipulated sounds emitted by small musical boxes, positioned in four different corners of the room, literary quotations of Descartes, Leibniz, Marx, E.T.A. Hoffmann amongst others, can be heard on the subject man and the machine from four further positions of the room. As currently with the computer and the internet, the machine had been an object of lively discussions, from classical antiquity up until the first half of the twentieth century, whereby the foremost aspect had been the relationship of man and the machinery created by him. Time and time again the machine served philosophers and writers as a metaphor for the cosmos, for authoritative and state structures and finally for man itself. 'Orbis mechanicae' is consequently also a documentary work which tries to explain the way in which the relationship between man and machinery has been treated in the philosophical tradition. Simultaneously the work reflects the relationship between art and machinery, as digital sound manipulation combines with the mechanical musical box as the oldest form of technical music reproduction. The musical boxes are altogether forty, hanging in grape-like clusters from the ceiling. It is almost anachronistic when the interactive intervention of the observer into the work is made possible through the musical boxes, and indeed not through the help of computers. Thus the observer, as a musical box player, is made to an element of a randomly steered spacial composition. |
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| 'Organum' Installation for four organ pipes, four loudspeakers and randomly steered players 'Organum' is a resuscitation of "acoustic" objets trouvés. In the sound installation four big organ pipes play into a room from different corners. The sound of the pipes is reactivated through four loudspeakers, which are sunk in the pipes. These play, electronically, the original sounds of the pipes back into the body of resonance. Thus a four channel sound mixture is created that is very remote from the traditional sound of the organ. The minimalistic interplay of the sounds forms an archaic sound expanse, which reminds listeners of the ritual music of Tibetan Buddhism or of fog-horns from ships in harbour areas. At the same time 'Organum' is an acoustic dice game, as the sound materials, randomly played from four corners of the room, mesh with one another. The random combination of sounds stretch the puristic sound material into a diversity of acoustic phenomena. In this way sound hoverings arise again and again next to the many and diverse motions in the room. These nearly become physically perceptible to the listening observer. In addition to that changes of volume and the gradual swelling and fading of the sounds originate a multitude of subtle tonal colours. |
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| 'APPLIANCES' is the title of a series of sound installations I set up in my private surroundings. These installations are based on the idea that the domestic environment is acoustically shaped by household appliances. The emission of tones and noise, often of musical quality, usually remains imperceptible because of low volume. In 1997, I developed an installation for a ceiling fan, another for a gas heater, and one for a refrigerator, under this general title. Each object was equipped with an amplifier, loudspeakers and digital players. The sounds were recorded, slightly manipulated (through acceleration, reverberation, or interruption), and then played back next to their original source. The actual sounds of the appliances began to interact with each other and their subtle alterations, thus becoming musically enhanced. 'Appliances 1' 'Appliances 2' 'Appliances 3' |
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