SOUND ART IN PUBLIC SPACE
Our aim is not to create sound art in public space but with public space. To use public space as an musical instrument. Our first work in Kiel was developed for the Siemens Arts Programme in collaboration with BMB Con presented at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival we created unique instruments/machines to produce physically powerful sound waves so that the entire Kunsthalle became acoustically resonant, tangible, and alive. For the Tuned City Festival in Berlin we applied the ideas to a public park under the name of COMPOSEDCITY a co-production of Lola landscape architects and staalplaat soundsystem. A similar incarnation was presented with Mark Bain in Graz at the Steirischer Herbst and ORF Musikprotokol.
For Station To Station commissioned by the Today’s Art Festival in Den Haag, in collaboration with Mike Reinirse, Erik Hobijn and Mark Bain, again we applied our principles to the Den Haag Central train-station. To explore the train station’s sound as a source and then control and transform it into a new instrument, we used the back and forth movement of the trains as faders for the mixing of 10 train horns and station sounds.
The project Yokomono-pro, developed for the Indian Khoj – International Artists Association in New Delhi.
Yokomono-Pro is a car horn concert performed by vehicles moving through a city. We use 30 vehicles then prepared them technically in order to remotely take over control of their horns. This enables us to synchronously play rhythmic patterns as they drive along a pre-determined route. Using the cars with their horns as a choir
Our latest work is The installation Composed Nature, developed for the Centrum voor Beeldende Kunst Dordrecht, consists of a matrix of 64 trees. Controllable, mechanical vibrators are mounted on each individual tree and are operated by custom made software. The installation now has a permanent pace in Klankenbos, the Belgium sound park.
