Sound, Light and Chaos

Sometimes I wish I could talk about important topics like Corona, climate change, the mistreatment of animals and humans or a dying planet caused by our greed and selfishness, like many others rightfully do. I imagine that I could strengthen what has to be said and even sometimes be correct in supporting some form of political incorrectness. I would try not to sound hysterical, stay respectful and speak out clearly against the madness of people who rape others, mainly by the use of twisted words and folded paper bills.

That time may not have come yet.

I want to do two things instead. For about half of the time I have left before trying to talk people into sanity, I would like to express the hardship and sorrow I have experienced in my life through several works yet to come. I would like to do so in full consciousness that sometimes help is not possible, but that in many cases, art which reflects on our almost permanent human crisis can help us better understand and relate to the problems that cause it and find possible solutions for each other and ourselves.

Secondly, I want to do what some may consider entertainment – which is absolutely not what it is. I would like to continue crafting special moments for people in which they can experience beauty in the company or even by the company of others, find some time to wind down, lose themselves in the moment and breathe more freely again. I think a serene kind of peace may be an even stronger statement against the hatred and corruption of minds within the clash of information wars we are currently facing. Shouting back and explaining things alone may not help, but singing hopefully might.

So please expect more personal and also more accessible works in the coming years.


This year

I am going to finish works at two different locations in Karlsruhe:

PhonoLuxMachine (Sketch), Collage by Marc Teuscher and Holger Förterer
Sketch of the PhonoLuxMachine at Kinemathek Karlsruhe

The first one is two-fold. I am currently building a sound and light machine (PhonoLuxMachine as Didi Müller named it) for the Kinemathek cinema foyer in Karlsruhe together with Marc Teuscher and Jürgen Galli. The machine will in the end create a big 11 x 3m sized, round projection with multichannel sound and is already partially finished.

It forms the technological basis for a work about the video archive of the Kinemathek, which we are not allowed to show publicly. I will break up and shatter the video projection to obfuscate the content beyond recognizable elements and this way make it possible to publicly see and not see the archive at the same time. In the coming years, other artists will hopefully use the PhonoLuxMachine for their own video and interactive works, or even VJing and film presentations.

The Silent Chaos Of Colors (Sketch)
Sketch for the work “The Silent Chaos of Colors”

The second work is called “The Silent Chaos of Colors” and was initiated by Eva Judkins from the Electric Eel. We will hopefully present it on the Werderplatz in Karlsruhe throughout the whole of December 2020.

The Werderplatz is a square in Karlsruhe that is alive with all sorts of people passing by, staying to eat or drink something or to simply hang around. We want to give them a cause and a chance to interact with each other by simulating color particles that they can throw at each other, comparable to the colored powders of the Holi-Festival. In times of Corona, we also want to give people at home the chance to connect to this facade projection in by using their Xbox ONE game console.

So, despite and against our current times of personal isolation, we would like to enable everybody to keep interacting peacefully with each other, and not just through words alone.