First day at ars electronica 2006. i was quite reluctant to go this time. Feeling that i’ve seen it all before, that the programme is not as great as the previous year, etc. I can be quite good at playing the blasé girl. And when you think that it’s only my third ars, you might also note that i can be quite ridiculous as well. I shouldn’t have worried, there’s awesomeness all over the place in Linz. There’s also a few crappy installations but as i’m a good girl, i’m only going to talk about what i liked.
Starting with Yokomono by Staalplaat Soundsystem, Honorary Mention Digital Musics. You might have noticed that i like these Germano-Dutch sound artists (see list of links to previous posts below). Their Yokomono installation stars 4 “vinyl killers” – toy car record players, each equipped with its own needle and radio transmitter. Unlike the usual record player, the needle is not static, it circle around on specially prepared loop records, whose loops initially contain “digital silence.” The records are manipulated to create interferences, noises and rhythms which are communicated by the transmitters on 2 different frequencies to four group of big old fashioned radios hanging on the four walls of the room, thus opening up a four-channel space-sound system. Additional radios on a circling model train (note to the curators: the room was dark, the trains were circling on the floor and i nearly stepped on them, just thought you might be interested…) move through the different transmitter frequencies, altering the sound.
The sound is determined by several factors: the wear and tear of the record and the primitive sound transmission changes the original “digital silence”, adding mechanical and analog characteristics, while the rotation of the vinyl killers and the movement of the visitors destabilize the VHF transmission to the radio, the fact that wseveral fm transmitters are sending signals at the same time means that each transmitter is effecting the other and other transmitting devices such as mobile phones. Besides, the gradually decreasing battery power of the vinyl killers changes the playing speed of the loops. These interference and the unstable media that is transmitting makes the whole set playfully unpredictable and hard to control.
Staalplaat Soundsystem is Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL) and Carsten Stabenow (GER).
My images on flickr.
Other Staalplaat works: Sale Away, an installation allowing passers-by to conduct an “orchestra” of household devices via their mobile phones on a display window; The ultrasound of therapy, an installation of 7 individual sound therapies, some are relaxing, others are energising or even disturbing; home appliance performances.