Listening Is Making Sense

(essay for the field notes #2 by the German label Gruenrekorder)

Speech, music and noise all reach our ears in the form of sound. In spite of this, we have grown used to considering them as separate spheres. Overcoming this separation results in a kind of listening that integrates sensual and cognitive perception: listening to the city as though it was music, to music as though it was speech, and to speech as though it was some kind of noise... >> more

My Life With Music

from: Die Zeit Online, 16 July 2006

I remember a long winter during my childhood. When it finally began to get warmer again, we children would play beside a nearby lake that was still frozen over and which seemed to glow in the setting sun. There were cracking noises and whiplash fractures, as intimidating for us as the thinness and fragility of the ice... >> more

Self-Organisation in non-linear Systems

On the triptych of compositions dripping, windscapes and sono taxis

The triptych of sound-art compositions dripping, windscapes and sono taxis focuses on the acoustic phenomena of dripping water, wind sounds, and the songs of frogs and crickets. All three works are based on a new philosophy that has become established in the natural sciences over the past 30 years, causing the cliché-laden sounds of nature, whose potential seemed to have been exhausted, to appear in a new light... >> more

The Concept of "Sound Object" (objet sonore) by Pierre Schaeffer

Pierre Schaeffer (1910 – 1995) is considered to be the founder of musique concrète. Trained as a radio engineer instead of a composer, he saw in the invention of radio, tape recorders and phonographs the potential for a new experience of sound, seperated from it’s source allowing sounds to have their own existence. He coined the term „sound object“ (objet sonore), that paved the way for a new kind of perception, the „acousmatic listening“... >> more

Silence in the Words of...

Silence a boundary notion, a conceptual ideal, an aural vanishing point. Saying something about silence equals loosing it. Being silent is impossible may it include to cease living. Many words have been uttered to grasp this paradox... >> more

Acoustic Sharawadgi

Ever witnessed the sudden appearance of a view or a sound, a perception of unexpected beauty that emerges out of context and with no intention leaving you baffled for this only moment by a feeling of plenitude and transports you elsewhere? This is what people call sharawadgi... >> more