language driven performance & installation, 2017
collaboration with Lukas Truniger
Exploring the boundaries where music and language overlap, Nicola L. Hein and Lukas Truniger use hybrid instruments – constructed from drum-skins and electronic components – as devices to turn written texts into pulses of light and percussive sound. As each machine translation emerges, the network of instruments starts to share the texts, transforming written material into aesthetic, visual and sonic patterns, for the performers and spectators to further interact with. Extrapolating from the example of the African talking drum, Membranes builds up an altogether new kind of tone language, constantly shifting and adapting itself before the viewer and performers alike.
The instruments form a reactive network of semantic and aesthetic actors: a play of forms, light and sound unfolds between them. Following historical archetypes musical communication instruments and seeking to create a speculative acoustic interaction space, this audio-visual installation and performance offers a new alternative communication environment.
In its installation form, the work shows sentences generated by an algorithm which analyzes a database of various theoretical texts about the relation between music and language. A dialogue between the independent object-instruments takes place and establishes a network of dead agents – transformed algorithms – that testify both to a form of communication that is historically rooted in a cultural tradition and a hypothetical language spoken in a world after the Web’s demise
_Performances
07.2020 ADAF online – Athens (GR) / Online
07.2020 NIME 2020 – Burmingham (UK) / Online
01.2020 The Dead Web – Ludwig Múseum –
Budapest (HU)
05.2019 Mapping Festival – Geneva (CH)
04.2019 Mirage Festival – Lyon (F)
09.2018 Retune Festival – Berlin (D)
11.2017 Dark Circuits Festival –
Knockdown Center – New York (US)
11.2017 Die Digitale – Düsseldorf (D)
11.2017 mex festival – Dortmund (D)
11.2017 Sonica – Tramway – Glasgow (GB)
10.2017 Walcheturm – Zürich (CH)
09.2017 Schillerpalais – Berlin (D)
_Exhibitions
01.2020 The Dead Web – Ludwig Múseum –
Budapest (HU)
05.2019 Mapping Festival – Geneva (CH)
11.2017 Dark Circuits Festival –
Knockdown Center – New York (US)
11.2017 Die Digitale – Düsseldorf (D)
11.2017 Sonica – Tramway – Glasgow (GB)
09.2017 Schillerpalais – Berlin (D)
_Project credits
<> Concept, realization & performance:
Nicola L. Hein & Lukas Truniger
<> Scenographic advisor: Marie Lelouche
_Support
+ Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council
+ DICRéAM – Centre National du Cinéma (CNC)
+ Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Foundation
+ Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains
_Press
* Le Temps (CH)
* Le Matin Dimachanche (CH)
* Clot Magazine
* HalfLife – Machines and Organisms – Artistic Positions in Times of Climate Change and Extinction
