Our project YOKOMONO got a Honorary Mention Digital Music at this years Ars Electronica Festival. We showed a new version of the Installation wich turned out very nice.

YOKOMONO confronts viewers with a set-up consisting of 4 “vinyl killers” – little toy record players in the form of VW buses, each equipped with a needle and a small VHF transmitter. The “vinyl killers” circle around on specially prepared loop records, whose loops initially contain “digital silence”. The records are manipulated and prepared to create interferences, noises and rhythms, which are transmitted cross-wise by the VHF transmitters on two different frequencies to four groups of radios corresponding to the walls of the room, thus opening up a four-channel space-sound system. Additional radios on a circling toy train move through the different transmitter frequencies, thus permanently altering their sound and making the range and order of the frequencies visible.

The sound is determined by many factors – the wear and tear on the records and the primitive sound transmission (MONO) changes the original “digital silence”, adding mechanical and analog characteristics, while the rotation of the vinyl killers and the movement of the visitors in the room destabilize the VHF transmission to the radios, the transmitters interfere with one another and other transmitting devices such as mobile phones, and the gradually decreasing battery power of the vinyl killers changes the playing speed of the loops. All of this makes YOKOMONO an unstable, incalculable system, in which distortion and erosion, the obliteration and destruction of the sound are part of the concept.

You can read a review made by the german-french arte-TV here:
http://www.arte.tv/de/kunst-musik/kultur-digital/Ars_20Electronica_202006/1316374.html

We also did a yokomono performace at the O.K. center media deck and spontaneously invited our friends chris (wirmachenbunt) and owain for some improvised vj-action. you can see some ‘crappy cellphone cam’ impressions here .

Developed for Siemens Arts Programme series ‘Der Blick des Komponisten’ (’The View of the Composer’) in collaboration with Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival , “Architone” was an attempt to create a holophonic sound image of the Kunsthalle in Kiel.
A composition was produced for the building that reproduced the full physical magnitude of the latter’s structure, and simultaneously probed the very material, shape, and function of the institution as a soundsource, as an instrument and as a physical filter as well. For this we created sound sources that have been distributed around and in the entire Museum. These sources, including klaxons and specially constructed resonators, produced such a powerful sound that the enormous dimensions of the building became acoustically “tangible” for the audience - they could hear through layers of walls and ceilings, they could feel the sound. The audience was bisically inside the sound. The idea was to direct the audience to hear sounds they would normally not pay attention to or at least not always recognize as music. Additionally, we used architectural features as instruments, such as by transforming windows and glass walls into loudspeaker walls, and in this way directly played the substance of the building while other small sound sources simultaneously moved within the space as dynamic mobile soundsystem. The public was fixed in a location and could experience a dynamic live produced and presented holophonic image of the building. a building that is normally just perceived as a functional ‘white cube’ for presenting art suddenly became a living sound organism.

Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL), Carsten Stabenow (D)
in collaboration with
BMB.con Justin Bennett (GB), Wikke ‘t Hooft (NL), Roelf Toxopeus (NL)

programming and technical support: Jens Alexander Ewald (D)

initiated and produced by:
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and Siemens Arts Programme in cooperation with Kunsthalle, Kiel
concert within the project series ‘anbruch 06′ (NDR das neue werk)

Kieler Nachrichten 20.08.2006

for more images display gallery ….

“Nose Dive on Linschoten ” was a new mechanical sound orchestra, containing 7 motor driven sirens, 20 big sound boxes and 24 metal grinders, at A Glamorous Night in Linschoten presented in the garden of the of the Linschoten castle (10 till 20 august) more information you may find here: http://www.huistelinschoten.nl/home.html