This installation was a later later version of the Avantilator project for Avanto festival 2003. It was shown at the )toon)festival in Haarlem, 16. - 18. of April 2004.

For the 2003 edition of the Avanto Festival in Helsinki we did a new commissioned piece called AVANTILATOR - for one hundred office fans. The Kiasma Theatre was a perfect place for this project. We build all sorts of instruments out of the fans, searching for their special accoustic quallities. Avantilator was a mixture of a sound art installation and a live concert. The audience was free to mingle among the fans or stay anywhere they like in the theatre to take in the performance. The concert was going on for 4 hours …

Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL), Carlo Crovato (GB/D)

For Oorsmeer we realised a sound installation with 60 vacuum cleaners and played several concert especially for children. 2 November 2003 at Vooruit in Gent and 7. - 9. November 2003 at the Arenbergschouwburg in Antwerpen.

Staalplaatsoundsystem is de naam van de groep die een geluidsmachine maakte aangedreven door maar liefst 60 stofzuigers. Bij een stofzuiger denk je wellicht niet aan een muziekfestival, maar eerder aan een saaie huishoudelijke klus en veel vervelend lawaai. Misschien maakt het idee van een “concert voor 60 stofzuigers” je eerder gek dan dat het je honger prikkelt eens te komen kijken en te luisteren. In de handen van Staalplaat verandert dat saaie lawaaiding echter in een bijzonder spektakel. Verbonden aan honderden speelgoedtoeters en allerlei prularia zorgt dit voor een uniek visueel en auditief spektakel. Na een bezoekje aan het “concert voor 60 stofzuigers” zal je mening over de stofzuiger niet meer zijn wat ze was.

Met zijn vierarmige draaitafel en een arsenaal van zestig verbouwde (met plastic buizen, flessen en speelse blaasinstrumenten getunede) stofzuigers, was Staalplaatstichter Geert-Jan Hobijn de opvallendste verschijning op het Oorsmeer Festival. Trouw aan het opzet van Oorsmeer bracht Staalplaat Soundsystem, voor de gelegenheid uitgedost als vuilnisman, een opgewekte set met kindvriendelijke collages. Gonzo hoorde een Berlijns hart tikken in deze Nederlandse installatiebouwer.
Door Peter Vercauteren/Gonzo

Jumpy Germanyness was a concert for brass orchestra and vacuum cleaners at garage festival, with Dick El demasiado, (IBW) 26. July 2003 in Stralsund.

Geographically the cumbia music is attributed to Colombia. This popular and very friendly music style has generated variations in all Latin American countries. Antropologically the cumbia has nourished itself from various sources: indigenous, African and European traditions. As far as the European tradition is concerned the German »copper-instruments/horns« (as well as the accordeon) have given the cumbia a definite colouring. We can stipulate that a certain type of cumbia has picked up German brass band and speeded it up, giving it it’s jumping character with a specific percussion and baseline. If we would want to reverse the process, we could go back to Germany and have a brass band play a »cumbia« at half speed. In this way we would get a trajectory: German consistency >>>> colombia jumpiness >>>> jumpy germanyness. (or colombian consistency!)

Through the festival, a brass band is invited to be directed in this framework of musical adventure.
The method would be:
- A local experienced amateur brass band is willing and prepared to participate.
- They send Dick their repertoire, so he can choose 3 to 5 potential songs susceptible to be morphed into »cumbias«.
- One or two days before the performance there will be a couple of rehearsals. Dick seeks a »musical position« to be able to sing in this framework.
- The sound will be mixed into the P.A. and recorded in an unusual way (sound-effects and echo, etc…).
- The band musicians will not hear this through the monitoring and will be able to carry on in their habitual frame of musicianship, undistracted by Hooly-Gully engineering.
The staalplaat soundsystem will accompany the orchestra with his own vacuum cleaner version of a brass band. We will have to find an adequate word for this new populistic measure of Alle Menschen Werden Bruder-ness.

Installation for 60 vacuumcleaners and 2 cement mixers, at the ENCI Cement factory
CEMENT festival Maatsricht 28 & 29 March 2003

Selectief luisteren Wie zich het kan veroorloven zal zijn eigen huis ontvluchten wanneer daar gestofzuigd wordt. Het geluid van een stofzuiger kan mensen tot razernij of tot passieve moedeloosheid brengen.
Wie alleen de aankondiging: “Concert voor 60 stofzuigers” leest zal zich dan ook afvragen of hij of zij zich daar aan moet wagen. Maar wie 28 en 29 maart de ENCI fabriek bezocht heeft in het kader van het cementfestival zal daar toch iets anders over gaan denken. 60 stofzuigers , in groepjes verspreid rondom het publiek, bliezen dat het een lieve lust was.
In eerste instantie ingezet als accentuering bij de door een dj gedraaide platen, namen de met fluitjes en fietsbanden getooide apparaten het bij wijlen over. Wat ondergetekende bij deze performance het meest opviel was dat zijn in vel jaren zorgvuldig opgebouwde agressie tegen de stofzuiger omsloeg in een sympathie. Het opvallendste was echter dat de motoren van de stofzuigers niet meer te horen waren. Als ik thuis nou ook zo selectief zou kunnen luisteren dan kan ik me mijn wekelijkse vlucht naar buiten besparen.
Johan Luijmes

Kling Klang, Ancien Hopital, Lille France, 12. October 2002
When we first asked Geert-Jan Hobijn to install some of his machines for LES CHANTS MÉCANIQUES, we just proposed him a huge place to invest. In fact an ancient hospital, built during the Middle Age and called “Hospice Comtesse”, a part of which being known as “La Salle des Malades”. Ill he wasn’t, but mad were the sounds he imagined for this place. Or not, finally, because -even if it’s not really the project he had on his mind, lack of time, but perhaps another year, dear Geert-Jan ?-, “Suck it Baby, A Lullaby in a Kitchen” has found its own place.

You need a visit ?
Some of the children standing in front of the eight beds were waiting for something to happen. “Could I be surprised ?” Some of their parents were laughing -discreetly, of course-, searching in their memories where they could have left their last waterwhistles, “well, was it in my cupboard when I was nine ; but could it be music with these kinds of vacuum cleaners and odd whistles ? Was it a joke ?” Some of the musicians being used to play in such a festival were wondering about the relationship between those hospital beds and the complete range of perfect DJ’s. “Could it be electronic music or just another strange sound-installation ?”

Not really. It was simply a concert. More precisely : several concerts, every half an hour, to alternate or to use combinations with “Pianoplayer” of LOGOS or “Cantan Huevo” of Peter BOSCH for a new noise symphony. Sometimes ambient music to emphasise Edith Piaf’s voice, or techno beat with yelling birds, sometimes ‘art brut’ drum’n'bass with vacuum cleaners engines or music for blowing wind in fifty bottles. You’d better had to be back each hour to follow STAALPLAAT’s exercises, and listen to the different musical waves.

And also to look at the smiles. When people get in the Hospice, they smiled because of their surprise, and when they were listening to the music with wide-opened eyes (”where does this sound comes from, will this little bird whistle when I look at it ? What’s the use of this bottle with ten plastic toys ?”), it was because this music was really made for the ears and the eyes, with children’s memories and also electronic. A joke. And not a joke. An hospital
sound that could cure us. For our pleasure.

11-11-02 - Emmanuel Vinchon, LES CHANTS MÉCANIQUES

at some time in early 2002 - an email arrives from america which says it would be a nice idea to hold a running vacuum cleaner in a can of gasoline.  (you can imagine what a spark within the engine will do to the liquid.) who is crazy enough to do that? some time later -100 vacuum cleaners, 6 flamethrowers, 120 kg propane gas, 50 hair dryers, about 400 toy flutes, pipes, toots, horns, 100 plastic water bottles, a field of 30 x 15 meters, 600 m electro cables, 400 m gas hoses, 100 m cordon rope, 10 electro controlled valves, 4 sirens, 1 four-point-soundsystem (10 kw), 1 four-arm-turntable, 2 four-channel-light organs, 2 four-channel-relay switch boxes, 3 different power current circuits, tons of fuses, 6 people within the fence, 400 people behind it watching the show and 1 geert-jan hobijn from staalplaat sound system in the middle of all of it. 26.07. 7:43 pm - the driver is hit by an avalanche of vacuum cleaners when he tries to carefully open the back door of the van - the first transport has arrived. 05.08. - geert-jan follows with his up to the roof packed car, which, in case of a police control, would surely have been stopped for arms smuggling. 06.08. - the whole ground level (600 square meters) of the storage building has been declared as a fiddling space.

up to 5 people work from 9 in the morning till late in the night. here is where the x liters of hot glue and the x meters of gaffa went. the vacuum cleaners are refunctioned from sucking air to blowing air and custumized with the toy instruments. they also get a hose inlet for the propane gas. meanwhile bastiaan maris has arrived and is taking care of the preparation of the fire work. 07.08. - more gluing and taping and testing and fiddling. bastiaan maris leaves and is never seen again. 08.08. 7:00 am - geert-jan hobijn fights very hard for every single parking space on the field of the show and explains furious car holders the danger they will be in. 9:00 am - the space fills with funny looking techno animals, formerly known as vacuum cleaners. there are still some cars from the day before on the field. 11:00 am - “are you repairing these?” - “are you selling these?” - “do you need any more of these?” 12:00 noon - flamethrowers, gas bottles get in position. Every circuit of vacuum cleaners gets stearing cables and gas hoses. 3:00 pm - “what are you doing - a concert?”

the sound system is set up. still some cars on the field. 5:00 pm - test runs. the flamethrowers are unexpectedly loud and hot. thinking of cancelling the show. “when does it start?” the sky is darkening. the technicians plan to carry the remaining cars by hand from the field. 6:00 pm - the police can’t give out the adresses of the car holders, but is friendly enough to call and ask them to remove their vehicles. 7:00 pm- they do. 8:00 pm - sound check, double cordening of the space. 9:00 pm - people start showing up. last security checks. 9:50 pm - the local fire brigade arrives. so we are ready to rock. the space is packed. 10:00 pm - “when you ask me what is going to happen - i have no idea. when you ask me if it is dangerous - i can’t tell. my grandfather used to say it is dangerous only to cross the street.”, geert-jan hobijn greets the audience. 10:05 pm - a minimal beat in a high frequency pulses over the space. very quiet. particles of bird chirping coming from the right side move slowly to the left. pieces of conversation. the beat is getting louder. some of the vacuum cleaners seem to awake, thin bird-voices from the very right corner with a subtone of the engines tune in the beat. relais are clicking. a deep bass sound starts to trigger another group of cleaners playing fluttering rubber tubes. group after group is tuning in. shrill pipes and warm horns, waterfilled twittering flutes.

hobijn puts soundlayer over soundlayer, cut-outs of sci-fi radioplays and fragments of classical bombast. totally lost in the sound and in absolute control of it at the same time. silence. boooooom. a 6 meter high jet of flame goes in the air. the beat is back. a fuse blows. on three places firecolumns rise with very loud explosions right in the beat of the ongoing soundcollage and light the whole place. technicians run around. switching. unplugging cables, changing cables. fuse blows. hobijn plays marschmusik. the vacuum cleaners are getting hoarse. the audience is screaming: “louder”. fuse blows. relais won’t switch the flamethrowers anymore. 10:35 - technicians are still running. hobijn is playing two turntables, one with four needles on the record and two cd-players with one hand, with the other one he is switching the flamethrowers manually in the rhythm. volume comes down, the vacuum cleaners are getting silent, single small flames fumping out of the cannons. only an ambient noise fills the air for minutes. four sirens start slowly to wail. that means the vacuum cleaners are about to jump. technicians are running, all gas valves are opened. beat is back - triggering the engines of the cleaners. nothing. gas is floating in the cleaners. nothing. you can see the propane in the transparent hoses bubble - liquid. nothing. you can smell the gas around the whole place. 11:00 pm - decision to stop. too dangerous. some last sequences of explosions out of the flamethrowers. show is over. vacuum cleaners have survived. some days later: an e-mail went backt to america: “german vacuum cleaners are built too safe…”

Sweet Sissy and the Ballroom Hiss was a concert performance for the 6th Vooruit Geluid Festival in Ghent Belgium, 26.-30. March, 2002. The idea for this project came under the impression of the Vooruit building and of the spaces especially the big concert hall. We built a huge installation for 12 industrial floor polishers, a whole range of household equipment (coffeemachines, mixers…) and technical tools. Downstairs the floor polishers were dancing in what seemed to be a choreography, on the balconies the other equipment was commenting the whole event in its own rattling way. The result was impressive to say the least: our concert hall, which usually hosts rock concerts and dance-parties for about 1200 people, was now the scene of a Sissy-esque electric ballroom experience, with the floor polishers as spastic ballroom dancers and the other machines as enthusiastic side-actors. Eva De Groote, Music Department Arts Centre Vooruit.

Sweet Sissy and the Ballroom Hiss at Vooruit Gent 2002

Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL), Carlo Crovato (GB)

For the opening of a Staalplaat design exhibition at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Rostock on 21. April 2001 we showed a version of lullaby in kitchenland.
A lullaby in kitchenland is the name for the staalplaat sounsystem live set playing with all sorts of instruments made from consumer electronics and household utillities.

Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL)

For Club nuit électronique Festival International in Maubeuge, France on , 31. March 2001 we showed a version of lullaby in kitchenland.
A lullaby in kitchenland is the name for the staalplaat sounsystem live set playing with all sorts of instruments made from consumer electronics and household utillities.

Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL) + Carlo Crovato (GB)