Staalplaat soundsystem and Lola have met during a 5 moth art in public space resicentie at the Zuidas in Amsterdam, a brand new banking quarter.
It was in this period that we have spend long discussions on sound in public space, from simple practical solutions like wind driven percussion instruments that visitors can use to compose, to fundamental working principals.
It was there where we were impressed by the working similarities and contrast between our disciplines.
Besides the obvious differences there are many similarities between sound art and architecture in arranging and composing public space
Working with function, material and volume but from a different perspective to the same problem.

In Composed City we want to show the direct relationship between public space and sound and place it in a broad perspective -historical, present-day, theory and praxis- by means of lectures, presentations and workshops dealing with public space in the city, approached from the view of sound art as well as landscape architecture resulting in a sound art work in public space. Composed city will take place in the preparation of the Berlin festival Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation in May and June.

Program
During the lectures a broad overall view is given on the position of sound and public space, historical and practical, then we’ll slowly focus on the points where sound art and landscape architecture interact. In practice: the first lectures begin with a historical overview of the entire field, the lectures on the present will be more focused on sound art in public space, and the presented artist will be specialized on a field were the architectural and public conditions of the space is a elementary part of their work. We have invited Mark Bain - Edwin van de Heide, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Carsten Nicolai.

The workshops will focus on the praxis and deal with artistic concepts and practical obstacles on the road to realization of a composition with urban facts. The workshops will result in a sound art composition - spatial as well as sonic - that reveals, emphasizes and uses the sounds of the urban landscape were in contact with local architects to select lacerations that will be the turned in to a urban instrument.

“Made In Taiwan” invites people to play with a complex mechanical sound orchestra, installed in the museum by using their mobile phones. The students have made a mechanical orchestra consists of modified, hacked, changed and customised, electronic household devices like vacuum cleaners playing flute, organ and brass, rattling kitchen mixers, buzzing ventilators, and humming refrigerators. In order to wake up the installation and start the orchestra, passers-by dial a telephone number. The call opens the door of the fridge, revealing a “mobile-phone robot person”. When they start pressing the buttons, the various modified household appliances come to live and begin to make a noise: the funny electrical music of recycled everyday objects. The main interest of the Staalplaat workshop is to involve passers-by in such a process of interaction and communication. Their method for achieving this is turning normal simple things around and upside down, by changing their function, by radical recontextualization and reconfiguration. Always with a lot of humour, in order to make ensure enjoyment for the audience.

Made In Taiwan workshop/installation at MOCA Taipei

The Yokomono-installation is built from around two hundred radios. As each killer will play its own record – each one is locked groove record made by Staalplaat for the installation – it opens up a separate audio stream. It thereby generates and controls a multi-channel sound system. By arranging the radios in groups it becomes possible to explore the architectural dimensions of the space. Some radios are tuned to the same frequency, and here Staalplaat uses small battery operated radios on sets of the train models to map the transmission in the space, for it will drive through the interfering frequencies.
The Yokomono set-up in the MOCA is a combinationof the live concert version and the installation version, it will be played live by members of Staalplaat Soundsystem.
Soon images of the installation, and live set of the Staalplaat soundsystem participation in ZONE V2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei will be posted here.

Yokomono performance at MOCA Taipei

For the Stuttgarter Filmwinter we did a Philharmechanic Workshop with kid’s building instruments from old vacuumcleaners and all sorts of toy-instruments and other noise making things. The workshop resulted in a performance of the kid’s as Young Philharmechanic Orchestra Stuttgart. The orchestra was conducted on a simply number-based system, the kid’s used flash lights on the half dark stage to switch on and of their instruments while iluminating them. For this we prepared light sensitive switching boxes for the single instruments.

foto: marian murat

At Avanto festival we gave an instrument workshop for children aged 9 to 12 at the Ateneum Art Museum. The result of the workshop was performed by SSS together with the young participants of the workshop at the Kiasma Theatre under the title Staalplaat Soundsystem & The Helsinki Filharmechanic Youth Orchestra. The orchestra was conducted on a simply number-based system, the kid’s used flash lights on the half dark stage to switch on and of their instruments while iluminating them. For this we prepared light sensitive switching boxes for the single instruments. The performance was a part of Kids’ Avanto.

Staalplaat Soundsystem & The Helsinki Filharmechanic Youth Orchestra at Kiasma Theatre on Sunday, November 20th at 19:30.

This workshop held at the HFG in Karlsruhe was trying to explore the potentials of dead computers as msusic and sound making instruments. Half circuit bending, half hardware hacking - the workshop ended after 3 funny days in a concert with all the students.

At the AKI Festival at University Enschede (Netherlands) we did a 3 day machine instrument and interface building workshop from 27-29 april 2004.

We invited the AKI students to select a public location at the university campus and to develop a installation for that spot. We worked  on the special characteristics and needs of this location. The students selected a big three at a centrals meeting place and build a glass sound organ triggered by wind that controlled a set of sound machines.

At Royal art academy at Stockholm we did a 5 day vinyl treatment workshop end of January 2002.