Detailed information on all our projects you can find in the menue >>>>

Since its inception in 2000, Staalplaat Soundsystem has created a multitude of Machine Installations using all manner of consumer electronics. The machine performances include “Sweet Sissy and the Ballroom Hiss” starring 12 floor polishers, and “Avantilator” a composition for one hundred electric office fans.
At the heart of this work is a low-tech philosophy, the aim is to make installations appear simple, revealing rather than concealing how they are made. Our next step was “Floating Islands”, a large sound/light installation in public space created for the opening of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Berlin. In this piece we create a floating orchestra composed of fifty vacuum cleaners, plastic bottles and lights. The interactive element of our work is another developing theme. The installation “Sale Away” made for the EMAF was a democratic piece that explored the influence of the public on the work; by simply using their mobile phones people were able to play a complex mechanical orchestra.

“Yokomono” is the Staalplaat Mono Erosive Surround Sound Installation.
The present setup consists of 10 vinyl killers, each customised with its own fm transmitter. The sound will come through a set of radios that receives the signal transmitted by the vinyl killers. You might think Yokomono is just a DJ set with 10 turntables, and in a way that is correct but in many more ways Yokomono is completely different. This project exists as performance and as installation version.

Perhaps the most interesting confrontation between the public and our work is “Sonic Therapy”, an installation intended to give individual, personal sonic experiences. This work not only allows us to work on a very individual level with the public but also offers the possibility to collaborate with other sound artists.

»Architectone« is  not to create sound art in public space but with public space, to use public space as an musical instrument.For  the first “Architone” in Kiel we created unique instrument/machines to produce physically powerful sound waves such that the entire building became acoustically resonant, tangible, and alive. For the Tuned City Festival in Berlin we applied the Architone ideas to a public park under the name of COMPOSEDCITY, a co-production of Lola landscape architects and Staalplaat. Bringing the two disciplines of landscape architecture and sound art together, we worked to analyse and develop public space acoustically using the energy and motion already present.
For the Today’s Art festival in Den Haag, in collaboration with Mike Reinirse, Erik Hobijn and Mark Bain, we applied Architone principles to the Den Haag Central train-station. To explore the train station sound as a source and control and transform it into an new instrument, we used the back and forth movement of as the faders for the mixing of 10 train horns and station sounds.
The Staalplaat Soundsystem is now working on the new Architone project Yokomono-pro, developed for the Indian Khoj – International Artists Association in New Delhi.
The incredible volume and size of Indian traffic, and the sounds it produced is our inspiration for this project. Their communication language is by car horn much, signalling with it, much the way we use car signal lights here in Europe. Applying the Architone practice we seek to intercept this phenomenon of car signalling and overlay it within a meaningful structure. Our idea is to hire with 30 of the Auto’s and to remotely trigger their horns as they drive along a programmed route. Using the taxis and their horns as choir it will be a combination of voice patterns and dynamic spatial movements creating sound choreographs. This taxi horn experiment hopes to engage on a large scale with the relationship between discrete signals and generalised noise,  The première was presented in August 2008 at the India Art Summit

And we have a series of (kids) workshops and Lectures

Detailed information on all our projects you can find in the menue >>>>