Sale Away was commissioned by the European Media Art Festival (EMAF) in Osnabrueck, 2004. The piece was installed in a popular shopping street in Osnabrueck and was designed to actively engage passerby’s. Sale Away invited people to play with a complex mechanical sound orchestra installed in a shop front using their mobile phones.
The mechanical orchestra consists of customised household appliances, like several antique tumble dryers that bump and spin across the floor, a buzzing swarm of kazoos played by a rack of suspended vacuum cleaners, rattling kitchen mixers, buzzing ventilators, radio playing toy trains, and other electrical appliances which might normally be found in a shop window. The various sound devices are arranged in eight groups. To start the orchestra and wake up the shop window, passers-by can dial the number posted on the window. This call triggers the opening of the fridge door, revealing an animated mobile-phone robot person displayed on a monitor inside the fridge. The robot invites the passers-by to “play” the orchestra through their phone with simple dial commands. Visitors can play the instruments and compose using the sound loop combinations. People can walk through the installation among the instruments, look at the many details, discover the various single inventions and be surprised by suddenly starting instruments in their back. The installation is playing with the irritations caused by the recontextualisation of every day household utilities and provokes talkative reactions from the audience. Sale Away can be seen as playful criticism of consumerism or an exercise in creative recycling.

Technical description:
The first thing the player sees is a refrigerator with a phone number written on it.
When the player calls this number, Calling this number triggers the opening of the fridge door, revealing an animated mobile-phone robot person displayed on a monitor inside the fridge. The player can activate any of the objects in the room by pressing keys on their mobile.
Pressing key “1″ starts a basic melody, pressing key “3″, for example, dancing tumble dryers. Key “7″, on the other hand, could be Vacuum cleaners playing various flutes . Pressing the same key again silences that “voice” of the orchestra. When pressing “* keys will select one of the eight sound channels and #” changes the basic loops. The music can be composed using eight independent sound loops which can be played and changed separately.  The player can control all sounds and different instruments, he can change the character from a silent minimal to a loud, powerful and playful and complex one.
The time per session is limited to 5 minutes.

There have been differing versions of Sale Away in Tschumipavijloen in Groningen, Todays Art Festival in Den Haag and at the opening of Steirischer Herbst in Graz. The piece was also used as a framework for a 4 day workshop at the MOCA in Taipei.
Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL), Carsten Stabenow (D) and Olaf Matthes (D)

“I went several times along at your installation and I’am always surprised to see that the installation reaches/attracts very different people. Kids, people returning from shopping- opening the fridge, people returning to the installation to show it to their friends, etc. Typical communication: 1)person: What is this? 2)person: This is art. Aha- Look there-Does it really work? I’am sure you would like to see these smiling faces at your work as well.Best wishes” (Alfred Rotert, EMAF, 21.-25. April 2004)

>>> see all SALE AWAY installations versions