Membranes (long video) Original

Audiovisual performance and installation, 2017

By Nicola Hein & Lukas Truniger

Exploring the boundaries where music and language overlap, Nicola L. Hein and Lukas Truniger use hybrid instruments – constructed from drum-skins and electronic components – as devices to turn written texts into pulses of light and percussive sound. As each machine translation emerges, the network of instruments starts to share the texts, transforming written material into aesthetic, visual and sonic patterns, for the performers and spectators to further interact with. Extrapolating from the example of the African talking drum, Membranes builds up an altogether new kind of tone language, constantly shifting and adapting itself before the viewer and performers alike.

The instruments form a reactive network of semantic and aesthetic actors: a play of forms, light and sound unfolds between them. Following historical archetypes musical communication instruments and seeking to create a speculative acoustic interaction space, this audio-visual installation and performance offers a new alternative communication environment.

In its installation form, the work shows sentences generated by an algorithm which analyzes a database of various theoretical texts about the relation between music and language. A dialogue between the independent object-instruments takes place and establishes a network of dead agents – transformed algorithms – that testify both to a form of communication that is historically rooted in a cultural tradition and a hypothetical language spoken in a world after the Web’s demise.

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Supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council; DICRéAM; Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Foundation and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains

Scenographic advisor: Marie Lelouche