Deterritoriale Schlingen

Photographs © Thom Kubli

A sound space is stretched by 11 transmitters, that dynamically form loops (Schlingen). This loop room (Schlingenraum) is individually sensed by the auditor-recipient. From partial perception emerges a public. The recipients interrelate actively and interact with the sender. Sender and receiver perform themselves reciprocally.

The radio is a wide-spread low cost technology. The principle of “wireless transmitting”provides the possibility of a potential recipience in any desired location. It is not bound to physical structures like cable or installed networks, yet undergoes the visual connected anchor of an euclidic perception of space.

Digitally fragmented sounds and beat loops are processed by means of a self-reflexive algorithm and arranged in 11 channels. On the basis of the preceding events, new structures are perpetually generated in real time. The relationship between particular sounds describes dynamic and tonal sound spaces that move in field structures.

Photographs © Thom Kubli

The sounds are broadcast via 11 short-range FM radio transmitters with different frequencies and obtain their spatial representation via the positioning of the receivers. The receivers are cheap commercial mobile radios, pocket radios, ghettoblasters, brought by the recipients. These populate the room in variable groups, or are spread over various rooms and outdoor spaces and ideally are moved by the recipients. Through the recipients topological rearrangement of the radio receivers, a potential restructuring characterises the spatial discontinuity.

The acoustic approach to a spatical understanding deterritorialises the visible spatial boundaries. Through superposition and “looping” (entanglement) of senders and recepients constitute transient, public spatialities. By sending acoustic partials the space is utilized. The recepients form the sound structure topologically, they enter into a performance with the senders.
(thanks to Nils Röller)

Deterritoriale Schlingen is a collaboration with physicist Sven Mann and philosopher Nils Röller.
Material: Multi channel FM-transmitter unit, approx. 60 radiosets, video screen, computer, wiring | Audio Material: Field recordings, fragments of popmusic, electronic beatloops, excerpts of poststructuralist readings (e.g. Foucault, Lyotard) | Dimensions: Variable; minimum extension: 50 m2 | Year: 2002-2004

Premiered in the US under the name Determinale Verschweifungen in 2004 (New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC).

Credits

Realized with kind support of Goethe-Institute New York, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC, Transmediale Berlin, Academy of Media Arts Cologne