Signal chain for aesthetics of the foreign

In the 21st century, social relationships are increasingly mediated by digital correlations. In these digital contexts we are permanently operating with people we do not know. Accordingly, in the digital world, the fear of the foreign does not exist.

The work wants to engender an Aesthetic of the foreign that scrutinises if fear of the foreign can still be considered as relevant in our contemporary world or if it has become a historical relict?

In this sound installation microphones and loudspeakers are interconnected with a system of acoustic spatialisation technologies consisting of a vocoder, a Korg Stage Echo, and a Roland Space Echo – today, both are classic almost cultic tape reverberation devices for spatial alienation of acoustic signals such as sound and voice. In the background of the stage, a projection screen passively illuminates the scene.

Between these technical crossings of the signal chain, the artist has to traverse the course, again and again, in order to participate and influence the acoustic signal flow through the local operation of the devices.

In the course of the sound installation, vocal sounds are alienated, questioned, and explored acoustically-plastically. Voices are forming traces, streaks of sound, layers of words, and reverberations – an acoustic archive of what has just been experienced that always performs at the transition point between de-construction and re-construction. It continuously engenders a foreign, even multiple processual version of the “me”, which can then be activated, re-edited, distorted, and selectively sampled from the source material at any time.

Maybe we are at our best, when we reach out for a self we do not know (yet) – by doing so, we learn.