Categories
audio pieces installation works

subs T tube

4 channel audio installation, sound system for mechanical sound transmission on pipes and tin cans, postcard, cleaning smock, 16 min
CLUB, Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch Berlin, 2023

subs T tube
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023

Subs T Tube, stages a fictitious music practice as it could take place in the near future. To reach his audience beyond established channels, DJ Plumper uses the sound transmission properties of pipes leading into public toilets to make his music audible there. In this way, he also avoids censorship and copyright lawsuits from an AI that already owns the rights to all sounds and all music in the year 2053. He announces his DJ sets on empty loo rolls, placed on site.
(Music and lyrics: Christoph Rothmeier, voices: Filomeno Fusco + Christoph Rothmeier )

subs T tube
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023
subs T tube
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023
subs T tube
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023
Categories
audio pieces installation works

have you seen my eyes

Gdzie są o-czy me ?

8 canal audio installation, 40 min,
Maiseh, 31. Jewish Culture Festival Krakow (Pl) 2022

have you seen my eyes?
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023

In the front garden of St Catherine’s Church in Krakow, 8 loudspeakers hang freely from the trees, moving slightly with the wind. You can hear a choir singing in Polish and Ukrainian. Each loudspeaker is assigned a single voice of the choir. The visitor virtually wanders through the choir and between the singers.
In the “Book of Polish Jews”, Shmuel Yosef Agnon writes that after the death of his legendary lover, Esterka, King Casimir the Great kept her eyes and let her spirit wander restlessly around the earth.
“have you seen my eyes” describes Esterka searching for her eyes. She speaks directly to the listener “have you seen my eyes ?” and tells him in 6 scenarios how it feels to be a restless spirit, and what she actually sees, robbed of her eyes.
Over the duration of the piece and the course of the story, 3 elementary forms of composition alternate again and again:

  1. vocal part, a motif that takes up the motet (polyphonic vocal music from the 13th century onwards). 2. the interaction of the singers with the reverberation in the recording room (Wysoka Synagogue in Krakow). And 3. the reading of the 6 scenarios.

Music and text: Christoph Rothmeier
with the voices of: Ruzyndla Choir: Wiktoria Sędzimir, Weronika Sędzimir, Małgorzata Międlarz, Przemysław Ćwik, Dawid Rozmus, Rita Rain, Oleksandr Mazii and Kateryna Sakhanda
Photos: Michael Ramus

31.jewishfestival.pl

have you seen my eyes?
audio installation
Christoph Rothmeier
2023

A language version in English can also be played via QR code and smartphone loudspeaker.

Categories
audio pieces installation sound design

aestivation stage

audioinstallation, 3 audio pieces for listening boothes, each 30min, future perfect land, berlin, chr 2021

aestivation stage
audioinstallation
Christoph Rothmeier 2021
aestivation stage
audioinstallation
Christoph Rothmeier 2021
aestivation stage
audioinstallation
Christoph Rothmeier 2021

” In order to save resources, we will have gone into hibernation. By having slept for more than 75% of our lives, we will have secured the survival of generations of people. Inside of an individual “Aestivation Stage” – its exact origin unknown – we will have spent nine months per year in a collective slumber. A civilization centered around societal dormancy will have been regulating humanity’s rhythm of falling asleep and awakening, gradually leaving its traces on our psyche… “

https://futureperfectland.com/

https://www.christophrothmeier.de/aestivation-stage/

Categories
audio pieces

the 1984 step

sitespecific audiowalk for walkman, moritzplatz berlin, tracks in box, chr 2019

inlet 1
tape inlet, credits + map

„ Thank you for pressing the Play button, you can clip the walkman on your belt now !“


The 1984 step, is a site specific audio piece that is designed especially for portable audio cassette tape player with headphone (walkman). It aims to guide you, nevertheless to its technical limitations, through an interactive parcours of urban phenomena and ideas, and how they appear to sight at Moritzplatz. Different Perspectives, from real and fictive Persons from 1984,2019 and 2053, are arranged like pieces of different puzzles to describe the Moritzplatz in its lively diversity, while the walking parcours is laid out by minimal guidelines and some unsettling instructions.

pict -1984
foto, julia kawa

The 1984 step wants to take you back to a feeling when listening to a head phone, and seeing someone listening to a headphone is something new.

Special Thanks to :

Merve Verlag Berlin for the permission to use Excerpts of „the walkman-effect“ (Popular music 4 (1984)) by Shuhei Hosokawa, Merve Verlag Gmbh 1987

The animal-soundarchive of the Museums für Naturkunde Berlin for the access and use of animal recordings. (for the detailed list please see casette-inlet)

The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum for the access to the archive.

inlet 2
Categories
audio pieces installation performance

stable timeline collapse

audio installation / concert, Pyramid Club ,Wellington (NZ), chr 2019

This sitespecific audio installation investigates the fragility of musical systems and the joy of misunderstandings in it’s social practice. Hanging instruments become resonating bodies for recorded voices of musicians who explain their view on local music practice and their perception of time. These statements become play instructions for other musicians to interact with inside the installation piece.

Performers: Erica Grant, Nell Thomas, Jörg Hochapfel, Isaac Smith

Interviewees: Daniel Beban, Mark Williams, Chrissie Butler, and Kids from the Thordon School.

Categories
audio pieces performance

uneasy melodies #2

Sound performance with range finder, Arduino and Pure Data, 9 min Wunderblock 2018 , Berlin Eichenwalde, 2018, Densidad Cero, MACO musea del arte contemporana Oaxaca, Mexico, chr 2015

Text Display :
The subjective exploration of the nave architecture is translated into acoustic signals and set to music thus a still unresolved relationship between architecture, room acoustics and musical ambitions. While posture and movement act like natural instruments on the improvisation, the repetitive search for melody, as it is generally architecture, leads to an euphoria-inhibiting performance of the technical experimental arrangement.

Categories
audio pieces installation

more off

radio play and installation, 180 min, 2018

more off is a radio play always in the making.
In the twisted sense of science fiction, events from the present and clues from the real from the present and circumstantial evidence from the real world places, situations and persons in the past and influence the scenario of the radio play. of the radio play. Thus, the sound studio, installed without technical equipment studio, (mixing desk made of end-grain wood veneer with an endlessly knob, markings “off” and “more off”) is already a real place already a real place before it gets a role in the radio play, and the psychadelic jazz Band called Kröter, has already released 3 albums, while the events that led to their formation just take place in the 60s.

Lyrics, music, Kröter props: Christoph Rothmeier
Voice: Henry Sargeant

Open Studios, Naumannpark Berlin, 2018

more off ( in progress )
Text excerpts audio play 2018

(Excerpt interview, tape recording, 13.11.1984 Gunter German Grunters about Madame’s actual musical creation, based on his seamless, swamp-like memory. approx. 360 min.)

[…
Radio host (M):
“Mr. German Grunters, you possess the gift or the curse not to forget anything of what you have experienced. Is that right ? “
Gunter German Grunters (GGG):
“Wrong and right, you know that no one believes me for a long time, I am very alone with my memory, the single memory quasi”
M: “You allude with your word creation “single memory” to the concept of the one-room apartment of the memory, is that correct ?”
GGG: “Wrong or right so that believes who wants. Now there is however in my private reality a transposed version of the experienced, in which it is possible for me events from the past to order and from the past and to locate them.”
M: “She had already described this place to me before the broadcast, it is a kind of a doll’s house, a half-timbered manor as they were in the 18th century, at the time of the (sound disturbance ) in the Alsace originated. Right ?”
GGG: ” No that’s wrong, I didn’t say that.”
M:” But you had … that was just 5 min ago.”
GGG: “Well, your memory has clearly played a trick on you.
M:” I could swear…”
GGG: ” But not prove…”
M:” Oh … Please continue…”
GGG: ” The place, if you are interested in the description of the place, this place of my Memory, so it strongly resembles the architecture of a swamp.”
M:” actually (…. at once ) a swamp architecture, and this originated like (very quietly:… in the last 5 min) ? .”
GGG: ” the frogs.”
M: ” aja … amphibians, …several ?”
GGG: ” a bag of frogs, my jute bag of tree frogs”.
M: ” They emptied their portable terrarium into the memory and a swamp was created. Right ?”
GGG: ” Wrong. First of all, I outsourced what I experienced, my brain could only store all the information from my 16ten years of age store all information, before that I use tree frogs.”
M:” You use tree frogs as a storage medium !”
GGG: ” I suck them”.
M:” How do amphibians taste….”
GGG: ” a little more differentiated than other storage media. In any case, they do not lose their individual taste, which makes them distinguishable among themselves and even without labeling to a reliable storage medium.
M:” Storage medium.”
GGG: ” The saliva is, of course, part of the archiving process as a lubricant of the experience and that works both ways. In nostalgic moments, of course, I also sucked the past past and relive it. For example, my first kiss.
M:” You had a tree frog in your mouth during your first kiss.”
GGG: ” In very emotional moments, a frog was not enough. At the time of my first love, I salivated up to 4 tree frogs a day. The simultaneous affair with Madame forced me to change me to redesign the whole memory system and to create the swamp. Just in time in time before the first frogs extinguished themselves.
M:” Thanks to the memory-decoded tree frogs, you were able to access a complete swamp of your of the experience. Do they like music ?”
…]

( Excerpt Narrative, Lacandonian Rainforest Festival 1964 )
[…
“How do they even play the guitar they are a toad.”
” With the heart.”
” Ah …yes of course …. well, and so how does your heart move your fingers over the sides and the frets ?”
” Actually quite normal, but in the context of the Marichiaband I play in I am forced to use a certain technique, it has less to do with picking frets, it’s more like massaging the frets.
it’s more like massaging the sides. I massage the sides in the frequency of my heart.
The impulse of my body thus amplifies the sound of the guitar. Transmitted through my fingers to the sides, and my chest to the body of the guitar. I create a pulsating envelope
of rhythmically changing air density, which dampens the trebles and mids of the brass
and pushes corridors into the air for my guitar playing.”
“I now imagine little guitar notes riding on a big wave, making their way through a sea of clanging trumpets.”
“Why this belittlement and why surf ?”
” hmmm … yes why just, of course … sorry “
The light of the day becomes softer and the contours of the shadows softer. A long corridor does between leaves and bushes and slowly turns into a cathedral vault that passes over their heads as they wander deeper into the Lacandon jungle of Yaxshilan.
of Yaxshilan. Through the branches come the calls of howler monkeys, songbirds and strangely electric crashing of butterflies. The green of the forest changes by a breath into damp shiny dark blue, while the light of the evening emits a lightly veined purple. His engagement with Madame, explains the Toad, there is not really a contract and moreover, the notes sent to him seem to have been mixed up.
She must have confused the written and the blank block. Only on one
strangely numbered pages, there is a strange constellation of notes in the center, more of a
constellation of notes, more resembling a heap, an ant gathering or a depla
or a deplacement of the notes caused by shaking to a sediment in a depression of order. It could have been a contemporary “hoevre” of art-music intersection, but frankly it was neither
overlap, but frankly it was neither clear in design nor did it send a subversive “play me” signal, just a heap of notes.
me” signal, just a heap of notes just, surely an oversight.
But what did he, the toad, know about it, it was just a feeling that kept him in this loop of indecision.
indecision, score or just paper, depending on the perspective.
Grunter had been in joyful excitement since the Toad revealed his commitment to Madame.
However, he concealed his love affair with Madame, not only that, but he also hid the contents of his burlap bag from the Toad. …]
[… From the toad only a light ripple on the fog cover is to be seen and thus offers Grunter offers, the toad can take place, on his head, he will be particularly attentive what
branches protruding into the path.
While Grunter follows the path enchanted by fog and moonlight, the clearly perceptible
heartbeat of the toad pleasantly orders his thoughts. Similar to countless small
black sticks that bump into each other in the shallow waves at the edge of a lake, swirl around and thus constantly renegotiate the space given to them. The initially cool damp belly on his head meanwhile adapted to both of your body temperatures. The
toad’s lower jaw rests on the base of Grunter’s forehead, and its forelegs with tassel fingers hold on to his temples.
hold on to his temples. She’s docking, Grunter notes. The pulsing toad’s heart
approaches his scalp, sinks very slowly through the top of his skull with the rhythm of his footsteps, and lingers quietly throbbing in the space between his temples. These in turn are gently
a circular massage, caused by the interaction of the small holding toad hands and the toad hands and the up and down Grunter’s steps. All movements swing in. Weightlessly the jungle swings past you.

Categories
audio pieces performance

uneasy melodies #1

Performance for voice signal cap and light organ 3 x 3 min 2015

Text display :
Three pieces and a half.
Three three times as fast at half
Speed as a half at three times the speed.
One half as fast at three times the speed as three at
half duration

unerhörte Räume, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, 2015

Categories
audio pieces performance

the entertainers‘ dry eye

music performance, 25 min, chr 2014


The entertainers dry eye, is a piece of music for a
soloperformer. The performance consists of 10-20
short music fragments, each fragment is played with a specially made cloth mask. The
performer sings, plays drums and keyboard simultaneously, through the masks sight and orientation is
the task can be solved more acrobatically than musically.
than musically. Musical accidents are provoked and desired.
( Music, costume and performance Christoph Rothmeier)

Klangkeller, Berlin 2018; Blurred edges, Hamburg 2016/218; AUA , Westwerk Hamburg 2015; High Tide, Westgermany, Berlin 2014; Superposition, Lehrter 17, Berlin 2014

Superposition, Lehrter 17, Berlin 2014
Categories
audio pieces installation works

zen machine

soundssculpture, Spisel Perdisptie, Nibikistudio, Berlin 2014; Transkriptionen, Mila Kunstgalerie, Berlin 2013

Zen machine.

A pen draws the sound curve of a rake in the sand basin of the machine. Simultaneously, the rake erases the track caused by the sound of the rake, and the sound generated by this creates another track. The machine rotates endlessly around its own axis, thereby generating the endless erasure of an endless drawing that is regenerated by the sound of the erasure. A contact microphone transmits the sound of the rake to a loudspeaker whose vibration is in turn transmitted to the movement of the pen.