Event
About
Artists: Alberto de Campo + Hannes Hoelzl + Jiawen Wang + Anne Wellmer
Performed at:
10997 Berlin, 2024
Six Strange String Theories is a sound installation and performance environment that bows before historical figures: Sun Ra, whose numerous innovations included creating the concept album Strange Strings (1967) with his Astro-Infinity Arkestra, calling it “a study in ignorance”; Alvin Lucier, who invented ways to compose with the material agency of things, including long strings; Bebe and Louis Barron (1956), who created the first cybernetic circuits that made music; and David Tudor, who invented ways to let the strange agency of electronic circuits and physical objects speak for themselves (Nakai 2021). Our work consists of six long strings stretched across the space where they are set up, into which we can play source sounds; the resonances of the strings are picked up, and mixed with the sources; and when we send the resonance sounds back into the network of strings, they become a cybernetic feedback system, autopoietically creating their own sound world, which continues to evolve even without sources. These three layers can be activated in live performances; in self-playing mode, the setup moves through its possibility space informed by a machine listening program.