Artwork Format: Sound Installation

The High Fidelity Wasteland Trilogy is a series of audio-centric works that experiment with the material waste left over from generations of decomposing sound reproduction technology.

High Fidelity Wasteland III: Broken Loudspeaker Pop presents a landscape of broken down loudspeakers collected from the trash and donated from the local community in Frankfurt am Main (DE). Rather than playing music, each loudspeaker amplifies an individual square wave oscillator which produces a consistent thumping, clicking, crackling or popping sound. While each speaker embodies a unique acoustic character emphasized by its innate material deterioration, the installation as a whole creates a pluvial soundscape that evolves over time as they fall in and out of synchronization in an aleatory manner. To further emphasize the material dimensions of sound, the technical infrastructure is approached in a very visual and tactile manner. Rather than being generic and and hidden out of sight – cables, power sources and hand-wired circuits in this work are bright, colourful and exposed and treated as an expressive artistic material.

Artwork commissioned in the context of a Residency in at Atelier Goldstein for the “On Hearing” program 2023. Further production support provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Photos: Elena Osmann

The High Fidelity Wasteland trilogy is a series of sound-centric works that wade through generations of decomposing material waste produced by the global music industry.

High Fidelity Wasteland II: The Protoplastic Groove is an immersive sound installation consisting of a 1950s era record player that devolves the audible timescale of music from the past. The work amplifies and inhabits the impurities, noise and biological origins of shellac records – the precursor to vinyl as we know it today. Rather than rapidly spinning classical compositions and nostalgic hits at the standard 78 rpm, this work slows everything down to a mere 16 revolutions per minute and stretches sound into a sombrely encompassing landscape.

The shellac record was the first ever disk-shaped recording medium which allowed people to own, collect and listen to music in the domestic setting. As a material, shellac looks and behaves like any other plastic; however, this dark resin has organic origins. It is bioadhesive matter excreted by the tree dwelling Lac beetle which is used to create a protective shelter for her offspring. Chemically similar to synthetic polymers, shellac is considered a natural form of plastic. And though shellac was rapaciously harvested and commodified throughout the 20th century to make music tangible, the era of the shellac record represents the only (and very short-lived) period where the music recording industry was sustainable.

Initial research for this second work in the High Fidelity Wasteland trilogy was supported by the German Phonograph Museum which was made possible through a residency at Kunstverein Global Forest e.V. in St. Georgen in the Black Forest. The production of this artwork was made possible through the European Media Art Platform / EMARE program at KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis. The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of The Canada Council for the Arts for their ongoing support. Special thanks to Daniel Stigler, Irene Pérez Hernández, Studio Alex Rex and  Olsen Wolf.

Photos by Romane-Iskaria

100 Year Old Quicksilver Cloud is the first work in High Fidelity Wasteland – an audio-centric trilogy that experiments with the material waste left over from generations of decomposing sound reproduction technology.

Wading into the toxic haze of early transmission infrastructure, this installation sonifies the decaying atmosphere inside a thyratron – a 100 year old vacuum tube radiating a cloud of blue ionized mercury. Vacuum tubes generated, amplified and controlled some of the earliest flows of electrons signalling the start of widespread communication networks – radio, tv, telephony, computing. Though produced prior to practices of planned obsolescence and outliving industrial lifecycles of technology today, the decommissioned liquified metals of the thyratron represent one of the multitude of ruinous substrates of post industrial ecology.

Audio produced in collaboration with AGF (aka Antye Greie-Ripatti)
Technical support provided by Daniel Stigler

Commissioned by transmediale – festival for art and digital culture Berlin as part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020.Produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada.

Further sponsorship provided by Martion – Audiosysteme.

‘DIY Sonic Loophole Generator’ is an animated step-by-step how-to video that demonstrates how to make a sonic loophole generator with mobile phones. This is a sister artwork to ‘DIY Telephone Feedback Performance’ – which you can read about here. These works are presented together as an Audio Visual Installation with a limited edition poster that is given away so that the effect can be experimented with at home.

This video was Commissioned by Michelle Kasprzak for the Future Flux Festival in Rotterdam

Sirens is a sound installation that consists of a custom made high fidelity sound system, found objects and an audio composition. The installation makes use of used motor hoods from the Trolli 35 lawnmower. The Trolli was one of the standard lawnmowers made and used in the former German Democratic Republic.

More about this project can be read about in the Soziale Sollbruchstelle Vol. 1 Publication

This work was made in collaboration with AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti)

Sirens is part of the Soziale Sollbruchstelle Series of artworks that was funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin and realized with the support of the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the Berlin University of the Arts. The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Photo credit: Philip Poppek
Video by: Jemma Woolmoore

Encompasing video, sound installation, photography and collage, Soziale Sollbruchstelle is an interdisciplinary artistic research project that iconizes and creates a fictitious universe for a forgotten piece of utilitarian technology. The work draws out patterns and juxtapositions surrounding practices of technology between a historically significant communist state and contemporary consumerist culture.

Manufactured from 1962-1989, the ‘Trolli ESM II’ was one of the very few models of lawnmowers made available to the people of the former socialist state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Its most striking characteristic is its motor hood. Sitting on top of the machine, with two mysterious looking horizontal air vents, it looks like an anthropomorphic spartan warrior adorning battle armour. There is an added sinister quality to these objects, as decades of use has marked them as if they have endured a lifetime of battle.

Soziale Sollbruchstelle deconstructs this household device and transposes it into the high definition/sleek aesthetic setting of present day consumer electronics design and marketing. By concealing and revealing its attributes, this series treats the old lawn mower like a rarified object of luxury and desire. Viewers are compelled to step into the mysterious universe of the Trolli and confront up close how the glossiness of its setting falls away as the detail of its embattled and timeworn patina takes over. Soziale Sollbruchstelle evokes both a militant history and sci-fi dimension, where the Trolli is at once both worn out and weathered yet primed for combat against a future of unkempt lawns. Within the mystifying narrative built up by the works, the austere, robot-like icon further acts as an analog for the ominous nature of a society of unease, connected to machines of questionable intelligence, power and control.

Soziale Sollbruchstelle is an interdisciplinary artistic research project carried out during a fellowship at Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS) / Graduiertenschule at the Art University of Berlin from 2016-2018.

The resulting works in this project include:
The Watch, video installation
Sirens, sound installation
Armour, sculptural installation with found objects
Tower, photograph
Lookout, photographic tryptic
Operation Manual, photographic collage
Government Issue, photograph
Soziale Sollbruchstelle, publication (deutsche Übersetzungen finden sie am Ende)

Artistic Collaborators:
AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti)
Sophia Gräfe

Further artistic support and expertise from:
Jemma Woolmoore
Lena Maria Loose
Carolin Meyer
Artist Carpenter Berlin
Daniel Stigler

Soziale Sollbruchstelle was funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin and realized with the support of the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the Berlin University of the Arts. The artist further gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Halle14 Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst.