Interview with Mike Meiré, Brand Director Dornbracht
about „Noises for Ritual Architecture“
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TR:
When did a concern for music or sound become a part of your work for Dornbracht?
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MM:
The first approach occurred in the year 2000. It was during Statements IV,
where we combined computer animations by Yves Netzhammer
with electronic tracks by the bands Opiate, Mouse on Mars and To rococo rot.
The special thing about it was that each of the artists was working without
any knowledge of the others’ work.
Then, at the presentation in Berlin, the sounds were performed live,
where they encountered images by Yves Netzhammer
for the first time. There were nearly magical moments as the images interplayed with the music.
The music suddenly revealed emotions in the otherwise emphatically sterile visual forms.
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TR:
What expectations do you associate with the element of the acoustic,
and to what extent can it supplement visual communication?
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TR:
One thing that has long been a source of fascination for me is the idea of conceiving
of music as an element of space, similar to a colour. Music can bring about elemental
changes to a space,
it can occupy the space, and if it is missing, then the room is empty once again.
As a medium, the sound of music has something that places it ahead of all other
communication – people receive it at a physical level that, at least initially,
has nothing at all to do with the intellect and responds a great deal more quickly than the intellect.
Music practically passes directly into the nervous system.
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TR:
What were the considerations that motivated you to launch the ‘Noises for Ritual Architecture’,
which is joined by the ritual architectures of MEM, Logic and Elemental Spa?
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TR:
These processes of purification or cleansing that I dealt with in the ritual
architectures involved that very
moment of shutting the intellect off for once. After all, that is one of the functions of ritual.
In both cases, sound installations and ritual architecture, what is involved
is the transformation of consciousness,
creating a zone in which perceptions of the everyday are transformed.
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TR:
What prompted the collaboration with Carlo Peters?
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TR:
I become a curator of music if I find it fits in with the context I am hoping to create in a particular project.
That is why I am very pleased that I met Carlo Peters several years ago; for one thing, he is a superb musician,
but more importantly, he also has this talent to empathise with concepts. He also enlists very different kinds
of genre in the process: for the music to accompany the ‘Farm Project’, for instance, he worked with country
and folk pieces from the 1970s, works that, on their face, are far away from the Noises.
Not only is he an outstanding talent for empathising with the spirit of a particular context;
he can then also take a particular musical material, fathom it thoroughly and carry it further
in a manner that, artistically speaking, is stylistically very self-assured.
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TR:
How did you communicate with one another, conceptually, in creating the ‘Noises for Ritual Architecture’ project?
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MM:
To begin with, I showed Carlo Peters the computer renderings as studies for the architecture;
I explained the sequence of the respective rituals and then perhaps played him a few sounds that
I had in mind, something like a point of departure. The structure that is now in place,
the flow of musical time and the multitude of sounds you can now hear – of course
this is the actual musical and compositional work, the work of Carlo Peters.
(Strike the two following sentences...:
Often, in the course of things sound characteristics were added that lent manifest
form to something that up until then had been for me more of a subconscious idea
of ritual architecture. An example of this is the organ in MEM,
which takes up the theme of the nearly sacred character of the architecture,
yet without forcing the listener to think of religion straight away.
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TR:
But couldn’t you quickly wind up in some kind of New Age concepts?
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MM:
Naturally, with a sound installation such as the SoundSpa,
there also have to be sound elements that somehow carry the listener,
giving him or her the opportunity to relax, to take a deep breath. (omitted: but that’s the kind of thing
that happens at more of a behavioural level. At a certain level,
the Noises play with certain frowned-upon approaches,
but for something like this, music in particular is a very interesting art form.
What we wanted to accomplish was not to create some manner of dream world or other.
After all,
cleansing rituals are about the transformation of the everyday.
Carlo Peters and I were agreed that the Noises would
have to be a progressive work. Which is why you hear these subtle rhythms of digital crackling,
rushing and error noises that led to the definition of the title for the project: ‘Noises for Ritual Architecture’.
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TR:
Why did you decide to create another supplement for the Sound Spa in the form
of a visual level – animation images by Jens-Oliver Gasde?
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MM:
One thing we noticed is that the entire Noises project had grown and matured so much in the meantime that
it was in a position to describe a special space all of its own: a space that was nearly a temple with an energy
very much its own, liberated from ideology or religion. I personally am often in search of just such a space,
if I’m on the road again and have to spend time waiting in airports or train stations. Since it wasn’t possible
include in the Dornbracht Noises for Ritual Architecture exhibition the origin of the project –
the ritual architectures themselves – I was looking for images people could use to meditate,
for instance if they direct their gaze upwards in the Sound Spa. The projection is also designed to
support the notion that a certain period of pause is appropriate to the music,
to enable it to unfurl its qualities over time.
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TR:
How did you wind up with the form now in place?
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MM:
For one, I didn’t want to show any bathroom architecture per se; moreover,
it would have been trite to
illustrate only certain elements of the sounds – birds, drops of water, caves or the like.
So, as in the case of the music, there was a need to derive another level
of abstraction from the architectures themselves.
So finally I drew the architectonic icons shown on the covers in 3D and created certain arrangements for each series.
Jens-Oliver Gasde then developed these drawings further.
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TR:
The computer-generated animations clearly exhibit their digital origins.
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MM:
That was something that was very important to me, because it makes clear that, given the technological,
and particularly the digital possibilities we have, we find ourselves in the age of simulation.
It also further accentuates the poetry inherent in the films of Jens-Oliver Gasde,
in contrast to the geometric-digital language of forms. He has succeeded
in placing the minimalistic cubes in a wonderful ‘flow’.
As a result, the beholder gradually forgets that it is rendered, although this fact is never concealed.
You lie down, look up at the ceiling, and you see things the surfaces of which recall architecture yet which exist
completely removed from the function of architecture. This underscores the feeling of floating
that is inherent in the music, and in a way you begin to float yourself.
Interview with Carlo Peters, Musician and composer of „Noises“
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TR:
I’d like to ask about your initial strategy:
In your production of the ‘Noises’, were you attempting to imagine the spatial nature of the architectures,
or was it rather: to design the music in a way that enables it to work within these architectures?
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CP:
More the latter: My approach was not to emulate space but to make the history of ideas about space,
and the cultural history of space, audible. The sound design, meaning the overall aesthetics
of each of the sounds used, relates to the language of material and form of the particular
ritual architecture by Mike Meiré. What I wanted to create here were acoustic relationships.
As a result, ‘MEM’ is very spherical and flowing, while ‘Elemental’ is also imbued
with archaic and piercing passages. ‘Logic’ is more exact, more algorithmic,
but it also plays with the aesthetics of digital errors.
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TR:
Did some of these aesthetic ideas go on to take on a life of their own in the musical material,
or were you always looking to couple your work with the ritual architectures?
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CP:
Both. Lots of things come about as the result of the process and as the result of a musical logic,
and there are also the recurrent acoustic and spatial associations that crop up in the layered dialogue
with the point of departure. Often, the exchange with Mike Meiré on one of the finished
first drafts pointed the way for further developments, too.
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TR:
In producing these works, did you progress from minute to minute,
or did you have a concept for the entire piece relatively early on,
a concept that you then proceeded to flesh out?
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CP:
Here to, I have to say: Both the one and the other.
There were certain anchor points or planned tensions, and one thing added to this,
more than anything else, is the re-emptying of the Soundscapes. Other than that,
I have difficulty issuing such ‘reports from the workshop’; the things I work with
tend to involve artistic criteria and music-historical forms more than particular rules.
‘MEM’, for instance, is the product of a host of interrelated artistic techniques,
and I have great trouble putting things like this into words. You also run the risk of providing
a mere description of the music, and the concepts also recur tonally throughout
the various layers of the Soundscapes.
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TR:
How did your experience in film scores (such as for the meanwhile award-winning art film,
‘Jivan Up There’ (for the E-R-S Energetic Recovery System installation, Dornbracht Edges 2002))
enter into your work producing ‘Noises for Ritual Architecture’,
a project in which you were able to orient yourself not by a pre-specified
time limit but by nothing more than the aesthetics of a space?
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CP:
Insofar as the designated space, as a place of cleansing, is primarily also a space for activity as well,
the experience with film scores was actually very helpful: Like a film score,
the landscapes of sound for the Noises project also involved acoustic narratives for spaces
in which activities are carried out. In the case of film, there are similar techniques of
interweaving a script and the emotions it involves with the effects of space, or if you will: with architecture.
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TR:
To pick up on that notion: what script does the sequence/the structure of the various noises follow?
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CP:
The composition reflects potential events in the respective ritual architectural setting,
both in physical form – the actions and movements of the user – as well as in a chemical form,
meaning the variable nature of the materials used, such as the oxidation of copper.
Aside from that, the Noises can be viewed as structures that invite the listener to ever-new interpretations.
The musical script seeks to involve the listener and his or her perception of space,
producing an inexhaustible store of new relationships between the listener and the installation.
The musicologist Helga de la Motte-Haber
once characterised sound art as a ‘networking of space through tonal structure’,
and even as a ‘elaboration of architectural theory’. That’s quite fitting, I think.
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TR:
Then there is also the arrangement of the Noises into the respective tracks...
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CP:
Yes, that’s right. ‘Logic’ or ‘Elemental’, for instance, play with a classic three-act structure,
a structure that is then musically broken up in order to open up new acoustic spaces or forms.
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TR:
In ‘Logic’, during ‘255.230.2 [a yellow]’, I noticed these short speech samples featuring a woman’s voice.
They’ve been manipulated, and the things the voice is saying are unintelligible.
There’s a similar passage in the recordings of a women’s choir in ‘Aes Cyprium’ on ‘Elemental’.
Is there a message hidden here?
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CP:
No, not at all. What I was doing was to use the voice as a sound, and to strip language of its meaning.
These are actually audible fragments of a transformation of syntax with the communicative purpose of generating a musical ‘mood‘.
The natural sounds and water sounds incorporated in the works don’t mean anything, either. In tonally altered form,
they have an entirely different function and open up new tonal spaces through lengthening or modifications of pitch.
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TR:
Which brings me back to the aspect of cleansing. One of the concepts of ‘acoustic ecology’
is the notion that the experience of a listening that has freed itself from recognition of meaning or message,
a listening that consciously hears only the sounds as such, can result in a liberation, can result in a cleansing of the sense of hearing.
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CP:
Yes, and possibly in a reappraisal. More precisely, at the same time this liberation of hearing is scarcely
distinguishable from the ‘liberation of sounds’ envisioned by the futurists or the proponents of musique concrete.
Each approach also represented an expansion of the conceptual or intellectual space, not only situating
this space in the ears but also creating new space between the two.
Interview with Jens-Oliver Gasde, CGA Artist (Computer generated animations artist)
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TR:
In terms of their visual impact, the ritual architectures for cleansing that Mike Meiré
has created are very well elaborated and concrete indeed. I
n your work developing the animations, to what extent did you sense
that you were subject to a risk of repetition or duplication?
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JG:
I think this was a danger that was already precluded in the original project draft
by Mike Meiré. Specifying the material I worked with – the basic geometric shapes
and light in its myriad effects – paved the way to another form of representation.
Naturally, the element of movement is specifically new: interestingly,
the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava describes architecture as 'frozen movement'.
In this spirit, with my animations I was trying to re-release the kinetic energy
of the three bathroom architectures – trying to create a ‘re-animation’, in effect.
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TR:
You were also working from a second point of departure:
the music of Carlo Peters. How did this music figure into your own work?
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JG:
Actually, it was the spatial quality of the music of Carlo Peters that first opened the door to the worlds of the Noises.
My objective was to come up with a visual interpretation of these worlds.
In the course of my work, a self-contained thrust then crystallised out
of this for each of the three themes: light (for MEM), movement (for Logic) and material (for Elemental).
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TR:
What is the function of your animations within the framework of the Sound Spa?
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JG:
First of all, in a very straightforward sense, the expansion of the acoustic world into the visual world:
the visitor looks up through an enormous ceiling window and into an infinite space, into an unreal
yet very sensuous world. This is accompanied by a slight departure from the patterns of perception
that usually dominate in the everyday setting. At some point, this also became indispensable for my own work:
I most preferred to work on the animations during the early morning hours.
This time of day was best suited to the aspect of deceleration inherent to the Ritual Architectures.
Interviews and copy: Tobias Ruderer