Generative sound environment for an art installation by Beat Zoder, written in MaxMSP. 6-channel live performance with Max9 at Studio kHz on 12 Dec 2024. Binaural rendering with REAPER and dearVR. Listen with headphones! https://essl.at/works/hirsch-roehren.html

In 2006, Swiss artist Beat Zoderer and Austrian composer Karlheinz Essl were commissioned to create a collaborative work for the music festival Stanser Musiktage. In an abandoned repository situated in the heart of the Swiss alps, both artists were setting up a room installation made of sewer pipes. Those plastic parts of different lengths were equipped with funnel speakers driven by a customized computer program written in MaxMSP by Karlheinz Essl. Utilizing realtime composition algorithms which the composers develops since 1985, his software created an ever-changing sonic environment which never repeated itself.

Seen from outside, the structure resembled a giant jackstraw heap which invited the public to explore the space. Sounds that were projected from the loudspeakers through the pipes commuted through the air, creating a mysterious atmosphere as if some hidden creatures were talking to each other in an incomprehensible, yet compelling language.

Von Hirschen und Röhren

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Von Hirschen und Röhren (2024) - BINAURAL

Born 1960 in Vienna. Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. Besides writing experimental instrumental music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze°2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition and creates generative sound and video environments. Since 2007 professor of composition for electro-acoustic and experimental music at the University of Music in Vienna.

Karlheinz Essl performs on a laptop computer that he has transformed into a live electronic musical instrument. The result is exciting and musical. You just won't hear these sounds anywhere else. He performs solo and in duets and trios, responding with sensitivity to fellow musicians, producing fascinating sound transformations, creating spontaneous surprises, and moving quickly from loops to cacophony to tiny clips of vocal sounds to all kinds of textures and ideas. He does all this with his m@ze°2(Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment) performance software. (Joel Chadabe, CDeMusic, Januar 2002)
