Situation: “Schaltzentrale” with Mo Wolpert and Guests
Berlin 2009
An ensemble of self-made sound objects and/or modified electronic instruments, designed and build by me and in cooperation with others – from the early 1990s up to now.
I am interested in creating instruments and electronic/electroacoustic sound design since my early days (since my father was an engineer of electronics as well) and started constructing and playing music instruments in the late 1970s.
After coming to Berlin in 1988, together with Matthias ‘Gobi’ Hofmann we started the project and workshop ‘Laboratorium für wissenschaftliche Grenzbereiche’ (1989-1992), with me (almost) planning and designing electronic circuits and with him mainly making construction, metal design and casings. In this workshop – with focus on semi-acoustic phenomena and electromechanical sound-sources – we created several unique instruments.
During the following years I improved these machines by my own and constructed new ones. Works in comission or in cooperation followed, such as the drum-pickup controller for the ‘Seismodrum’ made by Moritz Wolpert and others, →WORK.
The CG soundsystem objects are controlled by CV (control voltages), triggers, gate signals etc. and can be combined together in various ways. Their working principle is almost analog electronic and comparable to modular synthesizer systems. In automatic or semi-automatic (with manual control options or sensors) operation – e.g. in sound installations – the system is playing by itself. But the instruments also can be played manually (also, some instruments are specially made for that, such as the Glockenspiel or Theremin), with drum-interfaces, metallophone-interface, keyboard and more – in concerts, for recordings etc…
As a visual equivalent, the Mandalamat – an analog electronic controller for drawing machines – can be appended to the CG sound system for visual extension.
