alois späth: no sto­ries / koane g’schichtln

The Berlin-based sound artist Alois Späth (born 1972) pres­ents two expe­ri­men­tal and digi­tally mani­pu­la­ted pho­tos in LED light boxes and light frames, as well as two sound instal­la­ti­ons crea­ted with items from IKEA.
In both “My Heart is Steaming ‚” a large-format piece made ent­i­rely in red tones, and “The Three Ravens (When I Sang Raven­scroft With Fri­ends),” a pre­do­mi­nantly yel­low, medium-sized work, built-in speakers con­tain a sound­track in asso­cia­tion with its respec­tive image. Com­po­sed by the artist as a sound inter­pre­ta­tion of the image and expe­ri­en­ced with a Blue­tooth head­set, these loo­ping sound streams of live recor­dings vary con­stantly through a (seam­less) alter­na­tion bet­ween dif­fe­rent parts. The image is in its­elf sta­tic, yet its struc­tures of form and color con­ti­nu­ally break open again and again into motion. The sound is in its­elf flu­ent, yet now and then has an almost sta­tic appearance, cor­re­la­ting with the image in a com­plex man­ner. The inter­play of visual image per­cep­tion and the acoustic influ­ence of the sound can open up the viewer to com­ple­tely new worlds, espe­cially if the viewer pau­ses for an exten­ded amount of time in the sphere in front of the image. A multi-sensory expe­ri­ence is achie­ved with deli­be­ra­tely redu­ced media, as no cine­ma­tic tech­no­logy was used in these works. The image and sound instal­la­tion allows a direct­ness and a deeper effect to occur as soon as one expo­ses them­sel­ves to the expe­ri­ence and the artistic work through inten­sive immer­sion.
The two sound instal­la­ti­ons “LION & MATHIS (dou­ble quar­tet)” and “Agnes (octet)” belong to the series “Serial — Indi­vi­dual” and have been crea­ted with IKEA mer­chan­dise. While “LION & MATHIS” con­sists of four cera­mic bowls with over­han­ging flower vases made from glass, “Agnes” is con­sti­tu­ted of eight metal clo­thes han­gers joi­ned toge­ther to form an oct­ago­nal wind­mill. The ori­gin of these works lies in the sim­ple rea­liza­tion that things, objects, and ever­y­day items that have been seri­ally manu­fac­tu­red (partly in mass pro­duc­tion), seem—to our eyes—to appear exter­nally simi­lar. Yet, as soon as we lis­ten very care­fully to the inner sys­tems of these objects—for example lis­ten­ing to the snap of your fin­gers and let­ting the sound lin­ger next to them—an indi­vi­dual and par­ti­cu­lar sound reve­als its­elf to be dis­tin­gu­is­hable from other sounds. The so-called trans­du­cers, which are small, spe­cial vibra­tion speakers that dif­fuse sound only when they come in con­tact with an object, have been pla­ced on metal clo­thes han­gers, glass vases, and cera­mic sau­cers which act as reso­nance cham­bers. The mass-produced IKEA fur­nis­hings repeat noi­ses and sounds from nor­mal, ever­y­day situa­ti­ons, living spaces, and life events. Every object vibra­tes with its own sound that dif­fers from the sound of the other visually iden­ti­cal and rever­be­ra­ting object, ran­ging from acousti­cally mild to power­ful. With this varia­tion, the sound is played up and even colors the tones. In the over­all audi­ble impres­sion, it can be heard that the indi­vi­dual objects impart an under­ly­ing base tone as a musically-pleasing sono­rous­ness. Par­ti­ally through dif­fe­rent “reso­nan­ces” the sounds are allo­wed to wan­der through the instal­la­tion— almost as if there were sur­round sound or a mul­tichan­nel instal­la­tion in the gal­lery.
Alois Späth Bio­gra­phy: Born in 1972. After having been a mem­ber of Regensburg’s Cathe­dral Choir in grade school, he stu­died musi­co­logy and Ger­man lan­guage & lite­ra­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Regens­burg. Fol­lo­wing his stu­dies, he worked for several years as a pro­fes­sio­nal sin­ger in choirs and ensem­bles that include Col­le­gium Vocale Ghent, RIAS Cham­ber Choir Ber­lin, among others. Since 2004 he has explo­red experimental-electronic and computer-generated music. Begin­ning in 2009 he atten­ded Ber­lin Uni­ver­sity of the Arts’ pro­gram “Sound Stu­dies – Acoustic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion” for a degree in expe­ri­men­tal sound design. In 2011 he recei­ved his Mas­ter of Arts with the sound instal­la­tion “Pan­har­mo­ni­con 2” as his the­sis pro­ject. He is active as an sound artist, sound desi­gner, sound rese­ar­cher and inter­di­sci­pli­nary artist. He has crea­ted sound instal­la­ti­ons and inter­ven­ti­ons, electro-acoustic com­po­si­ti­ons, and sculp­tu­ral works for fes­ti­vals, insti­tu­ti­ons (such as Goe­the Insti­tu­tes in Uzbe­kis­tan, Kazakhs­tan and Spain), and thea­ters with the help of grants and scho­lar­ships
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