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Their musical interaction is improvisational, involving both direct communication between the musicians and interaction with their electronic devices. Music is understood as a constantly transforming movement that constantly produces new emergent situations. Essl and Döbereiner listen and interact in fundamentally contingent situations where chance is welcomed as a ferment of emergence. Their music integrates noise, intermodulation, and chaotic systems to create an immersive, multi-layered, and dynamic soundscape in which the boundaries between the performers and their instruments are blurred: two individuals become one.
Performed live at BMCA Storage Vienna on 24 June, 2024
Performance at the BMCA Storage Vienna on Jun 24, 2024
Photos and art work: Rita Chen
The abstract confusion begins to materialise, to make “sense”. Some visitors have closed their eyes, are introverted or scan the room with their eyes, letting their gaze linger on a work. The listeners are attentive, the tension palpable. It is a little reminiscent of jazz, improvised, unpredictable, sometimes with a joke or commentary on what has just been played. But also of the US composer John Cage. An important co-founder of the Fluxus movement from the 1960s. His works are strongly characterised by aleatorics and the production of unintentional sounds. This is also the case with the two sound artists: “For a long time, I only worked on digital media. But what I like about analogue is that it's less predictable and surprises me.”, says Essl during the break, as he explains me the synthesiser modules with their many coloured cables, which are appearing playfully connected. In terms of aesthetics, these modules are works of art in themselves.
After the break with drinks and appetizers, the performance continues. The gaze continues to wander through the room and its displayed artworks. Constantly re-contextualising what is seen with the change of sound. This also applies to Zong Ning's works, which were hung directly behind the performers. The large-format black and white photographs "Rouge Tigres” and “Mountain Spirit” from 2016 were suddenly transformed into a sci-fi dystopian setting, the naked woman into a mystical being.
Bianca Regl's large paintings could be perceived across the senses through the performance. Although the warm pink-purple works in the “Snyders Cherries” series reveal berries, fruit and organic elements, they are painted openly enough with a coarse, soft brush that they can be metaphorised along with the sound.
The evening with the “One on One” performance at BMCA Storage allowed the visitors to immerse themselves in a soundscape-like new hidden world that seems unclear and chaotic at first glance. From the moment one thought to understand the melody, it got lost in the stream of electronic music waves. Everything was subject to constant change. To quote the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the most important and brilliant composers of electronic music in the 20th century: “Music should not only be a wave bath for body massage, a sounding psychogram, a thought programme in tones, but above all a stream of superconscious cosmic electricity turned into sound“.
Text: Neve Regli
His music has been performed by numerous ensembles and soloists in Europe, and he has published his scholarly work in journals such as Computer Music Journal, Organised Sound, and Contemporary Music Review. He has taught at the Hochschule der Künste Bern, the Universität der Künste Berlin, and the FU Berlin, and has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in New Music at the University of Huddersfield and at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics Graz.
Luc Döbereiner, 2022
Karlheinz Essl (b. 1960) is an Austrian composer, performer, improviser, software developer, media artist and composition teacher. He studied composition in Vienna with Friedrich Cerha and completed his musicology studies with a doctorate on Anton Webern. Composer-in-residence at the Darmstadt Summer School (1990-94) and at IRCAM in Paris (1991-93). From 1995-2006 he taught algorithmic composition at the Bruckner University in Linz. Since 2007 he has been a Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Between 1992 and 2016 he was music curator at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg.
His work with computers and a long-term preoccupation with the poetics of serial music have been formative influences on his compositional thinking. During the 1990s he carried out various projects for the Internet and became increasingly involved in improvisation. In 1997 Karlheinz Essl was a featured composer at the Salzburg Festival.
In addition to writing instrumental music, Karlheinz Essl also works in the areas of electronic music, interactive real-time compositions and sound installations. He develops software environments for algorithmic composition and live electronics.
As a performer and improviser he plays his own computer-based composition environments as well as instruments such as toy piano, electric guitar and analogue synthesizers.
Karlheinz Essl, 2021
Updated: 9 Jul 2024