CYCLISATIONS - OLAF HOCHHERZ

The materiality of the book has been often debated and even fetishised by book lovers, as a distinctive trait of the medium, proving its unique sensorial experience. These universal characteristics can be interpreted also from a different perspective, equally physical, but more elaborated, like the acoustic one. Olaf Hochherz is a sound artist whose work is associating cultural fields using sounds as bridges between them, with their own « language ». In Cyclisations he’s taking his previous experiments with book’s acoustic feedback on a further level of exploration. He’s skilfully integrating the acoustic feedback of books (used as filters) on conceptually stratified levels. The concept of « feedback » is explored through the manipulation and use of books but then integrated in the live enunciation by the cybernetic theoretician Stafford Beer and embedded in the sound pieces. Hochherz refers to cybernetic theories, questioning the dreamed « feedback » system they were investigating through his own practice, which, on the opposite, takes feedback under control. The book physicality becomes then a starting point, with the sound integration of its content in various coherent forms, and coalesces a virtual representation closely describing it without showing even a single page.

Olaf Hochherz is a sound artist, performing with self-build electronic instruments and computer programs. He develops installations, performance installations and pieces for CD. He is interested in the conjunction of the instability and associative capacity of sounds: « I didn’t try to make an electronic device, which is controllable in the same way as a classical acoustic instrument, instead I work with the abstraction of the electronics. In my playing I do not control a technical apparatus, but create an associative field. The sounds have their own live. The playing tries to keep them alive. »
He presented his electronic compositions at different Festivals. His installations could be realized in Kassel, Taichung, Taipei and Shanghai. He toured with his performances throughout Central Europe and East Asia.
http://hochherz.klingt.org