Timo Kahlen. Sound sculptures and installations

Nominated for the German national Sound Art Prize 2006

Timo Kahlen. Media Dirt (Kiasma, 2004)
Sound sculpture at the National Museum of
Contemporary Art
(Kiasma) in Helsinki / Finland.

Three glass cylinders, several loudspeakers and
the sound of interfering radio frequencies :
" temporary, immaterial noise and beauty
found in between radio stations ...
creating a complex, artificial, purely technological,
yet seemingly 'natural' (sometimes insect or bird-like)
soundscape. In this way, the glass cylinders
become the laboratory for a re-construction,
a new abstract form of nature."
(Werner Ennokeit)

Sound sculpture exhibited at the International Symposion on Electronic Arts ISEA 2004

Timo Kahlen / Berlin and Ian Andrews / Sydney.
Sound Drift, 2005.
A series of interactive, generative
sound spaces at www.staubrauschen.de/sounddrift/
containing drifting 'clouds' filled with
radio noises: visual, kinetic audio clusters.
A concept for an immaterial exhibition
consisting of audio clusters slowly drifting
from one gallery space to the next
at the Ruine der Kuenste Berlin.

Click into the kinetic 'clouds' to move from one room to the next.
The interactive buttons will behave in various ways
(some will have to be clicked two or three times...)
Turn up your audio !

.            

Timo Kahlen. Concepts for 'Sound Drift', 2005. In collaboration with Ian Andrews / Sydney.
Courtesy Ruine der Kuenste Berlin







Timo Kahlen. SWARM, 2008
8 channel sound sculpture
at Fortezza / Franzensfeste fortress:
steel construction (800 x 100 x 100 cm),
enclosed sound of bees
Courtesy MANIFESTA 7 / Italy

For Manifesta 7 "Scenarios" sound exhibition at Fortezza,
Timo Kahlen created an irritating sound sculpture
blocking the central courtyard giving access
to the abandoned 19th century fortress.
The abstract steel sculpture enclosed the manipulated
sound of bees: initially a calm buzzing, the sounds became
increasingly agitated, nervous and defensive as the viewer
proceeded on his way into the fortress - only later to repose
to a soft and tranquile hum.

Timo Kahlen. Leerraum (Void), 1995.
Sound and light installation at the
Ruine der Künste Berlin.

An empty house,
windows partially filtered green,
green neon light and white walls.
Sound (radio shortwave frequencies
and birds' songs) emitted from loudspeakers
hidden beneath the floor.

In the sound and light installation Leerraum
the interfering radio waves create a complex, artificial and
purely technological but at the same time strangely
'natural', insect- or birdlike soundscape ... enhanced by
birds' voices and filtered (green) views from the windows
into the garden

"Die Vogelstimmen sind eine Nuance zu deutlich, die Folien an den Fenstern eine Spur zu grün.
Darum begreift man schnell, daß die Nähe zur Natur gemeint ist, nicht aber nachgeahmt werden soll.
Der Raum flirrt, fängt so die Aufmerksamkeit des Besuchers. Ähnlich wie in der Natur folgt man
den an- und abschwellenden Geräuschen mit suchendem Blick, versucht vergebens,
die Lautsprecher dingfest zu machen, begegnet dabei dem durch das einfallende Licht
gezauberten komplementären Rot an den Wänden und wird allmählich Teil des leeren Raumes."
Hanna Lentz, Berlin 1995

> play audio sample

The sounds used in Timo Kahlen's sound
sculptures and installations are based on an
archive of nomadic, interfering radio waves
and other ephemeral sounds,
which the artist has been recording since 1987.

Timo Kahlen
Media Dirt, 1989 - 1997 (2001)
and Staubrauschen (2001).
From a series of audio editions based
on an archive of hissing, gurgling, scratching,
whirring, singing, dirty radio noise of interfering
frequencies between stations
recorded1989 - 1997
Audio CDs, 32 min 40 sec / 35 min 24 sec

> play audio sample

Timo Kahlen. Interference (restroom of
the DCAC Arts Center, Washington DC) 1994,
Luftraum, 2001 and Schwirren (Whirring), 1993 / 2000.
Sound sculptures: display cases/marmalade jars,
speakers, enclosed sound of
interfering radio shortwave frequencies.

> play audio sample

Several of Timo Kahlen's works use empty spaces (voids)
to visualize sound waves and radiation occupying
or filling the apparently 'empty' volume of air.
Timo Kahlen's earliest sound sculpture of
this type, Vitrine, was first presented
at the Hochschule der Kuenste Berlin in 1993, later at
the Galerie Voges + Deisen in Frankfurt (1994)
and at the Oberösterreichische Landesgalerie
in Linz (Austria) in 1997.

Timo Kahlen. ping tschae tschae, 2005
generative, interactive multi-channel sound installation

In "ping tschae tschae" (which is the scientific, ornithological
description of a specific birds' song - read aloud by the artist,
amongst other descriptions, from a bird watcher's book)
the gallery space is filled with complex, yet seemingly mechanical,
artificial or descriptive sounds of birds' songs, appearing / disappearing
at random locations in the room. How do we experience nature today ?
The complexity increases as more
sounds can be generated from the only object in the room,
an interactive touchscreen monitor showing a piece of wood.

See http://www.staubrauschen.de/ping/

Timo Kahlen. Simile, 2006
Rubber boots (Wellingtons) suspended in metal frames,
nine small loudspeakers, nine channel sound composition
imitating birds' voices and other mimetical,
only seemingly 'natural' sounds

Exhibited at "Deutscher Klangkunst-Preis 2006", Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl and "Sound Art 2006" / art cologne

Timo Kahlen. Fire, 2008

Suitcase filled with
the sound of fire

Private collection / Italy. Courtesy Dieci.Due!, Milano








Timo Kahlen. Diodenzwitschern, 2006

Site-specific sound installation, proposal for
the German national Sound Art Prize 2006
(Deutscher Klangkunst-Preis), based on the
amazing utterances of a nightingale recorded on site.
Four channel audio composition

See http://www.timo-kahlen.de/dioden/

Timo Kahlen. Zewidewit Zizidäh, 2002

Sound installation based on the scientific,
ornithological description of birds' songs, on the mimetical
(re-) construction of (and difference to) nature through language.

Three glass cylinders containing loudspeakers and
audio loops describing common local birds' voices.

> play audio sample

Timo Kahlen. Circe, 2006
Eleven channel sound installation at
the Ruine der Kuenste Berlin

The work's motif is a scene from Greek mythology,
in which Ulysses is trapped by the wonders of Circe.

Two directional Sennheiser Audiobeam loudspeakers
put the gallery space in continual motion: the singing,
buzzing sound of flies seems to float throughout the space,
along the ceiling, walls and across two clusters
of metal constructions - yet the flies remain invisible.

Other, more stationary and lower, softly moaning and
singing sounds (again, re-pitched sounds of insects) travel at random
across nine smaller loudspeakers attached to the rigid metal
frameworks, which trap and pin down a series of
delicate porcellaine plates carefully laid out on the gallery floor.

Timo Kahlen. Transfer, 2004
Can images be translated into sound ?
This sound sculpture is based on the sound of images
of a model of the gallery space itself, transferred via modem
from Timo Kahlen / Berlin to Ian Andrews / Sydney
when developing their net art work Sound Drift (2005).
The modem sounds recorded while transferring the images
are now played back in the space itself,
engaging two cardboard structures, abstract black boxes,
in a complex, aleatoric digital dialogue.

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