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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Ain't there TV after death
Günther Rabl
Original: DM070474 - Track 01.wav | 0:13:39 | 137.9 MB
Original: DM070474 - Track 02.wav | 0:03:12 | 32.4 MB
Original: AintThere_CDmaster.WAV | 0:13:30 | 136.4 MB
Original: Rabl im Nebel_3.11.2006_A.Brunnflicker.jpg | 286 * 162px | 38.5 KB
We owe this short piece of music to the actor and writer Thomas Kamper, who gave me the opportunity to compose the overture to his play Jokebox. For the play, in which Beethoven’s Grand Fugue can be heard playing from a jukebox while various muted TV programs are running on screens, I selected a few basic elements for my work: excerpts from the spoken text; five seconds of sounds derived from Beethoven’s string quartet; and recorded TV sounds.
In the first part, the original text of the piece (spoken by Thomas and Barbara Horvath) is stripped of its spatiality and reconstructed in the harmonies of the quartet. Layers of choirs result and they ultimately end in a drone interrupted by a shot (actually the sound of a firecracker).
The second part consists only of TV sounds, condensed into a homogeneous noise on the one hand, and dissolved into individual short percussive elements on the other.
In the third part, I used my brand-new model of a resonating bar, which is then “hit” by tiny particles of the spoken text. At the end, a tunnel-like space opens up in which the condensed TV sounds are emitted again.
In the first part, the original text of the piece (spoken by Thomas and Barbara Horvath) is stripped of its spatiality and reconstructed in the harmonies of the quartet. Layers of choirs result and they ultimately end in a drone interrupted by a shot (actually the sound of a firecracker).
The second part consists only of TV sounds, condensed into a homogeneous noise on the one hand, and dissolved into individual short percussive elements on the other.
In the third part, I used my brand-new model of a resonating bar, which is then “hit” by tiny particles of the spoken text. At the end, a tunnel-like space opens up in which the condensed TV sounds are emitted again.
Günther Rabl (AT), born in 1953, has been composing electro-acoustic music since 1975. He first worked with an analog tape recorder, but since the late 1980s has composed primarily on the computer using his own software, which he continues to develop (NMS4, FFTBOX, VASP, AMP). His works include many multi-track compositions conceived for acoustic presentations with many loud speakers in large spaces; occasionally they have even been performed as intended. Since 2000, he has released his works on his own label: canto crudo.