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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.
the ant moves / the black and yellow carcass / a little closer
Bernhard Günter
To enter a discussion about the concept of The Ant Moves, I will use the two following lines: the motto of my label “Thinking without words is the ultimate goal”, and my private e-mail signature haiku “Elle fonderait / dans ma main / un peu de neige salie.”
The first line expresses my wish to create a “language free zone” with my music, by using only nonreferential sound materials and my refusal of any illustrative elements. This type of non-verbal, nonreferential reflection is what characterizes my relationship with sound, painting, poetry, and art in general. I believe that since my work is the act of a human, it can (potentially) be transmitted to all other humans, without recourse to language.
The second line refers to both my first CD Un Peu de Neige Salie and to a haiku by Basho (an English translation would be “It would melt / in my hand / a little soiled snow”, but I use only the French version, because the English one lacks the quality that it has in French, “snow” is female). It alludes to my preference for the small, non-spectacular, austere, as well as to the fact that my view of the world is a very zen-influenced one.
These notions have led me to a compositional strategy that is based on the sound itself. I start from sound material that I listen to very often and in a very attentive manner to find its internal qualities, tendencies, and potentials ... These are then enhanced by digital treatments to underline the direction the sound seems to want to go. Selected materials are then combined in various combinations that build the basis for the compositional form. In this process, silence is as important as sound, since I consider silence the “other” of sound, like in the relation of light and shadow ... The two unite to form the final “one.”
The first line expresses my wish to create a “language free zone” with my music, by using only nonreferential sound materials and my refusal of any illustrative elements. This type of non-verbal, nonreferential reflection is what characterizes my relationship with sound, painting, poetry, and art in general. I believe that since my work is the act of a human, it can (potentially) be transmitted to all other humans, without recourse to language.
The second line refers to both my first CD Un Peu de Neige Salie and to a haiku by Basho (an English translation would be “It would melt / in my hand / a little soiled snow”, but I use only the French version, because the English one lacks the quality that it has in French, “snow” is female). It alludes to my preference for the small, non-spectacular, austere, as well as to the fact that my view of the world is a very zen-influenced one.
These notions have led me to a compositional strategy that is based on the sound itself. I start from sound material that I listen to very often and in a very attentive manner to find its internal qualities, tendencies, and potentials ... These are then enhanced by digital treatments to underline the direction the sound seems to want to go. Selected materials are then combined in various combinations that build the basis for the compositional form. In this process, silence is as important as sound, since I consider silence the “other” of sound, like in the relation of light and shadow ... The two unite to form the final “one.”
Bernhard Günter (DE) born 1957. Started playing drums at 12; changed to electric guitar at 17. In 1980 moved to Paris; attended lectures by Pierre Boulez at Ircam and Collège de France and worked in the libraries of Centre Pompidou, to aquire contemporary compositional techniques. Provided music to the Ensemble Choreographique de Vitry several times. 1986, returned to Germany. 1987, he started to work on music using the computer. After 4 years of preparation and one year of work, he released his first CD.