Timo Kahlen
Timo Kahlen was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1966. He received his Master of Fine Arts at the Hochschule der Kuenste Berlin in 1993. Timo Kahlen has been working with sound, light, wind and other experimental media for over 20 years.
Works
1.
title: ping tschae tschae
year: 2005
Flash
“ping tschae tschae” (2005) by Timo Kahlen is a simple, yet seductively subtle internet sound art work, which is based on ornithological descriptions of birds’ songs. These scientific descriptions, read from an ornithological book by the artist, form a kind of mimetic, yet strangely abstracted, fragmented, acoustic re-creation of nature.
The work allows the viewer to meander through the image of a wood, activating sounds (ornithological descriptions of birds’ songs and further, digitally generated sounds imitating birds’ voices) simply by moving the cursor across the image. As the viewer moves the computer mouse across the image he actually generates the sound work – live, in real time, and always different.
2.
title: UR
year: 2006
Flash
description of work:
see attached file “UR_2006 Text dt-engl NEU.rtf”:
In the generative net art work “UR” (2006) surfaces and vessels become the containers of unwanted noise and ‘dirt’ generated by technological media and communication. Bits and pieces of sound create complex microcosms, ‘noise and beauty’ generated by the viewer when he touches and rolls over the given objects with his cursor. The multi-part interactive sound piece, made up of grinding, creaking, humming sounds and white noise, is based on an archive of recordings of ephemeral, interfering radio waves inbetween radio stations, which the artist has been compiling since 1987.
3.
title: Sound Drift
year: 2005
Flash
description of work:
see attached file “Sound Drift_2005 Text dt_engl NEU.rtf”:
“Sound Drift” (2005) by media artists Timo Kahlen (D) and Ian Andrews (AUS) is a generative, interactive virtual space for temporary, nomadic sounds : the noise and beauty found inbetween radio stations. A poetics of radio and noise. It allows the visitor to meander through a series of rooms that each contain one or more abstract ‘clouds’ filled with gurgling, whispering, hissing, singing, ‘dirty’ sounds of interfering radio waves. The ‘clouds’ themselves randomly and slowly drift throughout the rooms and – clicked at – lead to other rooms, creating a deep space very much like an archive of interfering radio frequencies: the constant radiation that occupies the apparently empty air that surrounds every one of us – all the time, everywhere.
The interactive work presents a complex, artificial, purely technological yet irritating, strangely mimetic soundscape, a new abstract form of sound : visualized through the patterns and movements of the ‘clouds’.
Sound Drift was developed via e-mail / online in a long-distance collaboration between Timo Kahlen (Berlin) and Ian Andrews (Sydney). It was first presented at the Ruine der Kuenste Berlin in 2005 and made available to the public at http://www.staubrauschen.de/sounddrift/ . Consecutive presentations at “Sound Art 2007” (Deutscher Klangkunst-Preis), Duisburg and at “The Sonic Image” (Totally Huge New Music Festival), Perth 2007.
Technical Comments:
The work allows the visitor to meander through a series of rooms that each contain one or more abstract ‚clouds’ filled with interfering radio frequencies. With the mouse, the spectator can move his cursor to click at the ‚clouds’ randomly drifting through the rooms. Each cloud contains one or more active buttons that will appear and disappear, and which – clicked at – will lead to further rooms. The clouds will behave in various ways: some will have to be clicked at more than once, some will only become active periodically…