Jens Brand was born 1968 in Dortmund. He studied at the Kunstakademie Münster from 1988-94. Since 1992 he curated the mex e.V. As a result of experiences with artists initiatives like the „Het Apollohuis“ in Eindhoven (Paul Panhuysen) or the „Experimental Intermedia Foundation New York“ (Phill Niblock) he turned to conceptual art and experimental music. He developed several music performances, installations and intermedia projects since then.

At the mexhibition he will present his work „G-Player4“, which was already featured at the Künstlerhaus in 2005 in a different context. The G-(global) Player is a device that scans the structure of earth’s surface via data from satellites in order to make it audible, just like a needle of a record player would detect the differences in height of a groove on a record and transform them into tones. Therefor the subtitle „The earth is a disc“ can be taken literally in this new context. Brand plays with scientific and human conceptions. This combination produces a completely new kind of perception. We „hear“ our planet, that we are being made aware of as a whole.

jensbrand.com
 

Julis was born in 1939 in Wilhelmshaven and died in 2011 in Berlin. He studied art at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste. His first installations engaged in photography. Later, influenced by works of John Cage, but even more by contemporary european music, he developed more interest in the sounds of the environment and the textures of sounds. He tried to connect space and sound by combining pulsating textures with the acoustics of the room, similar to David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and David Tudor.

Rolf Julius was the archetypal „sound artist“. He painted with sound, he colored with pitch, and his work demands the attention and open-mindedness of those who embrace modern art. He collected found sounds, and mixed them with prerecorded single tone notes which were then, electronically modified and filtered through tiny loudspeakers, transformed into music. Depending on the surface texture where the loudspeaker has been places - wall, floor or outdoors - these objects resonate and „breathe“ sound. Just like his piece „Lullaby for the Fishes“ made in 1984, which is kindly provided to the mexhibition by his daughter Maija Julius, who curated the mex e.V. until 2015.

Kallabris is a musical project that started in the mid 80ies and has since then exercised itself in active handling of sounds, limitations and items of every-day-life. Privately the name of Kallabris is Michael Anacker. But that is something completely different.

Fields by Kallabris is an installation for fields with groups of paper loudspeakers which represent a closed system of communication. The different fields sound and move stimulated by the same electromagnetic impulses and thus transport information by moving and sounding. Each field reacts differently while the network of the fields tries to establish equilibrium. Disturbances in single fields are compensated by the network. Fields is a cybernetic model of behavior which tends to skip into action. The skipping happens on the basis of simple patterns of communication. Lexicon, syntax, semantics and pragmatics are combined in a way that rhythmically transcendences any algorithm. Fields reveals the mechanic of interpretation and its fragility.

www.kallabris.de
 

Bart Maris is a Belgian trumpet player. He has worked with very many bands and played for the Flat Earth Society, dEUS, Zita Swoon and cooperated with Art Zoyd, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Evan Parker and many more. Also he holds a guest professorship at the School of Arts in Ghent.

Loops is a sound installation compiled of loudspeakers and vintage tape-machines. Every loudspeaker plays its own loop of a short sound fragment, composed by Walabix and Bart Maris (in different orchestrations). Pre-produced as audio tracks in variable length including silence. The overlapping of the many tape-machines creates a constantly changing composition of diverse density and many layers.
 

Tintin Patrone was born in 1983 in Marburg. She studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste with Korpus & Löffler, Haegue Yang und Matti Braun. Acoustic receives an extra significant value in her works. Tintin builds instruments, tunes cars and establishes collectives, that produce sounds and research the spectrum between noise and music. When is noise considered music and how does it behave with the sound of engines? Her performances, a field of improvisation and experiment are aiming on being lost in reverie. Her visual picture language is shaped by pop-culture, TV and the icons of internet communication. The symbols of a post-internet-esthetic appear in her graphics, carpets, paintings and objects. She performed with her Krachkisten Orchester at the mex-cellar in 2015.

The starting point for the video installation „Art Yard“ is the eponymous writen version of a performance idea by conceptual artist Walter de Maria. The idea formulated in May 1960 of a hitherto unrealized happening describes the emergence of a pit and is presented as a 3D animation. Soundtrack: cut-up version of ‚Musicwords (for Phill Niblock)‘ (1978) by Jackson Mac Low.

www.tintinpatrone.com

Hans Polterauer is a taught TV-technician and started in art as autodidact. Since 1989 he works as a freelance artist and drawer. He lives and works in Münzkirchen, Upper Austria. He works in the fields of kinetics, light kinetics, kinetics of plants, rotation- and stroboscope art. Since 2001 he member of the Innviertler Künstlergilde (IKG). Besides he belongs to the Kunstverein Passau and in addition since 2004 to the Künstlergilde Wels.

At the mexhibition you can see three exhibits by Hans Polterauer, to which he notes: „Ameisenkönigin“ (queen ant) and „Haarausfall“ (hair loss) are about the interaction between regularities (rotation of the motor) and coincidence. Hence produces every turn of „Haarausfall“ a „new graphic“. And caused by the rotation of the magnets new constellations are build again and again. Alike the interplay of rhythm and free improvisation in music. To me rules and chance matter very much in my art. And actually the evolution and our environment, even our society and at eventually also live are based on this principle. In my work „Beziehungskrise“ (relationship crisis) I want to demonstrate what can be observed in relationships very often and indeed is a crisis. - It doesn’t work with and it doesn’t work without. - Similar to being addicted, hate arises against what is loved on the other hand. An interplay of attraction and rejection.
 

Claudia Robles-Angel is an audiovisual and new media artist born in Colombia and active worldwide. Her work and research cover different aspects of visual and sound art which extend from audiovisual fixed-media compositions to performances interacting with biomedical signals via the usage of interfaces such as, for example, the EEG (electroencephalogram, measuring brain waves activity).
SKIN (from 2014) is an interactive installation, in which visitors have the opportunity to use a GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) interface, which measures their skin’s moisture. The variations of there values are an indication of psychological or physiological arousal, such as for example appearance of stress or relaxation. The values received from the GSR are further transmitted to a computer in order to transform the sound and the image of the interactive space. Visitors are therefor invited to create an audiovisual environment from their own emotional and physiological parameters.

claudearobles.de

The artist Anna Schimkat, born in Darmstadt in 1974, understands art, in the sense of the notion of exhibitions by Lucy Lippard or Szeemanns, as science, as experimental layout for questioning all different aspects, such as science itself. After finishing her studies at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, she stayed for some time as a guest at a research institute for neuroscience, where she was specially interested in visibility of perception and brain processes, due to modern technology of the magnetic resonance tomograph (MRT). She implements her investigations in human cognition primarily with her sound installations, that are always meant participative, too. In her works Anna Schimkat not only asks herself, but also the viewer how we are gathering experiences and how we achieve consciousness about the formation of experiences.
The sound installation „Note Sensible“ scrutinizes the individual perception of our daily sound environment in a space-time-composition on guiding systems. Four original German audible traffic signal systems for visually impaired people are installed on scaffolding poles throughout the gallery. By orienting the speakers to a central point, the different „pilot tones“ merge into a central rhythm pattern. The volume of the rhythm is automatically controlled by the ambient (background) noise level. A red button, mounted on the pole, invites the visitor to interact with the installation. Upon pressing it, audible signals are triggered, which juxtapose the „crossing signals“. For the installation, however, the crossing signals are replaced by sinus tones specifically assigned to each signal system. The 20-seconds interruption of the individual „pilot-tone“ leads to shift of the central rhythm pattern.

www.annaschimkat.de

RaumZeitPiraten (Tobias Daemgen, Jan Ehlen, Moritz Ellerich are a space and time bending artists group. Since 2007 they are misusing and remixing ancient and up-to-date auditive and visual technologies for heterogenous, organically improvised light and sound architectures. Their activities are aimed at playful, experimental connections of sound, image, object, space and time to an alternately-self-expanding-somewhere between science and fiction.
Discarded, broken and endangered musical instuments are saved from their disposal, modified into self-playing, musical automats and joined-up to form an electromechanical, audiovisual orchestra. With kinetic manipulations, light-, sound-, and motion-sensors, the instruments play themselves, each other and are played contactless by the changing conditions of their environment, creating everchanging soundscapes of intention and coincidence.
raumzeitpiraten.com

The Sonic Chair is a design furniture with loudspeaker, that is turnable by 350 degrees. Sitting in the center of a sound supports the spatiality of the recordings. Loudspeaker in the ceiling of the chair, the lower frequencies are transmitted to the back of the user via a special membrane. In some exhibitions of the series „soundwaves“ in Cologne and Münster, several sound artists were invited to submit their compositions specially conceived for this unique chair. The visitors are invited to give theirselves over to the floating streams of sound and bizarre interlaced sound landscapes. You will find abstract Kraut, electronic ambient, pure field recordings, layered guitar drones and achieved noise-stories, as well as sound-art, Jazz or experimental pop. The pieces can be listened to as a cycling program or can be selected via the console.
Sonic Chair is curated by Georg Dietzler, Erhard Hirt, Till Kniola and Achim Zepezauer with recordings by: Andreas Oskar Hirsch // Achim Mohné // Janneke van der Putten & Chrs Galarreta // Miki Yui // Achim Zepezauer // Stan Pete // Ross Parfitt, Erhard Hirt & Florian Walter // Artificial Memory Trace // Colin Potter // N // Das Synthetische Mischgewebe // Claus van Bebber // Gailė Griciūtė // Peter Strickmann // Marta Zapparoli
 

Living in London by choice, Tasos Stamou is an electroacoustic music composer and performer, alternative electronics music instrument maker, tutor and sound technologist. During a decade of sound performances and recordings, he has developed a unique style of live electroacoustic music composition. Long and continuous pieces are created in situ using a „portable electroacoustic music studio“. His work explores the space between ancient and contemporary transcendental music, using both traditional and advanced media. As homage to his homeland Crete he recently released a record on the label Discrepant with the title „Musique Con Crète“.
In 2016 Tasos Stamou was guest at the mex-cellar for a concert and now he holds his second workshop for the mex e.V. in cooperation with the Parzelle Festival, taking place at the Depot form October 31 to November 3. The workshop will be on the 3rd of November at 11am at the Künstlerhaus Dortmund. The expenses are 50,- €. Application required. 5 participants only!

www.tasosstamou.com