Foldings
Konstantin Fontaine & Johannes Schütz
Immersive Sound Installation / August 28 – September 8, 2024
Our identity is essentially shaped by memories, which influence not only self-perception but also cultural and social perspectives. They secure our understanding of the present within a continuum of time and weave past experiences into a coherent narrative structure. Yet memories are never fixed entities. Their malleability and fragility become evident in the fact that every cognitive impulse can potentially distort, adjust, or replace them. Our current emotional state also adds a subjective tint. Erroneous streams of information can shift vague and unclear memories into a blurred landscape of adapted perceptions and unsynchronized views. As identity-bearing memories continuously change themselves, an integral part of the self can distort unnoticed and allow us to dwell blissfully in error.
“Foldings” explores, as an audio-sculptural analogy, the dependent process of transformation between deforming memories and identity. The installation was created as a collaborative work by audio technologist Konstantin Fontaine and metal artist Johannes Schütz. Mechanical hammer impulses set the material into vibration. Contact microphones transmit the sculptural vibrations, which are then played back, pitched, and supplemented with synthesized sound. An interactive process develops and generatively drives itself forward. The resulting vibration patterns thus describe the correlations of the sculptures and serve as the basis for reactive sound synthesis. The familiar sonic structure can still be perceived even after numerous contortions of its form. Delicate upheaval may obscure such a distortion.
Konstantin Fontaine & Johannes Schütz
The artist duo Johannes Schütz and Konstantin Fontaine explore the interface between sculptural metal art and adaptive sound synthesis processes. Schütz is a trained metal artist and studied metal sculpture at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle from 2005 to 2011. In his figurative, representational sculptures, he combines artistic freedom with a solid mastery of the material. This results in works with presence that manage to animate and transform the material. Fontaine is a trained audio technologist with a focus on computer music and sound art. In the field of virtual acoustics, he particularly investigates generative approaches and algorithmic systems, with his installations mostly dealing with the alienation of acoustic scenes. The translation of complex movement patterns into synthetic sound generation is the main focus of their collaborative work, bringing out close correlations between material and auditory events.
swim 2024
With the series swim (spatial works and immersive music), ZiMMT invites you in 2024 to throw musical habits overboard. Nine concerts and three sound installations, bridging multiple genres, pose new questions. A broad spectrum of musical expressions from various genres is integrated into immersive, spatial experiences.
Fifteen very different local and international artists are part of swim. Their works range from intricately composed electroacoustic pieces to experimental approaches rooted in the aesthetics of club music. swim merges diverse sound worlds and lets radical approaches to music production and performance challenge conventional ideas. What is a live performance? Which technical means are used, and how do they expand musical expression? What happens to the role of the audience when it immerses itself in virtual sound worlds during an immersive performance?
Even ideas of what an instrument is are deconstructed, and familiar instruments are used in unusual ways.
During three-day microresidencies, musicians can develop their works on site using 3D audio technology and try out new approaches. All concerts will be live-streamed in high-quality binaural audio — for a spatial experience both on site and everywhere else.
