This installation by Leo Hofmann and Andi Otto builds upon a feedback loop between a camera and a projection. The camera is set up behind motorized venetian blinds onto which the live image is projected. An Arduino controlled motor opens and closes the blinds according to the music which leads to visual feedbacks, gradual shifts in transparency and opacity of the setup and - as an unexpected result we discovered during the process - most beautiful northern-light-style reflections all over the space. Premiered at Galerie Ame Nue in 2016.
This non-interactive sound installation is an excerpt from the performance "Pachinko Playalong" by Leo Hofmann and Andi Otto, premiered at ZKM in Karlsruhe in 2014.
Pachinko Playalong [Trailer]
Performativ audio drama 2014, 30 min Performance at Imatronic/ZKM (Karlsruhe) "In my opinion, locks are really just a psychological barrier." - Ron Reed, expert locksmith A video tutorial by the American locksmith Ron Reed serves as the conceptual starting point of the first collaboration between composer-performers Leo Hofmann and Andi Otto. In his instructions on how to pick a lock, Reed is less concerned with the mastery of technique than with a live dialogue between hardware and intuition. Hofmann and Otto apply his idea of a lock as a black box that must be sensitively cracked to their musical interfaces: for years, both have been using gestural controllers of their own making in developing individual interpretation practices for their electronic music. Through the metaphor of sealing-off, the piece arrives at the theme of a nuclear waste repository. How can we design warning signs that can be understood in a thousand years and locks that would last forever? In a fictional studio session to record auditive warning signals, curious suggestions from current studies are presented. The performers are situated at a table behind a blind. Throughout the piece, the mechanics to open and close its slats are operated by remote control. A camera captures the duo’s actions on the table from above and projects the image onto the blind in real time. The transparency of this moving projection screen generates a polyphony of simultaneous perspectives: double images with oscillating vibrant feedback elements between camera and projection and room-filling reflections of the slats, suggestive of Northern Lights. These thematic areas come together in recordings of weather reports from Japanese television. The mechanical game Pachinko serves as a clamorous background which Otto recorded in a Kyoto gambling hall. The countless falling metal balls, which decide the outcome of the game, are out of the player’s control – even more so than a lock being picked. Luck is essential, as in the case of the wind’s direction, when things suddenly become serious. --- www.leohofmann.com www.andiotto.com