[Atom at TESLA-Berlin, September 2007 / photo: Justine Lera]

Robert Henke and Christopher Bauder's installation Atom was one of the most exciting performances at MUTEK 2009. The project could be described as a whimsical rhythm machine or perhaps a spatial system for visualizing music. A summary of the project from the MUTEK review I wrote for Rhizome:

The piece involves an eight-by-eight grid of helium-filled balloons, each tethered to a motorized cable winch. Each balloon contains a dimmable LED and the entire assembly functions as a spatial instrument that responds to Henke's atmospheric ambient techno score. Audio events such as percussion hits trigger illumination within individual balloons and the height of individual nodes are constantly modulating.

During the festival, Robert, Christopher and I had the following chat about Atom. The pair of artists situated the work in relation to their respective Monolake and WHITEvoid projects in a conversation touched on musical performance, audience expectations and the occasionally blurry line between instruments and interfaces.

[Atom - technical rider illustration / photo: WHITEvoid]

Greg J. Smith: Between your performance of Atom and the A/VISIONS Tesla coil mayhem, I couldn't even bring myself to face another club event at Metropolis last night - so thank you. I've been trying to wrap my head around your piece and there are two ways that I'm inclined to think about it - I'm hoping you can respond to both of these ideas. Is Atom an instrument for playing space or an interface for musical composition? To me, the piece appears to be an instrument and I can only imagine the relationship between the motorized system and Robert's compositional process. Thoughts?

Robert Henke: It is an instrument because it is performed. There are only a few things pre-programmed, like building blocks and the whole narrative structure is the result of actually playing it - I really see it as an instrument. Christopher is playing the position of the balloons and I play the LED patterns and the sound.

Christopher Bauder: Yeah, it is like one huge machine that we are operating together.

GJS: In terms of the organization of the piece, at what level is it arranged? Is it movements or scenes or... I was thinking of scenes in Ableton Live and there were moments during the performance in which it felt like new movements, or vignettes were beginning. You could see the behaviour patterns of the entire system shift.

RH: It is more individual clips - it is not on a scene level.

CB: Actually, technically it is.

RH: I think we need to clarify exactly what you mean though...

GJS: Maybe referencing scenes in Ableton will limit this discussion.

RH: To clarify, the whole concert consists of nine pieces and the order of the pieces is fixed because the transitions between the pieces are very important. However, what happens within these pieces is very variable - the length, the dynamic and structure within the performance are all very free. So it is really like a concert where we play nine pieces and each allows a lot of freedom.

GJS: Presumably the behaviour, the possibilities influence the way that these pieces are performed. Can you elaborate on the overlap of your skill sets. I know that you've performed this project several times, how exactly have you tuned this system?

RH: You mean the interaction between the capabilities of the instrument?

GJS: The capabilities of the instrument and the sound that is showcased through it...

RH: 8x8, 64 LEDs is not that much material to work with - it is a very small, and very rough matrix. This forces you to come up with very basic shapes, and I set up a very simple rule for myself that every percussive element in the music has to create a sound and a visual signal. I limit myself to four MIDI clips in Live as that is the maximum that I can handle and really pay attention. These limitations lead to musical and optical and spatial structures that have to be simple. What makes this whole system come alive are the changes. Another approach would be if you think about a very difficult instrument, then the changes would be very difficult and you could work out very precise and well designed tableaux. The tableaux within our setup are very simple and the impact comes from the constant change.

GJS: I was quite struck by the fact that I had no clue where you guys were located until the very end of the performance. I didn't know if you were in the room or "the men behind the curtain". Towards the end of the concert, all the balloons dropped down to their base, resting state, and I thought the performance had ended - but it hadn't, there was one tableau to go. This final tableau started with all the balloons rising up to the highest position and as they rose I could see the audience on the other side of the room again - I had forgot about the people on the opposite side of the space the installation was mediating my view of them. To what degree does Atom reflect your thinking on performance, audience expectations, and space (within the context of a music festival)?

RH: First of all, as I repeat again and again, I find it really important to be close to the audience. I find it crucial to not be elevated, and, in a piece like this, since we are playing an instrument, we need to see and hear it - all these constraints more or less force us to almost become part of the audience.

CB: Since the piece has no direction and you have the same views from all sides, we decided from the very first performance that this will not be performed on a stage and the audience will surround the piece. We will create the patterns so that they can be perceived equally from all sides.

GJS: So there is no "sweet spot"?

RH: Exactly - I really try to create four channel sound in a way that works in every position. It might sound different in certain points within the room but it works everywhere. Even some of the overtly spatial sounds and effects, while they might cycle in one direction and then turn around - you can understand them from everywhere in the room.

[Atom at MUTEK 2009 / photos: basic_sounds]

GJS: Did you try to work through all the configurations of the matrix? There was a definite sense that you explored the entire form. There were some architectural references, such as the ramp, and arrangements where the balloons formed a floor or ceiling - but the bulk of it wasn't figurative. Certain balloon configurations had me thinking about the aesthetics of trackers and step sequencers but others seemed explicitly architectural. What is your thinking about the way that you "play" space with Atom?

RH: Really free associations - the ramp was our space ship.

CB: ...aliens landing with lights flashing on the side.

RH: ...and other forms like the bowl shaped volume that might read as that for for a while and then shift into a groups of lines that fire like pistons.

CB: Sound and space were interlocking all the time. The balloons created a shape and it looked like something and then we had a musical association. Sometimes it was the other way around...

RH: ...and we worked from sound. We asked ourselves: what shape or pattern would work with a specific sound?

GJS: It is funny, the MUTEK documentation for the project was quite limited. I checked out the project on Robert's site and even after examining the material on the piece I assumed that Atom was some kind of a percussion equalizer. Now, I would have been interested in this but what surprised me was the degree to which I could see a back-and-forth between the movement and the sound design - it was reflexive. So now I wonder, what exactly you guys do after this? Is Atom something that you tour, refine and explore, is there another system on a sketchpad somewhere?

CB: Both. We are refining it - this system, and the new prototypes are already under construction. This next version will have full RGB and the matrix will also be comprised of more units, and the balloons will also be able to be bigger - we're going to have a lot more options. This new system will also be faster and there are also a lot of other ideas in the works.

GJS: Ok. So with festivals like MUTEK, OFFF and ARS Electronica - do you see this project as some kind of a middle ground between the music festival and the new media expo? Do you think other artists might head in this direction?

CB: This kind of work as a trend?

RH: I don't know. Something I see that I know a lot of people who came for instance from a club music background when they were in their twenties. If they are continuing making music and they are serious about their art, at some point they will probably wonder to themselves "What should I do - when I am 50 or 60 will I still want to perform a minimal techno set at 5 in the morning?" You think about where can you put your creative output, what situations allow you to make art when you are older? Of course, working in an audiovisual context allows your work to perceived in a different way. I personally have a film sound background and I'm interested in those things and to me it was clear that I liked this kind of interaction and I feel that a lot of people from my generation who have been making music for a few decades are exploring similar systems for exactly the same reason.

GJS: I know you guys weren't at the panel that Philip Sherburne hosted yesterday, but Uwe Schmidt was talking about the travesty of that "well now what?" moment with making club music - he said he was always happy to leave a club when he was done performing.

RH: The club experience is important, but for me it's really a world that is not my world anymore and I have to be aware of that if I am interacting with this world. I don't want to be seen as someone who is pretending to be in this world anymore and for instance as a result of this I now insist that my Monolake live shows - which are still working in a club context somehow are four channel. It works extremely well because it clearly tells the crowd that something else is going on. For instance, I recently played in a party in France with Jeff Mills. It was a 3000 person rave with a gigantic PA and I was booked by the agent of Jeff Mills because Jeff likes what I do and I performed in the centre of the space and it was fantastic because it became so obvious to the people that something different had happened - not the normal DJ somewhere in the background or the usual live act and it worked extremely well. It wasn't that everybody was dancing their ass off, but I totally had the feeling that people were very fascinated with the fact that in their club space, they heard something related to their music and ideas - it had bass drums and it had basslines and hi-hats and snares and those things but at the same time it was different. For me this is where I can see the future and at the same time I can see audiovisual stuff working in these contexts as well. The only thing is that I currently have no concept how to integrate interesting visual content into this four channel scenario in a club.

[WHITEvoid / Polygon Playground / 2008]

GJS: What's interesting is that there seems to be a lot of prototypes out there for the way that artists can perform sound with video. We've talked about the press play, well-branded "cool visuals" camp that is prominent and well received but there are limitations there - how reactive can these systems be? Are video artists limited to being "interpreters" for musicians? To change directions somewhat, Robert seems to be referencing a mutated or evolving vision of the club experience. Christopher, how are you approaching this project? Are you coming at this work from an interaction design background or perhaps from architecture?

CB: Yeah, I've studied interaction design and I do a very broad range of projects from commercial work to art installations. I show my work at a lot of art and media festivals and I love club music, I still go out clubbing and that is the common ground.

RH: The raw energy of good club music refers back to a few very basic principles of music. I've been involved with academic computer music for long enough to understand what is often missing there and at the same time I am bored to death by minimal techno.

CB: It is also funny the way Atom reaches some people who would never go out to listen to techno. There was a 70 year old woman who came up to us after we performed in Paris and she didn't say it was too loud. She listened to it, she was very close to the speakers and she thought the performance was too short. She was completely immersed in the piece - it is funny that people who never go into clubs can listen to similar sounds in a different context and love it.

RH: ...and they feel connected to it. For them, techno is a different style tied to a different scene, or world for that matter - we find this connection very interesting.

GJS: At one point during the performance, when the bass was cut, the whirring of the motorized winches became a part of the soundscape. That made me think about the legacy of sampling these types of sounds within electronic music and hearing a motor as a "working part" of a musical performance was kind of a moment of purity - it was great to hear this here at MUTEK.

CB: Sometimes people say that they are disturbed by the sound of the winches.

GJS: ...do they want all the process to be inaudible and seamless? To me, the process is what is interesting. For example, if there wasn't a bit of swing on the balloons the performance might be more formally perfect - whatever that means, but what I like is how certain balloons are a little off from their neighbours.

RH: I think that I have to put in a layer, and Christopher has to put in a layer of "spray" in the next version - so you can adjust the randomness a little bit.

GJS: So there is no randomness in it right now? Aside of course from dealing with air and physics?

RH: No, currently there is no imperfection in the system but in thinking about the next system we probably need to introduce a little bit of this mist. In music this is needed, same thing in animation - if it is too perfect it is boring.

GJS: Impenetrable.

CB: A little grain always helps.

GJS: Indeed! Thanks for the chat.