2017 Recap time!
2017 Recap time! 2017 gave me a lot of good shows, two new installations, the continuation of my album-recording with Andi and the start of my teaching at the NYU Berlin. Without the constant help of my friends and partners, the urge and push to constantly explore new territories, it would be hard to keep up the self-motivation to do all this. Especially as the world seemed to fall apart a little more in this year, working as an artist sometimes seemed so unimportant. My half-true response to that is, that art should always be there to question the old, explore the new and give spectators the possibility to forget, at least for a moment.
These were my 2017 moments: In February I played two shows and had one exhibition in Tokyo and was overwhelmed by Japan on my two-week trip with my brother-from-another-mother Karsten.
In June I was at the Amsterdam Festival for a show with Jan and Andi Mouse On Mars and Musikfabrik Köln for some Neue Musik - Robot Madness. At the end of June, we won the Visual Music Award, thanks for Jakob and Sönke for receiving it and got funded by the INITIATIVE MUSIK for our new Album.
In July I played for my friends from Tech Open Air a met the awesome Travis "Machinedrum" for the first time. Award for the warmest welcome goes to Romania and the crew of the Clujotronic festival.
Somewhen mid-2018 I got to know Magnus Hecht and Anika Jankowski with their publishing hous and we decided to work together in terms of publising and releasing new and hot robotic shit!
In the beginning of November I published a new installation called "Soft Manipulator". I had this Installation in my mind for a long time, but it was not until Gwendolin Kremer from the Altana Gallery asked me to contribute some work that I started building it. I thought, it would be very cool to have a robotic installation, where people without musical knowledge can make music with objects and test out the sound side of items with their own hands, not obstructed by interfaces. It worked, also thanks to my near-genius level programmer Lennart.
End of November I totally got lost in the speculative design sphere but fortunatly got out of this world just in time to held my talk "The Speculative Future of Art, Music and Technologie" at the Most Wanted: Music Conference Berlin. The biggest influence here was "mad professor" Knut from The Constitute, with his constant stream of over-the-top ideas. Also in November I was spontaneously invited to play at Mutek Barcelona Digilab and got to know the Spanish part of the Mutek family.So, what will 2018 be like? It's just a number. But I hope it's a good one.