Ben Fawkes: Michelin Mo, (2024)

The series »Sonic Experiments« is dedicated to current developments within the various varieties of experimental electronic music. The program presents upcoming musicians and sound artists who either have a special sense for new, forward-looking impulses, or pursue particularly innovative compositional approaches. The aim of the series is to invite the audience to expect the unexpected.

Ben Fawkes:

This piece is an experimental and research project on prepared guitar techniques, inspired by John Cage's prepared piano pieces and Keith Rowe's guitar preparation methods. Fishing weights, crocodile clips, a polyphonic e-bow, a tennis racket mute, a violin bow, corks and xylophone mallets are the “tools” of choice for the preparation and are used on three guitars and a bass. In many ways, this work is an attempt to break away from the idea of “playing the guitar” in the traditional sense and find other ways to create sounds, rhythms and melodies. Each guitar will be equipped with its own loop pedal. The use of alternative tunings and the prepared techniques mentioned above, as well as the use of space echo, delay, reverb, tremolo and a range of intelligent synthesizer-like pedals, allow for an interesting palette of sounds and timbres to be presented and then spatialized in the ZKM cube. Looping helps build up the layers, creating an organized “chaos” and hopefully some happy accidents. 

Credits:

Dominik Kautz (Curator & project manager)
Götz Dipper (Guest artist mentor)
Laura Benetschik (Project management assistant)
Ben Miller (Sound director)
Manuel Urrutia (Stage manager)
Bernd Lintermann (LiDAR motion detection technology)
Hans Gass & Alexander Hauk (Light- & stage technician)

This year, »Culture Moves Europe« awarded five grant receivers with scholarships. Funded by the EU's »Creative Europe«-program, »Culture Moves Europe« is implemented by the Goethe-Institute.

Ben Fawke's scholarship is fully funded by ZKM | Karlsruhe with no additional funding from the European Union and is not part of »Culture Moves Europe«.

Maximilian Pellizzari’s project is co-funded by Autonome Provinz Bozen - Südtirol, Deutsche Kultur.