IMA | lab No. 16

At the "Double IMA | lab" two guests with distinctly different methods of working will introduce their work in discussion with Ludger Brümmer and Till Kniola:
By way of the spectral analysis of existing music recordings, Michael Iber has developed so-called "soundalikes" – illustrations of music that have become music. Thomas Ankersmit, by contrast, is dedicated to the special sound aesthetics of synthesizers and works on their digital extension and potential in the form of live electronics.
 

Michael Iber (*1965)

The musician and radio journalist is presently developing a sonification method for the analysis of production data. As former pianist in the classic sense, today the intepretation of music and its context comprises the center of his artistic work. His so-called "soundalikes" involve the spectral analysis of audio files which, by means of an especially developed software, were transposed in randomly allocated instrumental scores. In the process, illustrations of music have become music, which provide the soundalike software of corresponding algorithms used for preparing instrumental images of audio files. The strange familiarity of the »soundalikes« is thus both obsequious and repulsive.
There have been instrumental realizations of "soundalikes", including those by the Staatskapelle Weimar (2006) or the Ensemble Modern (2011). He realized electronic works, among others, for the Berlin HAU theater X-Appartments Project (2008) or the Frankfurt Positions (2011).
 

Thomas Ankersmit (*1979)

The Dutch musician produces live electro-acoustic music, plays alto saxophone, and realizes installations. Since 2006, the Serge Modular synthesizer has been his main instrument which, alongside the Buchla synthesizer is generally considered to be one of the experimental, electronic instruments of the pre-digital era. Whereas the major synthesizer producers sought to imitate traditional (key) instruments, the goal of the Serge-Buchla model was the creation of an entirely innovative music.
Ankersmit is one of the few musicians to use the Serge synthesizer as a live instrument, and compliment it with their own system. He is particularly interested in physical and psycho-acoustic phenomenon; with his improvisations, he is interested in the emergence of "otoacoustic emissions" − sounds, which the human ear produces itself as reaction to certain frequencies. Ankersmit often meets with minimal composer Phill Niblock, and forms duos with Valerio Tricoli or Kevin Drumm. His music appears on labels such as PAN, Touch and Ash International.