Timo Kahlen

Audio Dust

2011

Artist/s: Timo Kahlen

Title: Audio Dust

Year: 2011

Edition / Serial number: 8

Category: Installation; Computer-based

Material / Technique: website

Collection: ZKM | Center for Art and Media

Description: The soft, round fur object whirs, hums and crackles. As soon as the viewer’s mouse cursor touches the sounds embedded in the interactive surface of the image projection, it creates a composition of seductively beautiful incidental and disturbing noise: generated by the viewer at that moment, always live and always different, depending on the position, speed and direction of the cursor’s movements, or intentional pauses, with which the viewer chooses to interact with the object.
The interactive film and sound projection »Audio Dust« (2011) addresses the difficult technical process of recording sounds. Dusty, scratchy, only partially decipherable noise and acoustic fragments directly linked to the recording process have become entangled in the furry windshield of a microphone, have left multiple sonic traces in its tentacles. Static and moving fragments of sound embedded in the object form humming, whirring, buzzing and rustling microcosms that the viewer triggers by touching, hovering above or clicking on the soft, furry surface with the mouse cursor. “Windjammer, poodle or deadcat: the windbreak made of long-haired fur, which allows microphone recordings even in extreme wind conditions, has many names in the jargon of sound engineers. Timo Kahlen takes the image of filtering noise as the starting point for his interactive sound work. »Audio Dust« makes audible all the ambient and background noise that a windbreak usually absorbs. Our attention shifts from the microphone to the residues ofnoise caught in the thicket of the fur” (Julia Gerlach, ZKM Karlsruhe 2012). Raw, dirty sounds capture our attention.