take it to the bridge
(2024)
10 channel sound installation & performance
chalk drawings on tarmac, 2 solenoids, 10 channels, bass guitar, moog SIRIN, field recordings
Photos © Hannah Mayr, Marta Beauchamp
We arrive at the Südbahnhofbrücke spiral on our bikes, unpack bags, unpack microphones, observe others do their business, cycle up and down, down and up the spiral.
The geophone gives us an insight into how long the vibrations of the structure’s tubes resonate and especially into the difference of their resonating frequencies.
Lowering my attention to the ground, I notice that grasshoppers escape my presence as jumping swarms; the ones I don’t see chirp, in call and response.
The weeks of work that follow, back indoors with instruments and devices, drawings and scientific publications on insect communication entrainment, focus on weaving a composition around the bridge spiral featuring its architectural structure and its animal inhabitants.
The composition features live recordings of the grasshopper calls, found recordings of Heteroptera calls, imitations of this calls via the use of a SIRIN Moog synthesiser. These waves of calls are interspersed by songs played on the bass guitar, accompanied by a solenoid percussion system attached to two poles of the bridge and hitting directly on the structure.
This work was commissioned by "a _ maze – Verein zur Förderung audio-visueller Kunst" and developed between August – September 2024
Thank you to: Xaver Fuchs for providing his custom-built midi machine for this project and for technical advice, Stefan Geissler for help on site with the large scale drawings, Conny Zenk and Georg Hartl and the team of RAD performance for professional support during the rehearsals and production.