ART MEETS NATURE

At the center of the micro-sound-LED-light-art of the artist couple <SA/JO> is the perception of „resounding-shining“ nature, the fantastical world that is hidden within animal voices' and light's sound, color, and space microcosms.

The media artists gather their artistic-acoustic-visual base material exclusively from the animal world and nature and with it, create a spatial-sound-color-light-art that heralds, among other things, the „origins“ of sound on earth. Visitors listen in the light and color flooded „event spheres“ of the artificial staged „spatial-sound- microscopics“ and in this way, in the broadest sense, also become involved with nature, per se.

ART MEETS TECHNOLOGY

The artist couple works with new, in parts uniquely developed and innovative technologies for the expansion of human auditory and visual abilities, whereby new, unknown, and previously inaudible and invisible sound-, light-, and space-dimensions of our world can be experienced, staged as artificial, (ec)statically configured, audio-visual happenings in space and time.

Playing an important role in this is, on the one hand, the careful and respectful preparation of animal voices and natural sounds, as well as, on the other hand, breaking down to its basic elements, the physical „natural“ phenomenon light (exclusively generated from video films of the three nature elements water, fire and vegetation) in continuous pixel-fluctuating, „abstractly“ four-dimensional dark-light-color modulations in space and time.

In order to, mainly, make audible to a great extent in an original and unprocessed form, the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of animal voices and natural sounds, which are hidden in sono-molecular internal structures, the artist couple developed a process of spatial sound microscopy that is unique throughout the world.

Among other things, they use it to create artificial „habitats“ for sound and light. Quasiimaginary, micro-acoustic biotopes arise, which the visitor, who is inside of an enterable biomorphic-architectural three-dimensional LED-color-light-sculpture, can participate in as a total experience, addressing all senses simultaneously.

ART MEETS SCIENCE

Audio-microscope, EndoMicroSonoScopy and the latest computer aided LED-light technique stand for the use of new, digital technologies and innovations in the area of audio-production for sonar-luminar-scientific research, analysis, and archiving of micro-acoustic animal sounds as well as of natural color-light-phenomena which are previously invisible.

The artist couple profited from the innovative and exclusive developments in the electroacoustic spatial sound art of the solo artists in previous years.

Sabine Schäfer, who as one of the first media artists in the world, established the three-dimensional, computer-aided movement of sound in space - with her internationally highly acclaimed spatial sound project series „TopoPhonia“ - and was honored for her accomplishments with the international Siemens media art prize in 1993.

Joachim Krebs, an award winning (the Beethoven prize, and the Villa Massimo grant Rome, among others) composer and sound artist, with his project series „Artificial Soundscapes“, and the exclusive development of the process for sound microscopy, the so-called „EndoMicroSonoScopy“ at the end of the 1990s. The process allows a quasi permeation of the molecular inner realm of sound and noise to make previously inaudible, audible.

More detailed information can be found in the artist catalogue published by Ed. Kehrer Heidelberg: TopoSonic Arts 1997-2006, and online at this homepage.

The media art works by the couple of artists <SA/JO> combine science and art and it shows, among other things, also perspectives for the functional implementation of micro-acoustics in the areas of psycho- acoustics, sono-biology, acoustic nature studies, and medicine.

Scientific research institutes, as well as audio-archives for animal voices support the project. Among the collaboration with the research departments of the ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) and of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the collaboration with the Leibniz-Institute for research in evolution and its bio-acoustic department at the Humboldt University of Berlin, which has just been initiated, will continue to gain in importance.