STEIM

On October 30th , we visited STEIM, considered by many art-savvy Europeans as the center for new and experimental music. Artistic Director Jan St. Werner describes the organization as “an artistic community and exhibition space.” Their objectives are untraditional, compared to much of what we’ve seen, as they work from project to project with no master plan, just an initiative to provide their resident artists/musicians with the tools and engineering know-how to create whatever far-out instruments their little hearts desire. The trajectory of STEIM’s work is fluid and responsive to the goals of their artists, rather than a tired, overarching mission.

This is The Reactable, one of STEIM’s many ongoing projects:

Using small translucent cubes adorned with black and white stickers (of sorts), this man manipulates sonic waveforms like delicate air-hockey pucks. Video cameras underneath the table’s surface read the patterns of the cubes, and alter the frequencies according to a pre-programmed response system. The sound was diverse in pitch as well as volume, ranging anywhere from oscillating squeals to low, room-shaking drones.  As remarkable as the machine was, I couldn’t imagine a band performing with such a thing, and the aural result wasn’t unlike what many avant-garde noise bands are creating, and have been creating for some time with now readily available tools.

I was initially tempted to dismiss the instrument as something inaccessible and trite--technology for technology’s sake. Why spend incredible money and time developing “neat stuff” that is irreplaceable and unapproachable to any musician working outside of a techno-centric community? Jan touched on this point, if only briefly, explaining, “Acoustic musicians have so much control over their instruments that we try to capture with electronics… Music has to come from somewhere, we think.” STEIM attempts to push a certain sort of composition back from the realm of post-production or the computer interface, into the hands of musicians to perform in real-time.

-Sarah Nienaber