GeOrgel

For actual information, pleaase, visit the GeOrgel-project-website (blog in german / choose your language in the menu)

„GeOrgel“ is an installation with ten interactive sound drawers. The drawer serves to control the volume of the sound coming from it. The combination of different furnitures becomes a polyphonic instrument and a container for oral history. The installation refers as well to living room culture of the 1980’s as to the surrounding. People from the neighborhood were interviewed and asked if they can contribute a song to the installation. Visitors are allowed to open every case and can also contribute to the drawer’s contents. Furthermore, musicians and artists are invited to perform there. In 2023 „UpcycleTheStreet!“, a series of public interventions takes place in front of the GeOrgel.

The word „GeOrgel“ means something like someone playing an organ badly – but in slang, it refers also to the (failing!) starting of the car engine. The style of the furniture is „Oak rustic“ but it’s also kind of an unofficial follower of the „Gelsenkirchen baroque“. As such, it refers to the city as the location where it’s built and presented. Allthough situated in the west, it’s nowadays Germany’s poorest city according to people’s income situation.

Inside GeOrgel … documentation, 3 mins, 2023

Ich-Orgel (I-Organ)

in collaboration with / in Zusammenarbeit mit Michael Rieken

(deutsche Version unten)

„Ich-Orgel“ (I-Organ) is a reactive sound and light installation as well as a tool for an an audiovisual performance. It creates electronic interpretations of organ samples by J.S. Bach. When a visitor activates the composition of 6 different tracks / speakers, he can navigate from one channel to another by moving his head slowly to one of the coloured circles that symbolize the sound layers. In addition, the body moments are adding up to a timebased portrait of the player that’s expressed in the 6×7-pixel-display expressed by 42 globe light bulbs.  Watch a documentation of the av performance i organ – video.

Ich-Orgel“ – Einladung zum meditativen Komponieren

Ich-Orgel“ von Stefan Demming und Michael Rieken ist eine interaktive Klang-Licht-Installation, bei der Kameraaufnahmen von Besuchern in eine klangliche Komposition und skulpturale Lichtinstallation übertragen werden.

Indem Ausstellungsbesucher einem Feld aus Glühbirnen gegenübertreten, hauchen sie diesem durch ihre Anwesenheit Leben ein. Die Bewegungen haben dabei Einfluss auf eine Komposition aus Klängen, die Orgelwerken von J. S. Bach entstammen.

town musicians (Stattmusikanten)

interactive / generative videoinstallation 2001 / 2016

Donkey, cat, dog and cockerel are the 4  audiovisual tracks of a composition that’s generated in realtime. Due to an occasional change of the speed of each player’s performance, sound and velocity of the players are constantly changing. According to the fairy tale of the Bremen town musicians, the animals occupied the house of bandits who couldn’t bear the cacophony of the musician’s first performance.

1 computer, 1 camera, 1 video projector, 1 screen, 2 channels audio, custom software, technical support: Michael Hille Rieken; 2001 & as a generative version, 2016