How the music evolved

What is fundamental for Printopia from the musical point of view is that there never was a plan for the whole. It started with the tipos-en-su-tintas’s exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Talking about the event, we came up with the idea that for the opening there could be some music. So Esther and me became involved. Since we are both pianists and there wouldn’t be even one piano available we opted for two Kalimbas plus synthesizer as live instruments for this „intervención sonora“.

In preparatory steps I thought of different layers and imprints, like in the printing process, only with sound. I recorded some phrases with the Kalimba, translated the audio to midi, arranged it and sent it to the synthesizer. I wrote a little Kanon, recorded it, let the synth play a counterpoint, produced a fixed media part from midi and audio files and realized that it still lacked connection to the works of Matthias and Lars.

I remembered from my first visit in their workshop that of course the printing machines make rhythmical noise when in use. To make the sounds of their production meet the exhibits: that could be a very simple and sympathetic way to connect the intervención with its origin in the rooms in the moment of the opening for everybody to experience. Because I was in Berlin and wouldn‘t come back to Tenerife before the vernissage, Matthias recorded the machines with his mobile and sent me the audio files. I processed them to samples which could be played on a small keyboard which then also became part of the live-setup of the intervención sonora. There Esther and me played the Kalimbas, the keyboard and the synth in the surrounding of the exhibits and the preproduced audio material, including printing sounds and in one moment also the fluttering of the hanging paperworks in the draft from an open window, as well as the bells of a nearby tower.

A slightly processed recording of this event makes side B of the record.

Side A takes another step: during one other stay in Tenerife Lars, Matthias, Esther and me met in the workshop and improvised different choreographies extending printing actions into interactions with printing material while focusing on their sounds. It was a mixture of technical recording and improvisational flow. The result were longer stretches of recorded time we dedicated to different specific situations, each exploring its own potential in manners between playfulness and documentory seriousness. We also talked about the inspiration the mechanics of the machines, the interaction of human with steel bodies, the prescription of movements by necessity becoming construction, the perfect print, the variation, the blackness and Jean Tinguely. I took the recording back to Berlin and let it rest.

When New Year 2023 came and Esther and Matthias visited Berlin another recursive step was taken: Matthias became active part of the music. I prepared a setup in the studio of my group, ensemble mosaik, for Esther playing a nord stage keyboard with a remotely kalimba-like sound, Matthias playing his and Lars’ own printing machines on the same small keyboard and me playing a dominion 1 analog synth with an sound analyzing extension written in max/msp. We met in the studio and just started playing together, shorter and longer sessions which I recorded multitrack plus one mic in the room.

These harvested sound materials, from the sessions in the workshop in Tenerife and in the studio in Berlin, became the fundamental resources from which the five tracks derived in a rather tedious postproduction process in which I reshaped them, at times leaving them untouched, at times subjecting them to completely new ideas. The whole process included always the ingredient of freedom, accepting doing nothing as well as observing with intense curiosity how and where it carries us. I think this won‘t be the end yet.

Ernst Surberg