Whether love, hate or cool detachment – no musical instrument can express emotions as powerfully as the human voice. The sound works sung by New York artist Kristin Oppenheim herself consist of just a few words. Nevertheless, they powerfully address themes of longing and loneliness.
With the Dreamachine, Brion Gysin invented the first art object that had to be experienced with closed eyes and induced a state of light relaxation. The artist also worked on methods at the sonic level that were intended to alter the state of consciousness.
Electronic sounds were all the rage in the mid-1960s. The young American composer Jon Appleton was certain that they would enable him to reach the emotions and consciousness of a wider audience. In 1967, while waiting for a connecting flight at Newark Airport, he put this idea to the test.
When cyber-shamanism emerged in Japan in the 1980s, 3D sound recording technologies and brain machines were developed there to simulate the effects of hallucinogenic drugs. Henry Kawahara was at the centre of this movement.
In the early 1980s, a sampler cost as much as a mid-sized car and could record just six seconds of sound. Hamburg musician Holger Hiller rented such a device on a daily basis in order to leave common pop clichés behind.
Robotic vocoder voices in music were the symbol of an electronic future in the 1970s. The technology was already being used during the Second World War and was further developed in 1961 at Bell Labs in New Jersey, where computer music pioneer Max Mathews employed it to adapt a love song from 1892.
