Going to meet people I want to meet
This week I’m introducing staalplaat soundsystem, artists who traverse Europe with Berlin as their base. I’ve experienced a lot of different sound art, sound installations and sound performances, but the YOKOMONO live at Ars Electronica gave me the goose bumps. I decided to see them in Berlin.

Jan is Dutch and founded the record label staalplaat, and kind of acts as the leader of soundsystem. Carsten was born in East Germany, and has organized an arts festival in the town of Stralsund on the Baltic Sea. Apparently it’s going to be held in Berlin this year. I’d love to go...

Plofile
Created in 2000 by Geert-Jan Hobijn, Carsten Stabenow and Carlo Crovato.
They’ve presented works that fuse media art with techno, noise, and other kinds of music.
Jan founded the record label staalplaat in 1982. Carsten is active in staalplaat, and also created the media art festival “Festival garage” in 1997 (this year marks the 10th edition). It’s scheduled to happen this year in June or July in Berlin. I didn’t meet Carlo, but apparently he’s also active as a solo artist.

Welcoming back a guest from the past,
Suso-san the milliner is back! We visited Miyahara Takao, a friend from college days who is active in the graphic world as an art director.As we talked, it came out that Miyahara is from Hitoyoshi City in Kumamoto Prefecture. It’s a stone throw’s away from my hometown, Miyakonojo. There’s a long loop bridge at Kakuto in Hitoyoshi, but I hadn’t thought of it in ages before meeting Miyahara.

In the Ars Electronica Digital Music category last year, staalplaat’s YOKOMONO was a selected work. Four red Volkswagen mini cars loaded with FM antenna towers spin on top of vinyl records, and countless battered radio cassette players hang from the four walls and project the sound of the cars rubbing against the vinyl. The mini cars slow down as their batteries die, which also changes the FM frequency. As spectators walk between the mini cars and the radios, the frequency changes subtly.

Enter inside, and it’s like being tossed into a sea of noise. The noise flowing from the walls envelops any trace of people, and leaves you enjoying the harmony of digital and analog.

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Highlight from last year’s Ars Electronica. I’d like to bestow this work with the air artlog version of Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica award. Haphazardness and chance introduced into intentional actions creates a dynamic space. Jan and Carsten are face to face with haphazardness... Seeing this performance made me want to cover them in Berlin.

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I had them show me past works at the staalplaat shop in Berlin. It seems their creative juices really flow when they’re creating unheard of sound spaces by using all kinds of things from their surroundings and then introducing chance.

1“The Ultrasound of Therapy” − mechanisms that enable you to feel the sound with your bones is cool.

2 “Floating Islands” − wind music created from flutes of empty bottles. Installed on the Spree river for the opening of the Dutch embassy designed by Rem Koolhaas’ Rotterdam-based OMA.

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1 “Weis 104” uses some 104 washing machines.

2 “Happy Metal” is a great chorus of electrical machines, created when fans, vacuum cleaners, food processors, etc. are run in an empty storefront... seems like a powerful work.　　

３ “YOKOMONO” when staged in Holland. This version is a lot better.

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What’s YOKOMONO going to do next?
What exactly is the approach to Staalplaat music?

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