EQ — a sound installation by Andreas Steffens and Daniel M. Ziegler

From 05.03.–20.03.2022, a sound installation with compositions by Andreas Steffens and Daniel M. Ziegler could be experienced on the first floor of the ArToll Klanglabor, Bedburg-Hau. The two jazz musicians, composers and performers have been working on the musical fusion of electronic and improvised music since 2016.

They have been exploring the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varèse, Morton Feldmann, John Cage and Curtis Roads for years. They use the aesthetics of electronic-classical music and transfer them to the improvisational style of jazz. The two musicians play saxophone, piano, guitar and a variety of historical and modern electronic instruments. 

For the installation “EQ” they composed new pieces and recorded them in the studio themselves, using acoustic instruments, filters, effects and modular synthesizers, among other things. The music was not performed in a concert, but made accessible to the audience in a sound installation in the ArToll sound laboratory in Bedburg-Hau. 

In all rooms of the ground floor different sound sources were installed to emit sounds into the room. These were triggered by the visitors. Due to their different lengths, there were always new overlays. Light sensors were installed at various points in the rooms. When a visitor stepped into the light barrier, they triggered the playback of a composition by Steffens and Ziegler. The places where these sensors were located were arranged like in a gallery.

In picture frames there were accompanying texts to the respective sounds, as a classification in the musical context or also as a lyrical or otherwise inspiring text. Attracted by the respective museum installation/picture frame, the visitor triggered the sound, which was then always played once in full length, even if he/she moved on directly. The visitors thus helped to determine the “performance” and the density of the resulting spatial sound. It was also possible to move in a straight line from one sound source of the continuous sound to the other without triggering a sensor.

The compositions varied in dynamics and length: there were pieces that lasted a few seconds and others that were several minutes long. They ranged from a barely audible crackle to an orgiastic and complex sound surge. There were “granular” compositions in which the smallest elements ranked at the perceptual limit of short impulses. Different tempos gave rise to polyrhythms, and different pitches created polytonality.