Christian Gützer and Emanuel Andel presented some of their works in the field of circuit bending and afterwards they held an open toybending-workshop. They were joined by Thomas Margolf, aka Frau Holle aka firestARTer.
Thomas Margolf: “Ich erklär mal kurz, was circuit bending überhaupt ist, bzw. was ich (und vielleicht auch andere Leute) darunter verstehen:
Beim circuit bending werden Geräte, die eine gegebene Funktion haben, so manipuliert, dass sie eine andere Funktion bekommen oder dass die bestehenden Funktionen erweitert oder verändert werden. Das geschieht meistens dadurch, dass man in den Geräten Erweiterungen einbaut oder sie gezielt manipuliert, Kontakte manipuliert, Kurzschlüsse durchführt – oder auch nicht gezielt, also in dem Sinne, dass man einfach probiert: zwei Kontakte verbindet und ausprobiert. Das hat auch nicht immer nur mit Geräuschen zu tun, das geht zum Beispiel auch mit Video, wenn man etwa Videomischer manipuliert.
Ganz weit gegriffen gibt es auch case modding: Man baut Geräte in andere Gehäuse, dass sie einfach nach außen hin anders aussehen.”
Christian Gützer
Christian Gützers’ career began in the metalworking industry, where he trained as a machine tool manufacturer. After this, he studied “visual media design” in Peter Weibel’s masterclass at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He graduated in 2007 with his work “Grow – Früchte des Kronos” (“grow “ší¬ fruits of the kronos”) which engages with the question of artificially manipulating the growth of plants and the implications of this.
Emanuel Andel
2007 Emanuel Andel graduated at the “Visual Media Design” department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Peter Weibel) with distinction for his installation “Knife.Hand.Chop.Bot”, which received a number of accolades, including nominations for the “Künstlerhalle Wien Award 2007″³, the “Transmediale Award 2008″³, an honorary mention at the “Share”š Festival” in Turin and was also exhibited at V2_ Labs in Rotterdam.
In 2003 Emanuel Andel and Christian Gützer founded the artist group 5VOLTCORE. They worked intensively on autopoetic and self referential systems, producing several installations and performances which dealt with the behaviour and manipulation of closed, inert systems. The artistic duo won the 2006 Transmediale Award with their work “Shockbot Corejulio”, which was a “Jury Recommended Work” at Japan Media Arts Festival, and numerous international exhibitions in Ireland, Spain, Norway and France followed.
http://5voltcore.com
Participation at Coded Cultures 2009
Thomas Margolf
Frau Holle, formerly known as firestARTer aka Thomas Margolf, the self-named ‘Oldschool-Audio-Nerd’ is a traditional electronic-bedroom musician. In his youth, he played in several Bands but also worked on his own electronic music, made with the first trackers that were coming up. Since the middle 90’s his artist name is firestARTer. But since too many firestarters showed up he decided change his name into Frau Holle.
Beside making music, he is very active in developing music tools. So he made the infamous Midi Interfaces for the Gameboy, C64 and GP2x which are used by houndreds of people all over the world now. Most of his projects are released as DIY Projects, so people can simply rebuild his circuits.
Frau Holle is also hosting several different Workshops like Circuit Bending Workshops where he shows people how to bend their Toys or Music Instruments. Or Gameboy Music Workshops where he teaches people how to make music with Gameboys. At the moment he is working out a new programm for a series of electronic synthesis workshops.