The Haptic of the Invisible

00:00:08:

00:00:14: In episode thirty-four, Tim Löhde meets composer Robert Lippock alongside sound performer Heer Young Sin.

00:00:21: They discuss how physical materials from the delicate resonance of glass to discarded everyday objects and trash can be transformed into striking sonic experiences.

00:00:32: The conversation moves through the historical relationship between architecture and acoustics, as well as a fragile balance of order & chaos.

00:00:43: Both guests will present new works at the Blauers Rauschen Festival.

00:00:48: With this project material, Robert Lippock reflects on fluid societies and architectural superstructures while here Yang Xin experiments with fundamental physical properties in her upcoming work Housewarming Number Two where a digital electronic network generates and produces air currents.

00:01:08: Robert Lippock is a visual artist and avant-garde pioneer based in Berlin, known for his work with the influential post rock band Toroco Corot and his solo releases on labels such as Raster Noton.

00:01:21: He moves effortlessly between club music performance and visual art installation.

00:01:27: His work is shaped by deep fascination with architectural space granular synthesis And tension between organic & digital sound worlds.

00:01:37: Hier Young Sin is a South Korean performer based in Berlin, whose practice is rooted in experimentation mechanical movement and kinetic objects.

00:01:47: Her work emerges from close observations of everyday environments transforming tangible objects and scientific concepts into poetic sound installations and live performances.

00:02:01: Hi Robert!

00:02:02: It's great to have you join us for this podcast episode where we will be discussing the acoustic capabilities of haptic elements and objects.

00:02:13: So in your installations you often transform physical materials into sound, so is there a material whose voice has surprised you the most over the years?

00:02:26: Well it's not one material.

00:02:29: as variety or approach I have on material I work a lot with glass.

00:02:41: For example, this is one of the materials i'm relating.

00:02:46: often in different installations... ...I like the softness and the hardness of it.

00:02:52: You can shape as you want when working at a glass workshop But if your bottle or window has these very precise reflections and resonances.

00:03:11: How did you come up with the idea to use these glasses?

00:03:14: Is there like a story behind or how did it happen?

00:03:18: for this particular piece, for Kunsthaler Baden-Baden I was asked to do work about their novel The Depossessed by Odela Le Guin And i was reading the novel planets, one is the main planet.

00:03:39: The other one is moon and there was a revolution and that revolution failed in all.

00:03:45: the anarchist and the revolutionary are on the Moon And they are creating kind of an anarchists society.

00:03:55: I was trying to understand how this autopie part of it as also just to be be transformed into the Baden-Baden world where richness and capitalism is like everywhere.

00:04:10: And I was using glass because when you enter a room in an exhibition space, You could see these different glass shapes... For me it was representation of that.

00:04:24: societies are fluid and like, there's a constant exchange.

00:04:29: And I was using the glass bulbs as a metaphor for that.

00:04:34: So how does um... The audience in these different venues change where you perform or present your music into work?

00:04:42: Sometimes it is just question of context.

00:04:45: i had a life set for quite long time and playing this in gallery space situations People were like presiding it as art.

00:04:57: And then I was playing the same set in Berghain, in a Rastanoton label night and obviously everybody was sure that its dance music which can be seen as dance music.

00:05:14: so people danced to it.

00:05:16: So sometimes is just not question of material itself, but of the context and material is put in.

00:05:26: For me the audience often very important on my life sets differ quite a lot from each other.

00:05:34: I'm always trying to find out what's the vibe with people.

00:05:40: Actually another question we had was your relationship between architecture & sound or where do you see their relationships?

00:05:48: I mean, the relationship between architecture and music in sound is of course endless.

00:05:55: In Baroque and Romanic and Gothic times there were shaping churches due to acoustic reasons that wanted to generate a certain acoustic to make speeches more rich or transcendent.

00:06:13: There's a relatively new part of science which is called acoustic ecology.

00:06:20: And they are like scanning through ancient temples and caves, understanding what role it played in ancient societies Often the paintings in cages from Stone Age times, they are set where acoustic amplifies certain frequencies.

00:06:53: So we don't know what rituals or speeches got amplified different ways and sounded more magic or made magic happen.

00:07:04: So often in history, acoustic was used deliberately or was shaped deliberately and buildings.

00:07:12: Shortly say something about the performance there... Ah

00:07:15: yeah!

00:07:16: This would be also nice to your already have plans.

00:07:21: I was reading this book about supergroup which is an Italian architectural group And they had idea of superstructures that built like superstructures over mountains and over bridges.

00:07:34: And I was asking myself what superstructures are, and superstructures is structures which used in shipbuilding and bridges they're like the fundamental structure to hold everything else.

00:07:46: so i saw my melodies of my rhythms as like superstructure for other things and I thought my superstructures could be tracks itself, so i started to put a record together which was called Red Superstructure.

00:08:02: When Blau's Rauschen asked me ,I was approaching this concert format because it is relatively new every time that I play it.

00:08:23: Hello here!

00:08:24: Thank you very much for taking part in the podcast episode.

00:08:28: I would like to start right off with my first thought.

00:08:32: Your work has also a very playful quality, so it's about hands-on experience and openness for experimentation... So where does the new piece begin?

00:08:44: And what inspires your creative process?

00:08:49: Each work begins differently – really different!

00:08:53: For example… For the Housewarming series, which I'm going to present in Blower Flouch and Festival.

00:08:59: I've been interested in greenhouse for a long time then gradually began exploring how to translate it into a sonic context.

00:09:10: Then i came up with its ventilation system Which I reimagined in connection With wind instruments such as harmonica melodica and flute To generate some sound.

00:09:24: But for my performance treasures, the starting point was somehow more personal.

00:09:31: After graduating from art university I had to move out of my studio.

00:09:37: then there were some people who helped me and one of them asked why are you paying so much money to transport all this shitty stuff?

00:09:54: I left very hard at the moment because those were not the treasure, but the material that i've been collecting for a long time.

00:10:04: So I realized how differently people assign their value to objects.

00:10:09: so I thought okay why don't I work with actual trash?

00:10:13: That was the beginning part of the whole project.

00:10:16: In your installations you use many like objects small objects and when you choose these objects You said, is it also like the acoustic quality that interests you?

00:10:28: or does it always have a story in the background?

00:10:35: It's always

00:10:36: both for me.

00:10:37: That's very important point.

00:10:38: from here I mean sometimes i'm drawn to the acoustic qualities of an object but then I really consider its context how it's used what it represents and So the sound and its context are inseparable for me?

00:10:54: Sometimes when I look at installations that you do, I also see a big machine or an orchestra.

00:11:03: One question came to my mind is... When your installations often use motors and mechanical movements they generate sounds.

00:11:11: so do you perceive these machines as like individual performers almost performance data in an orchestra

00:11:19: It also depends on the work because I don't approach this with a fixed perspective.

00:11:24: For the performance treasures, i really treat them as a collaborator.

00:11:30: so they take the role of performer.

00:11:34: but in my other installations and other performances The role of machines... They are different!

00:11:42: I see myself more as an facilitator or operator So someone who sets conditions and let's things happen.

00:11:51: And so actually one of the thing that I like most about your work is, you use direct unprocessed sound for objects or basic elements such as air currents... You don't bury this sound with digital effects than many artists do right now!

00:12:11: How did you come to this artistic decision?

00:12:16: Regarding digital effects, I'm not that much drawn to digital effects.

00:12:22: They don't really spark my curiosity for now.

00:12:26: Yeah actually also wanted talk with you about like order and chaos.

00:12:31: so there seems to be a tension in your work between structure and unpredictable.

00:12:37: So what does the relationship between order and Chaos mean to you?

00:12:43: Actually, I never consider them while working on my project.

00:12:47: But in my work they always elicit together as i said often set up structures like systems rhythms or constraints but within those there's always unpredictability because materials behave differently and also little machine don't repeat perfectly so small variations accumulate.

00:13:09: I'm quite interested in the moments where control and loss of control, they co-exist.

00:13:18: From the acoustics of stone age caves to mechanical breathing of a miniature greenhouse sound is deeply connected with spaces we inhabit and materials we touch.

00:13:31: It reminds us that even most invisible frequencies can possess powerful physical presence.

00:13:39: You can experience Robert Lippock's performance material on the twelfth of June and encounter Heer Young-Sinz housewarming number two live in the thirtieth of May during our

00:13:50: festival.

00:14:12: bla-bla-bla, bla-la-bla.