Joseph Baader

// Point, Surface, Twist

Installation, Lecture Performance and Speculative Research Practice with Shuoxin Tan

"Our exploration is rooted in the convergence between theoretical speculation and practical experimentation within sound synthesis. Drawing inspiration from Karlheinz Stockhausen's insights into auditory perception, particularly the transformative effects of manipulating point-like signals, we explore properties of specific topological structures. In particular, we are interested in the topological composition of the torus and its de-compositional transformation into the Moebius strip. Through our experimentation with SuperCollider, we aim to understand whether the intrinsic qualities of these structures can be elucidated through sound synthesis, while we also explore the extrinsic factors that influence their manifestation. Furthermore, we ask whether the certain contradictions and tensions inherent in topological properties can be perceived through acoustics and spatialization. This in turn would allow us to bridge the realms of the internal and the external in explorative sound synthesis."

26.09.24 @Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium, IEM Graz

In spring 2025 we will continue our research as guest artists at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

// Welcome to my Box

Sound Installation

A poetic and musical exploration of Schacht, Schachtel, Verschachtelung as sonic and social objects. The installation ist part of an ongoing research project on Schacht, Schachtel, Verschachtelung.

13.03.24 @Cité Internationale des Arts Paris

Supported by Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf and Cité des Arts Internationale Paris. Funded by a scholarship of Schmittmann Wahlen Stiftung and Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.

// Wellenbad

Sound installation and live concerts in public swimming halls with Nathalie Brum and Vincent Stange

Wellenbad brings water waves and sound waves to a swimming audience. In underwater sound installations in two public swimming halls in Düsseldorf and Bonn the swimmers can hear the compositions Fließrichttung by Nathalie Brum and Oder andere Wellen by Vincent Stange and Joseph Baader. In live concerts, the audience can listen to sounds from under as well as from above water. Besides Trio Wellenbad (Brum/Stange/Baader) the composer Oxana Omelchuk and the artist Anna Schütten played a live concert in one of the swimming halls.

06.11. – 19.11.23
@Münstertherme Düsseldorf and Frankenbad Bonn

Funded by Musikfonds, Kulturamt Düsseldorf, Stadt Bonn and Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung. In cooperation with Bädergesellschaft Düsseldorf.

// In der Zwischenzeit

Audiovisual Installation and Live Improvisations with Elisabeth Coudoux and Vincent Stange

In der Zwischenzeit ("in the meantime") is a multidimensional instrument. In the meantime it is an audiovisual installation. Five musical live improvisations were recorded within the installation in the week before the opening. Together with sound and video material of the installations setup, they provide the substance for a coninously changing musical work: Twice a week the artists visited the installation and played together and on top of the already recorded material. In the meantime the installation became a concert in which the artists and the audience find themselves in the meamtime of past, present and future.

19.10. – 05.11.23
@NRW-Forum Düsseldorf

Funded by Stiftung Kunst, Kultur und Soziales der Sparda-Bank West.

// CERA 4_ Sonification of a spheric sculpture

Sound Installation with Ingrid Pons i Miras, Sebastian Fecke Diaz, Will-Jan Pielage and Paul John

Cera4 is a collaborative project and the sonification of a spherical sculpture. Based on an irregular, spherical triangulation of metal struts with a diameter of two meters, the musical composition spans itself into the physical room. The sound follows an algorithmic path on the surface of the sphere, tying itself on the "knots" – places of conjunction on the spheres surface.

16.02. – 20.02.22
@Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

>listen<

// Andere Teilchen oder äußere Einflüsse

Interactive Sound Walk, with Vincent Stange and Maria Wildeis

Andere Teilchen oder äußere Einflüsse” turns the exhibition hall of NKR into an active resonating body. The sound installation consists of two different systems, each playing different frequency bands (31-125 hz and 300-20,000 hz).

02.12.21 – 05.12.21
@Neuer Kunstraum Düsseldorf
03.02.22
@Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

Funded by Kunststiftung NRW and Kulturamt Düsseldorf.

>listen<

// synchor - Soundwalk

Multiperspective Soundwalks, with Sebastian Fecke und Lambert Windges

Field recordings - sound recordings made outside of the recording studio - are always a document of a certain place at a certain time. This document is a very subjective one, recorded from one point of view with the recording button pressed at a certain time at a certain place with a certain reason. As the three of us are all using field recordings in our musical work, we are interested in what leads us towards a sound and makes us to press the recording button. Did a sound somehow attract us? Or did we look for this specific sound? Do we think already about the composition while we are recording something?

Developed and produced during a short time recidency in Montepulciano Italy in 2021. Supported by PROMOS and Kolleg für Musik und Kunst Montepulciano.

>listen<

// Keine-Hämmerklavier

Composition Series for Piano and Electronics

Keine-Hämmerklavier is a composition series for piano and computer. It questions the traditional idea of how musical instruments work and who (or what) can take agency in music performing. The common piano mechanism, which produces a sound when a key is pressed down is ignored and partly inverted in all Keine-Hämmerklavier compositions. Instead of strings which start vibrating and producing sound after hit by the piano hammer, the sound is approaching the strings and puts them into vibration. Sound waves with corresponding frequencies as the piano strings, put them into vibration and by this they start resonating. Those sound waves are produced by a computer in form of pure sine waves. Instead of played back with casual loudspeakers, the sine waves get transferred directly into the pianos belly, by the help of a transducer, attached onto the soundboards surface. This makes the whole piano instrument resonancing and amplifying the sound.

12.06.21
@LTK4 - Klangbasierte Künste Köln

18.03.22
@Basilika St. Aposteln, Köln

Funded by an artist grant as part of the NRW-Corona-Hilfen.

// Murmelphon

Algorithmic Sound Installation

Murmelphon is an algorithmic sound installation, which works completely analouge. Long piano strings are screwed through the room above the audience. On those strings, some rolling glass marbles produce a drone sound, which is specified by the amount and charecteristics of the marbles put into the system.

27.05.20 - 24.06.20
@LTK4 - Klangbasierte Künste Köln

listen

// Inside the Surface

Radio Piece and Sound Installation

Equipped with a hockey stick and a tape recorder he started to collect the sound of various kind of surfaces. A tape listening session with the potential to dive deep.

Nominated for the ARD PiNball Award 2019 and for the "The Burning Mic" @Berliner Hörspielfestival

07.11.19
@ARD Hörspieltage

30.10.19 - 13.11.19
@LTK4 - Klangbasierte Künste Köln

listen

// The Game of Unspoken Language

Performance (with Potential Difference Collective)

Potential Difference plays with loops of a society. The language of the city and it’s people was found through a game, by playing with familiar and already almost forgotten everyday architecturally hidden objects.

12.06.19
@Oodi Square Helsinki, FeelHelsinki Festival

// The Game of Enlighten Language

Performance (with Potential Difference Collective)

The performance explores patterns of human behaviour in a loop of replacement. There are light seekers and translators going around, seeking and speaking the infrastructures of contemporary human. Inspector is converting everyday objects to sound, conserving recorded objects into plastic bags, creating an archive of the tools one once had to have in order to be a person. This space is a moment of unbuilding, restart of human consumer identity and imagined post-capitalistic confusion.

April 2019
@Helsinki Music Centre, BlackBox

// Itsekkyyden Muistomerkki

Sound Walk

This soundwalk morphs natural sounds, recorded around the Helsinki Töölönlahti bay with chliché electronic sounds and creates an organic symbiosis of the two apperently different worlds. It's hard to distinguish who is controlling who and at the end it's a matter of selfishness how much we want to intervent in the nature.

>listen<

// hochmut

hochmut Collective

The hochmut Collective was found in 2016 by six transdiciplinary artists from Düsseldorf and Cologne. The focus of the events was the exploration of new and experimental forms of performance practice in music, dance and video. Together with external invited artists we combined sound and video installations with contemporary dance, party nights or live cooking shows.