Institute for Fine Motor Skills

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Institut für Feinmotorik (IFF) is a German-Swiss media art group consisting of Marc Matter, Mark Bruederle, Daniel van den Eijkel, Florian Meyer and, for a time, Melani Wratil, which focuses on acoustic art and music.

The group, founded in 1997, was best known for their 2002 album “Penetrans”, which was recorded entirely with prepared record players and presented a sound somewhere between Clicks & Cuts and Minimal Techno . In addition to numerous sound carriers, the IFF has also published videos, photographs, books and theoretical writings and organized multimedia events and exhibitions.

history

The IFF was founded in 1997 in Bad Säckingen on a proposal by Günther Zuckmayr for an event in a club in Basel, for which the IFF produced objects, videos, slide shows and sound collages. Between 1997 and 2000 the IFF released two albums, a project compilation, a mini-LP, a 10 ″, a single and other works such as photographs and videos in quick succession.

In the middle of 1998 the IFF invited musicians like Thomas Brinkmann , Franz Pomassl , Farmers Manual or Marcus Maeder to the “cd-projekt‹ institute for fine motor skills 1998/1999 ›“. All performers received “a CD with a hand-carved endless groove [...]. this groove, which had individual acoustic properties due to the manual production, should be removed with a record player and then remixed without using the actual, digitally stored music on the CD. The CD was treated like a record through the endless groove. The IFF documented the results in 1999 on a CD that was also supplied with such an endless groove. Also in 1999, “Negemergenz” was released on the North American label Fusetron, the group's first non-self-published album.

In 2002 the group then released their album “Penetrans” on the Cologne label Staubgold , which for the first time met with a greater response from the critics and helped them to a certain degree of awareness. In 2003 Melani Wratil from Cologne joined the group as the fifth permanent member, but in 2007 she left the group and devoted herself to various other music projects. After that, the IFF put in a musical release break, which was only interrupted by two singles in 2004. "At the moment it is more natural for us to seek confrontation with other musicians [...]".

Since then, the IFF has often worked in cooperation for events. In 2007 they were next to u. a. Elliott Sharp and John Tilbury guest of Udo Moll's "catalog of improvisation" series of events. In 2008, the IFF and members of the musikFabrik ensemble developed an improvisation based on the composition "Hooloomooloo" by Olga Neuwirth , participated in the Viennese music theater ensemble for city dwellers and collaborated with Stefan Schwander ( Antonelli Electric ) and Tim Elzer ( Don't Dolby ).

In 2005 “Feinmotorik Kompendium - Lexicon of Fine Motor Skills in Everyday Life, Science and Art” appeared, a book in the form of a lexicon with guest contributions a. a. by Wolfgang Müller , Frieder Butzmann , Thomas Kapielski , Manuel Bonik , Knarf Rellöm , Peter Piller and many more

In 2009 they made a guest appearance - again together with musikFabrik soloists - as part of the Bonn Beethoven Festival in the event "Path of Democracy - 60 Years of the Federal Republic of Germany (1989–1999)" in the plenary hall of the Federal Council. In addition, a new publication was announced, which should document the years 2003 to 2008. This publication finally appeared in 2011 in the form of the album "Abggriff" on Marriage Records.

In the same year they produced the radio play “The 50 Sculptures of the Institute for Fine Motor Skills” for SWR, which was later awarded the 2011 Karl Sczuka Prize .

plant

"Archive material" material list, 1997

Influences are the releases of the minimal techno label Profan founded by Wolfgang Voigt as well as the music of Reinhard Voigt . Basically, the group's aesthetics are due to a progressive reductionism as a basic idea, which defines the means of production more and more narrowly and on which the IFF expresses itself in detail in theoretical writings on record covers, supplements to publications, but also in articles for music magazines and on its website. In this context, the group itself speaks of “weak music”, a term that Felix Klopotek explains: “The trick is to sound out the area within the restriction all the more precisely and thus circumvent the restriction.”.

The production method is unusual: one to four people in the group operate eight turntables, four DJ mixers , a final mixer and two mono compressors . Until the work on the album Penetrans in 1999, the group still worked with records, but only used grooves, empty grooves or the paper on the record label as well as additional stickers on the record, after which they completely dispensed with vinyl and only worked with empty turntables.

The IFF itself described this change in its own way of working: “[...] the useful signal is transported to the turntable by record, but the useful signal is mixed up with all sorts of interfering signals on the way there. [...] If you subtract the useful signal from the result, you get the initial set of instruments from the Institute for Fine Motor Skills. The next step was an expansion of this set of instruments, which lay in the reduction - it is no longer the fault of the medium that primarily creates the sound, but the lack of the medium [...]. ”.

Since then, only other objects such as prepared CDs, sandpaper, thumbtacks, rubber bands, paper stickers, erasers, etc. have been used on the turntables. These are attached in such a way that they touch the needle while the turntable is rotating. "The turntable functions as a kind of" empty instrument "that sells the vibrations, the cracking and scratching noises or the sounds of slipping past".

The loops resulting from the regular rotation of the turntable with 33 or 45 minutes are then mixed. The structure of the arrangement is simple: a single loop serves as the basis, others follow; musical originality only arises through the mix, in which the loops sometimes run apart or slightly shifted against each other.

As sound elements, percussive elements can be distinguished from drones and other flat sounds. Percussive elements are always generated by regular impulses against the needle such as blows or thrusts. Compared to notated or, in particular, digitally programmed music, you can move outside of the bar limits, as turntables enable smooth gradations of the rotational speed per pitch . Surfaces, on the other hand, require a more complex, “very unstable” structure: “For example, we stretch a piece of rubber across the platter and place the needle on it. Then we adjust it so that the rubber rubs on the plate and thus starts vibrating, which the needle then picks up. A bit tricky. " Working with surfaces is, however, much more demanding not only from a technical point of view, but also from a compositional point of view, "because it is less rhythmic, more noisy , with many pauses." Since the live situation is mainly characterized by improvisation and allows much less planning, more percussive elements are used here. Countering this limitation with increased virtuosity is not an option for the IFF: “The idea is to stay below the possibilities”.

The fifteen-minute radio piece “Radio-Imitat”, produced in 2008 for the program “Radio Arthur” on Radio LoRa and released on CD in 2010, differs from the usual IFF production method: Here the IFF used short excerpts from radio broadcasts as a template for the piece that seeks to imitate the structures and sound aesthetics of large radio stations.

The group certainly sees the optical originality of their method, but emphasizes the priority of the music. The visual element is seen as secondary and rather risky for the musical content, which the musicians make clear by characterizing it as a "waste product". The musical limitations that occur during live performances are also rather undesirable, so the relationship to the live performance is rather condescending: “The live performance is a tinkering. The demands of the musician are not that high either, it is more a game, a joke. " Accordingly, even interventions by the audience in the setup are accepted as an "interactive element" under certain conditions.

reception

Regardless of its purely mechanical production method, the music of the IFF is received primarily in the context of electronic music between clicks & cuts and minimal techno , as Intro wrote in 2002: “The Institute for Fine Motor Skills is within tonal range of the digitally generated click techno of our day, but it represents a consistently handcrafted approach ”. This was entirely in line with our own intention: "We try to imitate the structures and aesthetic codes of digital / electronic music through the use of an important instrument of electronic music, namely the equipment of the DJ." The IFF sees itself as "not." sounding different than a state-of-the-art PowerBook Click-Hop piece ”.

Philip Sherburne points out that working with turntables may seem out of date, but embodies a deep materialistic tradition that John Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1 to the Jamaican sound system as the foundation of recombinant hip-hop culture .

The album “Penetrans” from 2002 was discussed relatively intensively. In a review, The Wire spoke of “simply rocking, exuberant grooviness. Rich in syncopated funk and a dozen shades, it adds up to a kind of roots techno - the 21st century equivalent of a jug band ”. Spex saw in the album "eight incredibly energetic tracks in the tension between minimal techno and rocking grooves, from elastic band twist to endless groove staccato, manifesting the formation of a more or less independent fresh genre, that of abstract turntablism [...]".

The North American Vice Magazine attested to the IFF that it “improvised exciting, intricate patterns of clicks and muffled sounds”, that “compositions weave around one another like bossa nova and swing like Bassie [ sic! ] ". The Falter called the resulting music "groovy, scratchy-hypnotic para-techno".

In view of the IFF's gesture, Joachim Ody recalls in 2009 that “the name and program of the four artists [...] are of course pure irony”, “because the IFF's aesthetics are not reflected in an electroacoustic analysis carried out too seriously” and emphasizes the aspect of "playful sound research".

Discography

  • Archive material (LP), 1997
  • Untitled (10 ″), 1997
  • Little information: No title (12 ″), 1998
  • Negemergenz (LP), 1999
  • The Manifesto (7 ″), 2000
  • Penetrans (CD / LP), 2002
  • Akoasma (7 ″), 2004
  • Original And Fake (7 ″), 2004
  • Radio imitation (CD), 2010
  • Tapped (LP), 2011

As editor:

  • various: cd project ‹institute for fine motor skills 1998/1999› (CD), 1999

Other works

  • Trouble-free (video), 1998
  • feinmotorik compendium (book), 2005, ISBN 978-3-937755-12-0 .
  • Radio imitation (radio piece), 2008

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marc Matter (Ed.): Feinmotorik Kompendium , 2005, p. 263, ISBN 978-3-937755-12-0
  2. ↑ a b c AGF, M. Behrens, Alejandra A. Severgnini, Aeron Haynie, DAT Politics, Stephan Mathieu, Francisco López, Institut für Feinmotorik, Janek Schaefer, Steve Roden, Scanner, Stephen Vitiello: "Splitting Bits, Closing Loops: Sound on Sound ": Contributors' Notes , In: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 13, Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music , 2003, pp. 83-87
  3. ↑ a b c d e Joachim Ody: Abstract Turntablism , In: positions. Texts on Current Music, Issue 79 "Fehler / Scheitern", 2009, pp. 44–45, ISSN  0941-4711
  4. ↑ See catalog raisonné on the website, online
  5. ↑ From the text accompanying the CD documenting the project, 1999
  6. ^ A b Felix Klopotek: Turntablism: Christian Marclay, Dieb 13, Marina Rosenfeld, Institut für Feinmotorik In: how they do it: Free Jazz, Improvisation and No Man's Music , 2002, pp. 125-137, ISBN 3-930559-75-7
  7. ↑ Announcement in the program, online ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.beethovenfest.de
  8. ↑ a b c d e Anett Frank: Was Loopt Because Da In The Black Forest? - Institut für Feinmotorik In: ​​DE: BUG, ​​Heft 58, 04/2002, S. 18, PDF Online
  9. ↑ A. Krebs / O. Finnendahl / St. Streich / S. Decentz / H. Muenz / Institute for Fine Motor Skills: To the creative potential of the error , In: positions. Texts on Current Music, Issue 79 “Fehler / Scheitern”, 2009, pp. 32–39, ISSN  0941-4711
  10. ↑ Eric Mandel: Institute for Fine Motor Skills In: Jazzthetik, 04/2002, 16th year, pp. 70–71
  11. ↑ Abmoderation to the piece, In: Radio Arthur , episode 10, broadcast: Sunday, October 19, 2008, 1: 00–2: 30 pm, 1: 06: 22–1: 07: 05, MP3 stream online  ( page no longer retrievable , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , MP3 download online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.radioarthur.ch  @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.radioarthur.ch  
  12. ↑ Hendrik Kröz: Institute for Fine Motor Skills - you spin me round , March 22nd, 2002, In: Intro, Online ( Memento of the original from August 11th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.intro.de
  13. ↑ Philipp Sherburne: Splitting Bits, Closing Loops: Sound on Sound In: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 13, Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music , 2003, pp. 79-81
  14. ↑ " simply rockin ', rollickin' grooviness. Rich in syncopated funk and a dozen shades of gray, it amounts to a kind of roots techno - the 21st century equivalent of the jug band. “Phillip Sherburne: Review of Penetrans In: The Wire 6/2002
  15. ↑ Joachim Ody: Review of Penetrans In: Spex 04/2002
  16. ↑ "improvises amazingly intricate patterns of clicks and thuds," Jason Forrest: Untitled , in: Vice Magazine, Spring 2003
  17. ↑ "Compositions that weave around each other like Bossanova and swing like Bassie", Jason Forrest: Untitled , in: Vice Magazine, spring 2003
  18. ↑ Der Falter, 40/2005, Facsimile Online ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / iem.at

Web links