Jakob Scheid

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Jakob Scheid (born September 15, 1966 in Vienna ) is an Austrian visual artist whose focus is on the production of machine objects and installations .

Jakob Scheid building a set, 2011
Monochord by Jakob Scheid, Salzburg 2008
Mechanical trumpeter, 2015

Scheid is a co-founder of the studio for experimental design “Product Design” in Vienna's WUK , a former freelancer for Coop Himmelblau and a lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Jakob Scheid is also a member of the Sirene Opera Theater , for which he has created numerous sets since 1998.

Music installations

Scheid's best-known works include musical instruments and sound installations he invented himself, the focus of which is on the subject of failure: They gain their aesthetic appeal by creating unusable, absurd or “unsuccessful” products or effects with high technical effort. Some of Scheid's objects are reminiscent of installations by Jean Tinguely , but Scheid not only works with mechanical means, but also uses electricity, hydraulics and computer technology in his works.

One of Scheid's largest sound installations was created in 1997 as part of the “Schönberg on the construction site” project in the Arnold Schönberg Center , directed by Michael Sturminger . At that time Scheid filled several rooms with simple, homemade trumpets made of plastic, which could be played using a central keyboard similar to an organ.

Scheid's self-referential violin machines, which were exhibited under titles such as “musica mecanica / mechanical string quintet” (Vienna, sirene opera theater , Heiligenkreuzerhof 2007) and “five monochords” ( Museum der Moderne Salzburg 2008), met with great interest . They have a listening function and try to play back tones that have been picked up at random. An aleatoric concert emerges from this endeavor .

Replicas of historical musical apparatus

  • In 2004 Scheid was commissioned to recreate a “modulated piano” by Nam June Paik for a performance by Olga Neuwirth and Marino Formenti .
  • 2006 Scheid reconstructed the Chess Turk and the speaking machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen from the late 18th century, where he nachbaute mechanics with modern materials and - in contrast to the original - not behind a anthropomorphic hid shell.
  • In 2014 Scheid was commissioned by a team of scientists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences to recreate the mechanical trumpeter by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (1807). The trumpeter has been reduced to its mechanical skeleton, but the technology of sound generation corresponds to the original. In March 2015, on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna, he was presented to a larger audience as part of a concert and played marches and military signals from the Napoleonic era. The concert took place in the ballroom of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where the original trumpeter also performed in a concert conducted by Ludwig van Beethoven .

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personal data
SURNAME Scheid, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna