Werner Cee

Werner Cee (born September 18, 1953 in Dorheim , Hessen ) is a German composer, sound artist, radio author and director.

Life

He began his artistic career studying painting at the Frankfurt Art Academy (Städelschule) in the 1970s and worked as a freelance visual artist until the 1980s, at the same time as a musician in the experimental rock music scene and free scene. This was followed by works in the field of media art, sound and light installations that create a connection between visual and acoustic media, sound, noise, architecture and music.

Then the focus shifted to electro-acoustic composition and Ars-Akustica productions for the radio. In the meantime, more than twenty large artistic productions have been realized for the Acoustic Art studio of WDR , Deutschlandradio Berlin , for Hessischer Rundfunk , for SWR and BR , as well as many documentary programs on the acoustic environment, soundscapes and ethnomusic features. He worked on the board of DEGEM (German Society for Electroacoustic Music). This was followed by teaching activities in sound art at the Saarbrücken Art College and lecturing in audiovisual design at the Bern University of the Arts .

Cee lives with his family in Nordeck , a district of the central Hessian town of Allendorf (Lumda) .

Awards

• 1991 Prize Winner "Music Creative"
• 1993 recognition by Ars Electronica , Linz.
• 1993 winner of the Bourges Prix de musique électroacoustique expérimentale.
• 1997 Acustica International (selection for short audio pieces) WDR Cologne.
• 2000 "Drift" 1st prize for radiophonic audio pieces. Radio Nacional de España / CDMC Madrid.
• 2001 Award for "Cities´Drift" 28th International Competition of Sonic Art. Bourges / F.
• 2002 " Prix ​​Ars Acustica " studio acoustic art WDR.
• 2002 Prize of the international computer music competition " Pierre Schaeffer " Pescara It.
• 2002 1st prize in the Computer Space competition, Sofia Bulgaria.
• 2004 1st prize for music at Computer-Space, Sofia Bulgaria.
• 2005 Award at the 32nd International Competition of Sonic Art. Bourges.
• 2006 German Sound Art Prize , WDR Cologne and the Marl Sculpture Museum.
• 2007 1st prize Stereophonic soundcapes, DigitalArtWeek DAW Zurich.
• 2010 "Featuring Schubert's Winterreise" wins the Prix Italia

Sound carrier

• DVD film music for Dziga Vertov's silent film from 1929 "The man with the camera". Absolutely media.
• LP Uludag: Mau Mau. Recommended records.
• CD-ROM "Sound Art in Germany", DEGEM Wergo / Schott documentation series.
• CD Cultures électroniques, Bourges, 21e concours.
• CD A guide to No Man's Land. Recommended records.
• CD inventions. 50 years of musique concrète, Berlin.
• CD Riverrun. Ars Acustica. WDR. Wergo.
• CD En Red O - Paisajes Sonoros VII. Simposio de Musica Electroacustica.
• CD Continuum ... seamless CD7 from the German Society for Electroacoustic Music .
• CD Soundscape Compositions 2001 SonicArtsNetwork. UK
• CD Prize Winner CD Computer Music Competition "Pierre Schaeffer" Pescara.

Radio plays

• 2017: Chants of the Charon

Radiophonic compositions

Selection; Concept, music, direction and realization by Werner Cee

• Agon

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2010, approx. 50 min.

"If I were to make one last film, it would be about the interplay between science and terrorism." (Buñuel) Shortly before his death, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière retired to his favorite Mexican hotel for the last time to work on a script. Both of them are disappointed to find that the bar in the house has disappeared. The film project is never realized. 30 years later, the sound artist Werner Cee confronts the apocalyptic manuscript with the sound of the Good Friday processions from Buñuel's hometown of Calanda: "This drumming, an unbelievable, powerful, cosmic phenomenon that touches the collective subconscious, makes the ground shake underfoot." (Buñuel)

• featuring Schubert's winter journey

Hessischer Rundfunk 2010, 54 min.

Travel abroad and find what is your own - this hope is followed by the series "Des Wanderers Lied" on four paths. "Strange I have moved in, stranger I move out again" with these verses begins the "Winterreise", probably the most famous song cycle of the Romantic era, which Franz Schubert composed shortly before his death in 1827 for voice and piano. A hiker goes out through the winter night without a fixed destination and tells of the pain of love and disappointed hope for political freedom. Schubert's romantic passion story serves Werner Cee as the starting material for a contemporary interpretation in which the original piano part is only quoted over the electric piano by Norbert Grossmann: this is how processed natural sounds, the sounds of the Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset and the »e -ch′in «as well as the eccentric, English speaking art of the Australian puppeteer and theater player Neville Tranter created the Schubert cycle for his irritating and suggestive sound journey into what is definitely today's human abyss.

• At the beginning of the sea

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2009, 53 min.

The Hardangervidda in southern Norway is a rough plateau, abraded by glaciers. This is where the early polar explorers trained for their expeditions, and it was here that hydropower enabled the production of heavy water for the first time, which is needed for the construction of atomic bombs. A facility built by Norwegian scientists in Rjukan was fought over and destroyed during World War II. Werner Cee uses this tension between primeval nature and short-lived human interventions for an acoustic land art project. The Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset places artificial sounds in the landscape, plays on found materials, communicates with the existing soundscape.

• Owning the weather

Hessischer Rundfunk 2008, 50 min.

In Frankfurt, the Norwegian jazz guitarist Eivind Aarset - with an extended electric guitar and laptop - and the Friedberg sound artist Werner Cee with live electronics, electric bass and e-chin (the electrified Chinese plucked instrument) have signed up for "The Artist's Corner" came together for a session that combines audio art and musical improvisation. “Owning the weather by 2025” is the name of a US Army program published years ago. Texts on the topic meet acoustic ambient manipulations. The results range from psychedelic sunset to apocalyptic roaring storm.

• Time blows - the edges of music

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2007, 48 min.

"Die Zeit weht" is a radio play above clouds - about the formless, nothing, changeable and bottomless symbolism of these heavenly phenomena, composed from the waving sound images of two hybrid instruments: the E-Chin by Werner Cee and the E-Guitar by Eivind Aarset. "Ränder der Musik" is a radio play about the poetry of the unwanted, the useless, the not thought out and the not made. It consists of the sounds of musicians before and after making music. A composition that shows the sounds as they are: seemingly random, effortless. Both pieces enter into a sound-poetic dialogue about the edges between form and dissolution and about the constant change in the passage of time.

• Hippy alchemy

Hessischer Rundfunk 2006, 45 min.

Flower power, the keyword of the American hippie movement, stood for a life free of violence and sexually taboo, in which drugs and music unbounded consciousness. In the German provinces everything arrives a little later and also a little differently. The desire for change was comparable. But what happened to all of this? The former rock musician Werner Cee invited a large loft to a reunion party after more than 30 years: schoolmates, artist companions and friends. They talked, jammed, partied until the early hours of the morning ... With the consent of those involved, all speeches and noises were recorded. Werner Cee uses the many hours of original soundtracks - language and music - to compose an electroacoustic trip that weaves today and yesterday into one another.

• Fire and Forget

WDR Cologne 2005, 54 min.

"Fire and Forget" is a military formula taken from modern weapons technology: once fired, the rocket or bomb does not need any further control. Werner Cee's audio piece "Fire and Forget" is a volley of short, extremely condensed and dramatized text-sound compositions that leave behind an acoustic landscape of ruins. The texts - quotes from cut reports of censored horror films, descriptions of weapons, the life story of a weapon inventor and lyrics by Jimmi Hendrix - are spoken by a single speaker, the puppeteer Neville Tranter from the Stuffed Puppet Theater, who gives each text level its own voice. The result is a seemingly surreal monologue - pathological fantasies or is it socially accepted everyday madness? The musical fragments of the rubble landscape consist of rock music quotations (electric guitar, bass, drums, live electronics, electronic chin, piano). An absurd song cycle from "real life" in an acoustic no man's land. Contributors: Eivind Aarset, Neville Tranter, Peter Hollinger

• Machinery of the polar landscape

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2004, 46 min.

Casper David Friedrich's famous painting "Eismeer" gave the impetus for this project. The picture was quoted again and again as an icon of skepticism towards progress. For the composer Werner Cee, an industrial ruin in Bitterfeld, a never-used water reservoir, has a similar symbolism - particularly evident during the flood disaster in summer 2002. Werner Cee confronts musicians with the image of Friedrich in the reverberant "sound reservoir" and lets the piece in Improvisation processes arise. The connecting sound element is an electronic Chinese zither e-ch'in. The long reverberation creates solidification and "deceleration" like floating clods in the Arctic Ocean by Caspar David Friedrich. Contributors: Flutes: Beatrix Wagner Violoncello: Gerhard Eckert Horn: Vladimir Djambazov

• Repercusión or The Hands de Che

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2003, 41 min.

Cuba - dream destination for travelers, myth of the socialist revolution and longing for Caribbean ease. When Werner Cee traveled to Cuba in 1998, his picture was out of focus. For three weeks he explored the island world with a tape recorder. He comes across the story of "Che" Guevara's hands, which were severed by the Bolivian army as proof of their victory. Sounds and noises lead into a world between times in which motorways are used by horse carts and the splendor of bygone times has long since fallen into disrepair. Werner Cee condenses the original tones into a poetic composition, combines the sounds from the streets of Havana into a surrealistic painting, and turns concrete noises into tonal metaphors.

• Out of area

Hessischer Rundfunk 2003, 43 min.

"The central theme of" Out of Area "is the portrayal of the distance and strangeness of the places where German soldiers are deployed - culturally and geographically. According to official information, there are currently around ten thousand German soldiers deployed abroad, from Canada, Africa, Kosovo and Turkey My piece uses as sound material the live recorded attempt of a radio amateurs of the Kurzwellenring Süd near Nuremberg to make these regions and their numerous German (soldier) stations audible via a shortwave receiver with all their interference. A DJ also provides the traditional music of these cultures and a layman as well as a newscaster read texts from the working papers of the "www.Zentrums Innereführung.de of the German Armed Forces" available on the Internet. These texts are used for training purposes in preparation for the foreign assignment. The electro-acoustic processing of the original material as well as the compression and superimposition of the three segments is intended to create an artistically designed image of German soldiers beyond our borders. I deliberately abstained from one comment. "(Werner Cee) Contributors: Peter Pannke, Friedrich R. Stöhr, Norbert Umsonst, Michael Harenberg

• Istanbul crescendo

Hessischer Rundfunk 2002, 52 min.

A bridge over the Golden Horn connects the two historical quarters of Istanbul: the old oriental Stambul and the 700 year old, European-influenced Genoese quarter Galata. The Galata Bridge became the central point of my acoustic encounter with Istanbul. This point between the two districts has experienced a constant crescendo over the course of a long history. The city on both sides of the Golden Horn has grown, bridges have been built, passed, rebuilt, the population has multiplied, the speed and density of traffic have increased until the present, when the bridge is under the Traffic threatens to burst. Where the two bridge halves meet, their connection is interrupted, the construction elements are not firmly connected. And it is precisely here that the constant lawn materializes, becomes sensually perceptible: asphalt and concrete shake, tons of steel clash against each other. The epicenter seems to be located here, sending its waves and vibrations over the urban area of ​​Istanbul in concentric circles. Following the individual circular lines, my radio play aims to trace the continually changing sounds of the city that never rest. "(Werner Cee)

• Monochrome

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 2002, 49 min.

"When I design a surface as a painter, I have to work in layers. A single covering of paint only leads to a lifeless coat of paint. I build up the color from a multitude of different, loosely superposed surfaces so that the respective surface always shines through and I can create a complex color tone that shimmers and oscillates in itself. " (Werner Cee) In "Monochrom" the composer Werner Cee draws on his experiences in painting. The focus of the composition does not lie in the temporal structuring, but in the depth layering of a sound surface. The sounds are superimposed without overlapping. They become a shimmering, shimmering, moving band of sound.

• Sound of air

WDR Cologne 2002, 50 min.

"Ton der Luft" is a landscape painting using acoustic art. Layering, accentuating, contrasting, mixing, blurring, glazing - techniques that are usually used in painting create an audio piece here. In contrast to the documentary-depicting soundscape composition, "Ton der Luft" stages a soundscape with musical means. Analogous to the plein-air painting, all sound recordings were made outdoors, directly in the landscape. An acoustic choreography was developed for selected locations - an overgrown quarry lake in the nature reserve in Leun an der Lahn, the inner courtyard of the old Birklar estate in Lich, etc. Here, a choir as an actor created a variety of specific sounds and vocal noises that interweave with the natural landscape: an interplay of soundscape and musique concrète emerges. The audio piece was therefore realized exclusively on the basis of the pure microphone recording. Although parts of the composition are deliberately reminiscent of electroacoustic music, the sounds have not been manipulated or alienated in the studio afterwards, just cut and assembled. The piece is transformed on an additional level into an acoustic color theory in which texts from Vassily Kandinsky "On the Spiritual in Art" and a list of paint pigments are embedded. "

• drift

Hessischer Rundfunk / Radio nacional de Espana, Madrid 2001, 60 min.

The starting material for the audio piece is sound surfaces sung by the Kamer Riga youth choir and processed in the studio, from which vocal landscapes emerge. The composition layers the surfaces one on top of the other, structures, reliefs, warps, cracks, patterns are formed. Acoustic light changes ensure sudden or gradual changes in the soundscapes. The composition "drifts" between noise and sound, between artificial and natural character, between designed and undesigned moments. The surfaces dissolve, regroup, change constantly, sometimes clearly, sometimes almost imperceptibly. As in Impressionism in painting, it is precisely the blurring and the dissolution that create a sharper, clearer image of atmospheric processes. Sometimes the listener also loses control, his orientation: where does the piece change, where does only his own perception, his perspective change. "Trift" moves in the field of tension between choral music, electroacoustic music and radio play. Participants: Youth Choir Kamer Riga under the direction of Maris Sirmais

• The news of the garbage

Hessischer Rundfunk 2000, 53 min.

The story of the radio play is usually a story of one-off production. Werner Cees "Die Kunde vom Müll", originally broadcast as a studio production in 1998, experienced a second version live with a different cast in 1999 at "intermedium 1" in Berlin. The first impetus for this piece was Wolfgang Hilbig's prose text " The News of the Trees "; On the linguistic level, fragments of this text lead through the audio piece. The topic is not real garbage in the sense of an environmental problem, but garbage as a metaphor for the constant change of things, their creation and decay, the impermanence of power. The text fragments are integrated into a composition that uses concrete, noisy recordings via feeds. What these sounds have in common is that they are waste products of differently motivated activities. In addition to this acoustic garbage, from which constantly changing soundscapes arise, the speakers Rainer Domke and Patricia Schäfer act live with their texts, the Berlin drummer Peter Hollinger makes junk objects sound, the London singer Phil Minton reacts to the action with vocal improvisations.

• Weather

DeutschlandRadio Berlin 1999, 50 min.

"In this audio piece, random events meet calculated elements and combine to form an overall audio image that can be compared with a cultural landscape: weather, lighting conditions, geographical conditions and uncontrolled aspects of a landscape. Human interventions such as planting or the construction of paths and buildings structure this New image and interact with nature, which often creates the unique charm of a landscape. " (Werner Cee) Chance and calculation are given here in a raindrop game. Werner Cee invented a water drop instrument with which he lets drops fall onto various sound objects at the desired speed and weight. The polyrhythmic structure of the drops becomes music in the digital processing.

• Elegies

WDR Cologne 1997, 40 min.

The composer, poet and visual artist Werner Cee on his elegies: "During a trip to Spain I happened to witness a Holy Week procession. The strong expressiveness of this ritual, evocation of transience on the one hand, and festive joie de vivre on the other, made such a strong impression on me that I afterwards repeatedly visited such processions and made sound recordings of the whole variety of sound events. In reports in which persecuted and suffering people describe their fate in times of unrest, I came across individual, incidentally formulated sentences, which precisely in their seeming banality the tragedy of ins The poetic power of these quotes prompted me to collect them. My artistic work also includes concerts of improvised music, and that's how I met the jazz musician Peter Brötzmann. In his extremely expressive saxophone playing I found a soloistic counterpart to the M eating ritual of the Holy Week processions. I invited Peter Brötzmann to improvise in the studio. Processions, improvisations on the saxophone and bass clarinet as well as the texts spoken by lay speakers in eight languages: the three elements form the basic lines of my composition. All recordings were made separately from each other. The architecture of the composition is built up from over twenty voices. Original recordings can be transformed into abstract sound images or realistic scenes can emerge from an electronic soundscape. The text quotations, initially clear and easy to understand, increasingly merge with the sound fabric; their multilingualism removes the clear reference and opens up associative freedom. "Contributors: Saxophones: Peter Brötzmann

Sound and light installations

(Selection)

• Between still and already. 1989

Multimedia ZKM Karlsruhe. Civitella d´Agliano, Italy

• Feedback. 1990

Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart

• Hunting in Couples. 1991

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

• Lost. 1992

Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe

• Between the lines. 1992

Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe

• Darksights. 1992

Venue of Contemporary Art Vienna

• Surf 1992

Urban. Sindelfingen Gallery

• Braindrops / Droptrap. 1993/94/95

Sound installations for water drops, among others: Interface II, Hamburg. Ice cream factory Hanover. Lake Constance Symposium. Kryptonale, Berlin.

• After All the Jets Are in Their Boxes and the Clowns Have All Gone to Bed. 1995

Interim gallery Munich. Chemnitz power plant. ZKM Karlsruhe.

• Xample III. 1996

State Museum Darmstadt. Ataturk Culture Museum Istanbul.

• Hardship. 1996

Sound / light installation Kunstbunker Tumulka, Munich.

• History. 1997

international media art festival EMAF, sound installation in Felix-Nussbaum-Haus Osnabrück 2002

• More and more. 1998

Sound installation Marknaden. Stockholm Imperial Archives

• Berlin Airlift. 1998

Surround sound installation at the Technical University of Berlin

• Seascape Istanbul. 1999

Musiikin aika- Time of Music Viitasaari, Finland

• Drift into ambience. 2000

EnRedO Elektric songs. Barcelona

• Time Morph. 2000

Surround sound installation. Jahrhunderthalle Frankfurt Commissioned for the Raiffeisen Banks Business Day

• Istanbul crescendo. 2004

Sound performance with live video mix Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Goethe-Institut Istanbul Turkish October, Munich

• The man with the camera.

Live soundtrack for Vertov's silent film Biennale Bern EMAF Avantgarde Filmfestival Osnabrück

• Out of area

Sound performance for the foreign missions of German soldiers international media art festival EMAF Osnabrück 2004 Hörkunstfestival Erlangen

• At the beginning of the sea. 2007

Sound and video installation. Soundart award winner. Art fair Cologne

• Cages. 2006

Sound and video installation. Prize-winning work for the German Sound Art Prize. Marl Sculpture Museum

Theater works

• Kusma. 1993

Theater Club Kiev, Festival of the Regions of Upper Austria

• Fire and Forget.

Musical theater. Commissioned by WDR for the Traumzeit Festival Duisburg 2005

• The news of the garbage.

Cutting Edge Director's Prize Staatstheater Darmstadt Intermedium. Academy of Arts, Berlin

Film music, video

• The man with the camera: Film music and soundtrack for Dziga Vertov Dvd on AbsolutMedien Berlin
• Wolfsrausch: A documentary from Rinchnach / Bavarian Forest

Web links

• Werner Cee's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.wdr.de/themen/global/suchen/gs_index.jhtml
2. ↑ http://www.medien-kunst.ch/portrait/machen/dozentenalt  ( 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.  
3. ↑ js: Significant radio prize goes to sound artist Werner Cee ( memento from September 29, 2010 on WebCite ). In: Gießener Allgemeine, September 28, 2010, p. 37, archived on September 29, 2010
4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2010 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. 
5. ↑ http://mediatheque.cite-musique.fr/masc/?url=displayNotice.asp?ID=0237089
6. ↑ http://www.klangkunstpreis.de/pdf_download/Pressemitteilung_Vergabe.pdf On June 18, 2006 in Marl