Rechenzentrum , a data processing centre. It’s the best chosen name for an audiovisual electronic experimentation collective, with that Teutonic touch us Italian, and not only us, are so fascinated by. All those who work and are interested in digital art, have learned to know and appreciate this Berlin trio, that from 1997 has made its own way acting as pioneers and watershed between art and electronic music and visual art forms, in such a way that now they are accused of having achieved that sort of creative plateaux with more and more inactivity features or lack of stimulus.
It would be stupid not to admit that the young discipline of audiovisual electronic seems to show more and more its end, in creative terms, in relation to a growing artistic production and to a general technical equalization. Marc Weiser , music and programming, and Lillevan , video and loop, are deeply aware of what is around them, of how they get in short time to the necessity of a turning point, or of a deep artistic awareness, maybe similar to those who pushed them to write that programmatic document of audiovisual integration that has represented a dogma for many young artists during the years.
Q&a WITH RECHENZENTRUM
– You wrote you feel like a true band expressing through audiovisual elements, giving the same importance to the visual and sound elements, kept on the same level, treating music with a visual approach and videos as a music instrument. But how do you translate that concept and this approach live? How is it possible to understand it in your performance?
Rechenzentrum: Well, we wrote a manifesto on what we think about audiovisual electronic experimentation. At the beginning of the 90’s, many clubs started to show with the dj their videos and this happened in festivals too. So, soon we felt the need to write a manifesto of our approach to that work, explaining clearly that it is important for us that music and image should be on the same level, creating a unique event that couldn’t be replayed, as a sort of extemporization in which the visual element is always on the same level than music and rhythm. Without controlling how the public could react, but making it flow naturally. There isn’t an excessive technical element in our work as many believe; there is a human element, a lot of extemporising a great mutual vision of things. When we perform live everyone knows what the others are doing, we extemporise according to what is occurring on stage in that moment and according to our emotions.
– So, you extemporise a lot in your work and in your show
Rechenzentrum: The live performance has a strong vagueness component; even if we have many prepared things very complex, with a computer we can choose effects already prepared in studio, mix them in the most appropriate way, changing only some parameters and modifying rhythmic or effects. There isn’t much synchronism between audio and video, we think there isn’t anything more boring than synchronism, it’s like a presentation of a work, there isn’t any live element, and there isn’t any improvisation and humanity in those shows. You just have to listen to a Skoltz Kolgen live to understand what we mean.
– How do you relate with the growing and often frenetic high-tech approach to audio-video digital experimentation?
Rechenzentrum: We must say our research pushes in a direction that is different from the super technological one marking most of modern experimentation, and from the attention of technical research or from synchronic realisation of the work. Our aim, what we really like to do, is a human version of electronic audiovisual. We are interested in choosing the direction in which we want to work in an autonomous way, not the one Sony or Pioneer or big software production societies suggest us. So, even for this reason DVD is a support we don’ like. In ten years all will be different once again, for audio and for video supports, as well as for reproduction supports, without forgetting all we will be able to do downloading the contents on the net and making them available for mobile phones, at growing speed. This way, we risk content overproduction, musicians and video artists will have to be careful as all these supports will need more and more contents, diminishing the importance and the impact of our work. It is important to keep in mind what we are doing as artists.
– Don’t you think that for your role of artists is important even an approach to your work for communication beyond an exclusively aesthetic and emotional impact?
As an artist you tend to work on different levels. I (Lillevan) choose the images for different reasons, both because they are beautiful and because they communicate a certain mood. Pure aesthetics isn’t enough, even being abstract, for the reason why “abstract” means to look for the essence of the things. It is the same with sound, it isn’t more difficult and I don’t think it is less direct in comparison to visuals.