email chat with Andrew Deutsch

Interview with Sebastian Oschatz by Andrew Deutsch conducted by e-mail during 2001, and roughly reassembled by Sebastian. The text printed here is a draft; the full Interview is part of an upcoming book release.

gebrauchsmusik

AD: The idea of gebrauchsmusik came to me when listening to "Systemisch". I was thinking about Satie's idea of "living room music" or "furniture music" and "ambient" music in general. It seems that much of what is heard on "Systemisch" could be used this way, - sounds to live with; sound as context. I suppose this would be a "functional aspect" of music, which in your outline you said you avoided in Oval (dance music).

SO: In fact we talked about saties concept of "Klangmöbel" (furniture music) while preparing for the Wohnton release. It eventually was one of the inspiration to the title of the album. But i think most of the idea of seeing the tracks as furniture stems of the practice of letting cubase running in loop mode while working on new ideas. Being exposed to the basic loops for days forced us to work on any minute detail. So every piece was extensively tested as a furniture music. (as the working sessions involved three people working almost around the clock on the tracks in one small room, most of the loops were also tested as "music to sleep to") usually after listening to the individual loops for a long time, we were quite happy with using them only for very short moments. The long version of Dowhile on Diskont can be seen as the coming-out of our working habits. Although we accepted the term "ambient" as a marketing tool, we never felt happy with this genre, as most other artists reduce the music to a certain functional listening mode.

AD: Do the Meso projects have sound elements? If so, is there a German term such as "gebrauchsmusik" that might apply to such compositions?

SO: yes they usually do, although clients usually see it as a low priority thing. we mostly use terms like "sound" and "audio". As mostly Karl and me were interested in sound works, we mostly used the label "involving systems" for the interactive audio works.but the distinction got a little blurry the last years.

everything is private

AD: When visitors encounter a Meso project are they having a "private" experience, do you construct the elements to initiate a very intimate experience for the viewer? I'm very interested in considering the idea that "everything is private". I terms of composition and interaction are you trying to activate the viewers (private) imagination.

SO: Yes and No; "everything is private" may be a too focussed statement; When i put that in the outline, i was referring to the interaction loop: Visitor controls piece; Piece responds; Visitor experience piece; Visitor responds inuitively; Piece responds; etc.. Being in that loop is a very private experience as it involves your very own intuitions -- People can get very focussed, and tend to forget everything around them. This privateness is not a thing restricted to an individual - We also worked on a lot of group situations, where multiple people can share the same interaction loop.

Getting this interaction loop going is hard work. It seems to be that there is a certain threshold involved: There has to be a certain flow in the loop to keep it going. If the flow is not enough, the loop breaks up - This is the current state of many of the so called interactive websites. It also breaks up if there are to many rational decisions to make, or if people getting to emotional. The visitor has to be able to develop an intuitive understanding of what to expect from the interaction and must be able to create a certain mental model of the things which might happen. Yes, you might term this imagination. Of course this is a well known phenomenon with playing an musical instruments or with games. Most of our installation try their best to lowers the borders for being able to improvise, mostly be reducing the amount of craftmanship necessary.

everyone is an artist

AD: Perhaps this touches on Joseph Beuys' notion of "...everyone an artist."

SO: It touches, yes. Beuys' statement was an antithesis to the art establishment, and it was very important thing to say at that time. On the other side there are obviously different levels of ingenuity and inspriration around -- There are also different levels of willingness of letting other people in the same room being artists. I think its a very important thing to give people the chance to discover and utilize their creative potential. Beuys' statement is a very positive concept for living, it's a good thing to believe.

The inv.sys. 2.3 installation was meant as a kind of educational piece on this concept of "everybody is an artist": Although a lot of people back then thought that everybody is able to make a techno track - and the installation allowed everybody to do so, there were certainly some people more in control of the machines than other. Things are not so easy as they might appear. It also showed that even though most people spend some time with the installation and obviously feeling creative; the musical outcome was mostly undecipherable by anyone not involved in the creation process. As the four-to-the-floor beat mostly kept running, no one noticed - That was part of the concept.

algorithmic composition
and randomness

AD: Can you explain your understanding of "algorithmic composition" and its relation to creativity. How do algorithmic processes relate to your creative process?

SO: Most of the algorithmic composition tools we use with involving systems might me considered trivial from a theoretical point of view. Mostly they are things like rhythmic permutations, echo effects synced to the beat, finite state automata, granular synthsis etc. In itself these algorithms don´t do much, but they create simple scalar parameters which are suitable for a working interaction loop. Scalar parameters are great because you can control them with trivial devices like dials and pushbuttons - They dont introduce craftmanship, and are so well-known that they dont disturb the interaction loop.

AD: Most people would consider algorithmic composition to be quite mechanical.

SO: yes, it is, but it has to be, to be understandable. With the 2.3 installation we explicitly focussed on the aspect of being mechanical, as the musical reference frame uses also purposely mechanical structures like in techno or drum´n´bass. Using complex algorithms tends to be indistinguishable from randomness for a casual user - Or it forces a very intellectual listening experience, which might not be what you want. Being boring isn´t want we wanted either, so most of the installations were based very much on pre-composed material: we used record players in combination with a large box of record (2.3 and 2.7), radio receivers (heavy rotation revisor) or digitally stored material in various quantities (seconds: brk_b.t; hours: mutable muzzy musics; days: inv sys 2.2).

AD: John Cage was also deeply invested in algorithmic works as it aloud him to transcend his own taste, it opened possibilities that he would never be able to think of on his own. Is this true for you as well?

SO: Yes; With the early oval works we used random processes like sampling prepared CDs. We mostly prepared them without even having heard the material in normal playback mode. It was exactly like John Cage said: We never would have been able to come up with these samples by any means of inspiration or composition. These samples were not imaginable beforehand. Later I used a a similar strategy with the videos: Starting with some designed elements, I introduced random elements by deploying certain bugs in the graphic software of the computer. These bugs usually had some very aesthetic appeal. I was working at a research instiute on a very expensive silicon graphics machine at the time. I allowed myself some time to play with these artifacts and found some local maximae of the resulting aesthetics (unfortunately these kind of bugs seem to be sorted out on todays machines). The time was limited, because the institute where i worked closed at midnight. I recorded all material on two evenings. After that phase i got back into design mode and assembled the fragments to the music. This was a classic design task in a video editing suite. But the intermediary step was very important. Randomness is a very valuable tool, when economic pressures come into play.

AD: It must have more to do with a creative process than an "economy of production time".

SO: The main problem, the main advantage with randomness is, that it at first negates the existence of an underlying structure, which could potentially be understood and deployed for some purpose. For that its is individable from an economy of time, as it implies "atoms" which don´t need to be elaborated further (as well on the composers side as on the listeners side). Backwards applied as a design strategy i mostly use randomness when i want to avoid the emergence of some pattern which might confuse the visitor. On the other side - to put into bold words: Basing a composition entirely on the concept of randomness is as interesting as doing a cover version of say, the beatles. Its like a cover version of john cages work - although there are probably different audiences addressed. Learning from random processes is another interesting thing, as Markus Popp did in the later oval releases, or as it can be seen in the "clicks and cuts" school on mille plateaux. The sensibility of working with rhythms and digital sound glitches is educated by the exposure to random sounds and structures.

on the subject of
musical progression

AD: [In the outline you wrote] "heavy rotation revisor vs. mutable muzzy music" Can you elaborate on that?

SO: Both are two recent sound installations: Mutable Muzzy Music is based on a maximum-error-tolerance minimum-interaction logic to make it usable as an intelligent musical furniture. The installation can be controlled even while literally half asleep, and the listening people wouldnt mind. The Heavy Rotation Revisor on the other side uses a maximum-interaction minimum-error-tolerance logic: You have to put these samples in a sensible pattern or the results dont resemble anything interesting at all. The people from the exhibition where it was installed removed the speaker very soon. Its a demanding piece of furniture.

AD: Is "Mutable Muzzy Music" your invention?

SO: its the result of Karl Kliem´s work here at Meso, the concept might have been invented at a lot of other places before but we never seen it as an interactive installation. Karl did the concept and all the max/msp audio programming, i developed the visualization later on his request.

auskomponieren and
ausleben
AD: Even though one might be listening to a recording or part of a "data set" the "event" of the music is live. So, in web based projects and radio, one is dealing with "event-structure". Does the term "Auskomponierung" apply here?

SO: I think it doesnt really makes much of a difference; when listening to an interactive unfolding of musical structures, there always have to be a huge groundwork of non-interactive, non-unfolding structures in the background. They are the necessary basis of the piece. They have an author, they are composed by an artist. Otherwise there would be just silence, and of course no audience listening to the silence. So, nothing has changed. In computer science there is this difference between doing things at compile-time and at run-time. Compile-time means the unfolding happens once - while the programmer is near - and the piece is shipped in unfolded state (as ist the case with the typical computer programs like word and with traditional records and CDs). Run-time means, that the unfolding taked place each time the program is executed. This happens for example when you open a web page with javascript in it. But its important to see that this difference is not a fundamental gap - its just a matter of usability, efficiency, compatibility or practicabiliy, basically you can decide at will. Or your client will do that for you. I think the main change will occur on the listeners side when the playback situations change: For examples when combining algorithmic composition with portable devices and biometric sensors - Thats where I wait for the marketing guys catching up - I see a large market for portable devices which generate music according to the movements of the body. Like dancing in reverse. In the simplest form it may be "music to do sports by" - the rhythm gets synchronized to the walking cycle, when you start moving, sounds comes in and the like; kind of "ausleben" instead of "auskomponieren".

owning music
AD: The question of "owning music" is a really important one. It seems that with radio, web streams and interactive pieces the emphasis is placed back on the live aspects of music.

SO: The concept of owning music is really falling apart, thats very interesting phenomenon to see. Not that anything had changed from a conceptual point, but there is simply no technological backing for the traditional concepts anymore. Playback, storing, copying, distributing music is effortless. Music spreads like a virus. In the long term, recorded music will be available to anyone, anytime. It may take a couple of decades until the kids have digitized their older brothers record collections, and the majors will have to change their business models, but there is no reason that this will not happen. From an artistic standpoint, being able to tap into millions of other users record collections and bootleg archives is unpredecented and fantastic. The question of why somebody would want to record music needs to be re-discussed obviously. In retrospect it might be difficult to argue why someone would not "own" a piece of music when he or she would have it in their mind and is able ot remember every minute detail in it. Music tried to spread always like a virus, but not for long, without the technology, only the most talented people had been able to memorize and play back a tune they have heard before, for all others the music just stick in their minds. A typical pattern of technology replacing craftmanship. Having access to all that sound will probably rise the standards for the consumers - for the producers probably as well. Music needs to be better; thats great. I think listening to music will change rather slowly. Music is always twofold; its about remembering and surprising. I think the first point is a rather difficult goal with ubiquituous live streams and interactive pieces. You will really want to listening to something twice. Listening to music today is mostly a matter of playback situations. Listening to a piece in a concert is a different thing than listening at home. Listening alone is different from listening in a group. Playback situations are a matter of playback hardware, which will is in turn a matter of the marketing strategies of large media and network companies. Marketing strategies will change according to stock market turbulences and politics. For example, the huge fees, which had to be payed for getting access to the UMTS radio frequencies here in germany will it make very improbable that there will be cheap high speed wireless internet access in the next 15 years -- No napster transistor radios to carry on the beach. Carrying around records will make an economical sense for quite a while -- thats the politics of digital audio 2001.

compositional strategies
and
irritainment
AD: Can you explain your approach to composing as it relates to new media distribution strategies and installations?

SO: i for myself feel more at home with defining or redefing media than really using them. I am more interested in the implications of media. Like redefining the roles of the visitors or applying artifacts of one media to another media.

AD: Is "irritainment" one such compositional strategy?

SO: Yes. Irritainment means entertainment through irritation. It involves playing with common metaphors, or changing the semantics of features and bugs. It can be seen as a lustful experience of discovering that things are not what they used to be. The irritainment factor is about understanding the meta level: Being able to see the distinction, which has defined the thing in the first place. But the term irritainment may actually be a misnomer: We should complement "irritainment" with the word "irrication", as its about as much about education than entertainment.

AD: Can you elaborate a little more on "using Deutsche Bundespost telephones with rotary dial as an input device for interactive visualization"

SO: This is a typical example of irritainment applied: In one installations we used telephones with rotary dials for controlling a realtime graphics program. You were able to select different colors and line widths by dialing numbers and following the instructions. The rotary dial on the telephone is one of the first interfaces which where in use in everyday life. When the telephone was introduced, nobody knew what an "interface" was. It was the first digital interface, it put abstractions in everyday life. People got numbers. Knowing the numbers made people accessible. Being called by someone doesnt mean that you are able to call back. You may trace the number of somebody who is calling you, but not not the person in itself. The telephone number tells you something about the location of the phone in some strange unexposed map. The concept of telephone number is an abstract layer which is shared by the people. And its one of the first digital artefacts which were in widespread use. It is interesting to see that only with the advent of email addresses, the concept of telephone numbers can be seen in its complete strangeness.

Another interesting things with the telephone system is, that the technology was so complex at the beginning that there were numerous rigorous standards and regulations to get it working at all. Up until the seventees all people in germany had basically the same phones (actually there were two types; one for Deutsche Demokatische Republik and one for the Bundesrepublik). All phones had the same gray, the same shape, the same complicated mechanism inside. It was not allowed to modify or even open them. The rotary dial had a distinct "eigenleben" - you need to put the finger in a hole and move a disc, the force to turn the dial is different depending on the direction and the speed of the finger, the dial makes all kind of sounds, depending on speed and position, and so on. This is so strange by todays standards that people usually don´t believe that its possible to connect that kind of thing to a modern computer (actually its quite easy, as the protocols are very low tech - but i have to admit that the voltages and currents are a little out of fashion in todays electronic). In another installation we mounted a position tracking sensor in the phone. You had to move the base unit with the dial up in the air and perform subtle motions with it, the motion was directly mapped to some changing of patterns and parameters in an realtime animation. So albeit the thing you had to perform looked completely stupid (as people also held the clumsy headset between shoulder and chin), you had very precise control over the animation.

back to oval


	Interview with Sebastian Oschatz by Andrew Deutsch conducted by e-mail during 2001, and roughly reassembled by Sebastian. The text printed here is a draft; the full Interview is part of an upcoming book release.
gebrauchsmusik	AD: The idea of gebrauchsmusik came to me when listening to "Systemisch". I was thinking about Satie's idea of "living room music" or "furniture music" and "ambient" music in general. It seems that much of what is heard on "Systemisch" could be used this way, - sounds to live with; sound as context. I suppose this would be a "functional aspect" of music, which in your outline you said you avoided in Oval (dance music). SO: In fact we talked about saties concept of "Klangmöbel" (furniture music) while preparing for the Wohnton release. It eventually was one of the inspiration to the title of the album. But i think most of the idea of seeing the tracks as furniture stems of the practice of letting cubase running in loop mode while working on new ideas. Being exposed to the basic loops for days forced us to work on any minute detail. So every piece was extensively tested as a furniture music. (as the working sessions involved three people working almost around the clock on the tracks in one small room, most of the loops were also tested as "music to sleep to") usually after listening to the individual loops for a long time, we were quite happy with using them only for very short moments. The long version of Dowhile on Diskont can be seen as the coming-out of our working habits. Although we accepted the term "ambient" as a marketing tool, we never felt happy with this genre, as most other artists reduce the music to a certain functional listening mode. AD: Do the Meso projects have sound elements? If so, is there a German term such as "gebrauchsmusik" that might apply to such compositions? SO: yes they usually do, although clients usually see it as a low priority thing. we mostly use terms like "sound" and "audio". As mostly Karl and me were interested in sound works, we mostly used the label "involving systems" for the interactive audio works.but the distinction got a little blurry the last years.
everything is private	AD: When visitors encounter a Meso project are they having a "private" experience, do you construct the elements to initiate a very intimate experience for the viewer? I'm very interested in considering the idea that "everything is private". I terms of composition and interaction are you trying to activate the viewers (private) imagination. SO: Yes and No; "everything is private" may be a too focussed statement; When i put that in the outline, i was referring to the interaction loop: Visitor controls piece; Piece responds; Visitor experience piece; Visitor responds inuitively; Piece responds; etc.. Being in that loop is a very private experience as it involves your very own intuitions -- People can get very focussed, and tend to forget everything around them. This privateness is not a thing restricted to an individual - We also worked on a lot of group situations, where multiple people can share the same interaction loop. Getting this interaction loop going is hard work. It seems to be that there is a certain threshold involved: There has to be a certain flow in the loop to keep it going. If the flow is not enough, the loop breaks up - This is the current state of many of the so called interactive websites. It also breaks up if there are to many rational decisions to make, or if people getting to emotional. The visitor has to be able to develop an intuitive understanding of what to expect from the interaction and must be able to create a certain mental model of the things which might happen. Yes, you might term this imagination. Of course this is a well known phenomenon with playing an musical instruments or with games. Most of our installation try their best to lowers the borders for being able to improvise, mostly be reducing the amount of craftmanship necessary.
everyone is an artist	AD: Perhaps this touches on Joseph Beuys' notion of "...everyone an artist." SO: It touches, yes. Beuys' statement was an antithesis to the art establishment, and it was very important thing to say at that time. On the other side there are obviously different levels of ingenuity and inspriration around -- There are also different levels of willingness of letting other people in the same room being artists. I think its a very important thing to give people the chance to discover and utilize their creative potential. Beuys' statement is a very positive concept for living, it's a good thing to believe. The inv.sys. 2.3 installation was meant as a kind of educational piece on this concept of "everybody is an artist": Although a lot of people back then thought that everybody is able to make a techno track - and the installation allowed everybody to do so, there were certainly some people more in control of the machines than other. Things are not so easy as they might appear. It also showed that even though most people spend some time with the installation and obviously feeling creative; the musical outcome was mostly undecipherable by anyone not involved in the creation process. As the four-to-the-floor beat mostly kept running, no one noticed - That was part of the concept.
algorithmic composition and randomness	AD: Can you explain your understanding of "algorithmic composition" and its relation to creativity. How do algorithmic processes relate to your creative process? SO: Most of the algorithmic composition tools we use with involving systems might me considered trivial from a theoretical point of view. Mostly they are things like rhythmic permutations, echo effects synced to the beat, finite state automata, granular synthsis etc. In itself these algorithms don´t do much, but they create simple scalar parameters which are suitable for a working interaction loop. Scalar parameters are great because you can control them with trivial devices like dials and pushbuttons - They dont introduce craftmanship, and are so well-known that they dont disturb the interaction loop. AD: Most people would consider algorithmic composition to be quite mechanical. SO: yes, it is, but it has to be, to be understandable. With the 2.3 installation we explicitly focussed on the aspect of being mechanical, as the musical reference frame uses also purposely mechanical structures like in techno or drum´n´bass. Using complex algorithms tends to be indistinguishable from randomness for a casual user - Or it forces a very intellectual listening experience, which might not be what you want. Being boring isn´t want we wanted either, so most of the installations were based very much on pre-composed material: we used record players in combination with a large box of record (2.3 and 2.7), radio receivers (heavy rotation revisor) or digitally stored material in various quantities (seconds: brk_b.t; hours: mutable muzzy musics; days: inv sys 2.2). AD: John Cage was also deeply invested in algorithmic works as it aloud him to transcend his own taste, it opened possibilities that he would never be able to think of on his own. Is this true for you as well? SO: Yes; With the early oval works we used random processes like sampling prepared CDs. We mostly prepared them without even having heard the material in normal playback mode. It was exactly like John Cage said: We never would have been able to come up with these samples by any means of inspiration or composition. These samples were not imaginable beforehand. Later I used a a similar strategy with the videos: Starting with some designed elements, I introduced random elements by deploying certain bugs in the graphic software of the computer. These bugs usually had some very aesthetic appeal. I was working at a research instiute on a very expensive silicon graphics machine at the time. I allowed myself some time to play with these artifacts and found some local maximae of the resulting aesthetics (unfortunately these kind of bugs seem to be sorted out on todays machines). The time was limited, because the institute where i worked closed at midnight. I recorded all material on two evenings. After that phase i got back into design mode and assembled the fragments to the music. This was a classic design task in a video editing suite. But the intermediary step was very important. Randomness is a very valuable tool, when economic pressures come into play. AD: It must have more to do with a creative process than an "economy of production time". SO: The main problem, the main advantage with randomness is, that it at first negates the existence of an underlying structure, which could potentially be understood and deployed for some purpose. For that its is individable from an economy of time, as it implies "atoms" which don´t need to be elaborated further (as well on the composers side as on the listeners side). Backwards applied as a design strategy i mostly use randomness when i want to avoid the emergence of some pattern which might confuse the visitor. On the other side - to put into bold words: Basing a composition entirely on the concept of randomness is as interesting as doing a cover version of say, the beatles. Its like a cover version of john cages work - although there are probably different audiences addressed. Learning from random processes is another interesting thing, as Markus Popp did in the later oval releases, or as it can be seen in the "clicks and cuts" school on mille plateaux. The sensibility of working with rhythms and digital sound glitches is educated by the exposure to random sounds and structures.
on the subject of musical progression	AD: [In the outline you wrote] "heavy rotation revisor vs. mutable muzzy music" Can you elaborate on that? SO: Both are two recent sound installations: Mutable Muzzy Music is based on a maximum-error-tolerance minimum-interaction logic to make it usable as an intelligent musical furniture. The installation can be controlled even while literally half asleep, and the listening people wouldnt mind. The Heavy Rotation Revisor on the other side uses a maximum-interaction minimum-error-tolerance logic: You have to put these samples in a sensible pattern or the results dont resemble anything interesting at all. The people from the exhibition where it was installed removed the speaker very soon. Its a demanding piece of furniture. AD: Is "Mutable Muzzy Music" your invention? SO: its the result of Karl Kliem´s work here at Meso, the concept might have been invented at a lot of other places before but we never seen it as an interactive installation. Karl did the concept and all the max/msp audio programming, i developed the visualization later on his request.
auskomponieren and ausleben	AD: Even though one might be listening to a recording or part of a "data set" the "event" of the music is live. So, in web based projects and radio, one is dealing with "event-structure". Does the term "Auskomponierung" apply here? SO: I think it doesnt really makes much of a difference; when listening to an interactive unfolding of musical structures, there always have to be a huge groundwork of non-interactive, non-unfolding structures in the background. They are the necessary basis of the piece. They have an author, they are composed by an artist. Otherwise there would be just silence, and of course no audience listening to the silence. So, nothing has changed. In computer science there is this difference between doing things at compile-time and at run-time. Compile-time means the unfolding happens once - while the programmer is near - and the piece is shipped in unfolded state (as ist the case with the typical computer programs like word and with traditional records and CDs). Run-time means, that the unfolding taked place each time the program is executed. This happens for example when you open a web page with javascript in it. But its important to see that this difference is not a fundamental gap - its just a matter of usability, efficiency, compatibility or practicabiliy, basically you can decide at will. Or your client will do that for you. I think the main change will occur on the listeners side when the playback situations change: For examples when combining algorithmic composition with portable devices and biometric sensors - Thats where I wait for the marketing guys catching up - I see a large market for portable devices which generate music according to the movements of the body. Like dancing in reverse. In the simplest form it may be "music to do sports by" - the rhythm gets synchronized to the walking cycle, when you start moving, sounds comes in and the like; kind of "ausleben" instead of "auskomponieren".
owning music	AD: The question of "owning music" is a really important one. It seems that with radio, web streams and interactive pieces the emphasis is placed back on the live aspects of music. SO: The concept of owning music is really falling apart, thats very interesting phenomenon to see. Not that anything had changed from a conceptual point, but there is simply no technological backing for the traditional concepts anymore. Playback, storing, copying, distributing music is effortless. Music spreads like a virus. In the long term, recorded music will be available to anyone, anytime. It may take a couple of decades until the kids have digitized their older brothers record collections, and the majors will have to change their business models, but there is no reason that this will not happen. From an artistic standpoint, being able to tap into millions of other users record collections and bootleg archives is unpredecented and fantastic. The question of why somebody would want to record music needs to be re-discussed obviously. In retrospect it might be difficult to argue why someone would not "own" a piece of music when he or she would have it in their mind and is able ot remember every minute detail in it. Music tried to spread always like a virus, but not for long, without the technology, only the most talented people had been able to memorize and play back a tune they have heard before, for all others the music just stick in their minds. A typical pattern of technology replacing craftmanship. Having access to all that sound will probably rise the standards for the consumers - for the producers probably as well. Music needs to be better; thats great. I think listening to music will change rather slowly. Music is always twofold; its about remembering and surprising. I think the first point is a rather difficult goal with ubiquituous live streams and interactive pieces. You will really want to listening to something twice. Listening to music today is mostly a matter of playback situations. Listening to a piece in a concert is a different thing than listening at home. Listening alone is different from listening in a group. Playback situations are a matter of playback hardware, which will is in turn a matter of the marketing strategies of large media and network companies. Marketing strategies will change according to stock market turbulences and politics. For example, the huge fees, which had to be payed for getting access to the UMTS radio frequencies here in germany will it make very improbable that there will be cheap high speed wireless internet access in the next 15 years -- No napster transistor radios to carry on the beach. Carrying around records will make an economical sense for quite a while -- thats the politics of digital audio 2001.
compositional strategies and irritainment	AD: Can you explain your approach to composing as it relates to new media distribution strategies and installations? SO: i for myself feel more at home with defining or redefing media than really using them. I am more interested in the implications of media. Like redefining the roles of the visitors or applying artifacts of one media to another media. AD: Is "irritainment" one such compositional strategy? SO: Yes. Irritainment means entertainment through irritation. It involves playing with common metaphors, or changing the semantics of features and bugs. It can be seen as a lustful experience of discovering that things are not what they used to be. The irritainment factor is about understanding the meta level: Being able to see the distinction, which has defined the thing in the first place. But the term irritainment may actually be a misnomer: We should complement "irritainment" with the word "irrication", as its about as much about education than entertainment. AD: Can you elaborate a little more on "using Deutsche Bundespost telephones with rotary dial as an input device for interactive visualization" SO: This is a typical example of irritainment applied: In one installations we used telephones with rotary dials for controlling a realtime graphics program. You were able to select different colors and line widths by dialing numbers and following the instructions. The rotary dial on the telephone is one of the first interfaces which where in use in everyday life. When the telephone was introduced, nobody knew what an "interface" was. It was the first digital interface, it put abstractions in everyday life. People got numbers. Knowing the numbers made people accessible. Being called by someone doesnt mean that you are able to call back. You may trace the number of somebody who is calling you, but not not the person in itself. The telephone number tells you something about the location of the phone in some strange unexposed map. The concept of telephone number is an abstract layer which is shared by the people. And its one of the first digital artefacts which were in widespread use. It is interesting to see that only with the advent of email addresses, the concept of telephone numbers can be seen in its complete strangeness. Another interesting things with the telephone system is, that the technology was so complex at the beginning that there were numerous rigorous standards and regulations to get it working at all. Up until the seventees all people in germany had basically the same phones (actually there were two types; one for Deutsche Demokatische Republik and one for the Bundesrepublik). All phones had the same gray, the same shape, the same complicated mechanism inside. It was not allowed to modify or even open them. The rotary dial had a distinct "eigenleben" - you need to put the finger in a hole and move a disc, the force to turn the dial is different depending on the direction and the speed of the finger, the dial makes all kind of sounds, depending on speed and position, and so on. This is so strange by todays standards that people usually don´t believe that its possible to connect that kind of thing to a modern computer (actually its quite easy, as the protocols are very low tech - but i have to admit that the voltages and currents are a little out of fashion in todays electronic). In another installation we mounted a position tracking sensor in the phone. You had to move the base unit with the dial up in the air and perform subtle motions with it, the motion was directly mapped to some changing of patterns and parameters in an realtime animation. So albeit the thing you had to perform looked completely stupid (as people also held the clumsy headset between shoulder and chin), you had very precise control over the animation.