email chat with Jeremy Turner

Interview with Sebastian Oschatz by Jeremy Turner conducted by e-mail Sep 21-, 2001

Jeremy Turner is instructing a new course on the "History of Digital Audio" starting this October, 2001 at the Vancouver Community College in Vancouver, Canada. Turner is also a composer and inter-disciplinary artist. Turner used to be a regular Arts/Entertainment critic for AOL Canada and website reviewer for Intelligentagent.com in New York.
Sebastian Oschatz is formerly a member of the innovative German electronic group, Oval. He currently is working as an interaction designer at the German media design collectium "Meso" (www.meso.net) with a special focus on real-time video synthesis. He worked on sound installations with the Meso group and "Involving-Systems" (www.involving-systems.com). In addition, he teaches interface design at the University in Ulm. Oschatz lives in Frankfurt, Germany.

setting the context

JT: I met Markus Popp in Vancouver when he was giving a free lecture on his "Ovalprocess" software. I only heard recently that you also designed the interface with Richard Ross. I originally assumed that OvalProcess would be shareware where people could upload their own samples from CD and then 'ovalize' them with some customized plug-ins. In other words, any user could also be the author as they chose the CDs and the only authorship attributed to "Oval" per se would be the code preset to remix the chosen sources in a restricted way. So, when I saw the demonstration, I was rather disappointed to find that all the samples were his from the "Oval" audio-disks and that the format for aligning these samples were not all that different from say, Sonic Foundry's ACID. My question to you is, if it was entirely up to you, how would you have created OvalProcess? Also, are you still in contact with Markus Popp?

SO: […] I will start with the second question, which can be answered "no". The first part is also very simple but I also have to step back and set the context:
somehow around 95 we started thinking about doing a [piece of] software to complement our audio works. Myself, coming from a computer science background, this didn't seem to be very far fetched. I was much involved with academic user interface design issues and was programming real-time graphic systems. Unfortunately, I wasn't much into audio programming, so I was very happy when Markus met Richard, who was willing to work on some of our ideas.

JT: Is Richard still working with either of you guys or was it a one-off event?

SO: He continued to work on the installation version of OvalProcess. we have some intermittent email conversations but there are no projects going at the time.

JT: Okay and my question about the current format of Markus' OvalProcess software?

SO: What you describe is very much what we thought what might be an interesting next-generation-marketing ploy back then. From today's standpoint, Macromedia Director might not be the tool of choice, but it was amazing what Richard was able to accomplish back then. As this was a part time project for all of us, schedules delayed over and over again and nothing really happened. Richard did lots of programming but our feature requests changed considerably each time we met.

JT: So you all had differing ideas as to the best method to presenting the user-interface? Was Markus' idea of having the interface installed in a Skodapark sculpture-kiosk suggested as early as 1995? If so, did that pose obstacles towards getting the project finished?

SO: [No, I dont think so,] I think it was more some last resort to get. I think he met some guys who were very much into building these plexi-glass boxes. Putting a real product onto a CD is a much greater effort. Markus, coming from a media theory background, wasn't obviously much into software engineering, and Richard had millions of other things going on. At some point (all the recording functions were still missing), we did some presentations together.

JT: What were the initial reactions to your early presentations?

SO: we did some really good TV coverage and some interesting contacts, but as everything was pretty vapour-ware nothing really happened. Soon afterwards, Markus considered me as having left the group. I was rather surprised that in 2000 Markus really tried to resurrect the beta versions of process as a considerable option for sound design. Another thing to consider: Markus is a brilliant songwriter, so he just didn't like other people messing around with stupid samples -- it wouldn't be of any interest to him. That's why he never really wanted the sampling options. (but I think his sales pitch spells different)…

the OvalProcess interface

JT: So, do you see the current OvalProcess interface as cutting-edge?

SO: [Not at all..] There have been some changes in the graphic design but the basic functionality is the same as 1996.

JT: Yeah, that is what the interface looked like to me...eerily retro. When I first asked Markus what software he used to employ for albums such as "Systemisch", he wouldn't tell me saying it wasn't important and then he finally caved in and admitted to using Cubase.

SO: That's correct. All of the samples were played by a completely awkward to use Yamaha tx16w. The 12-bit sampling was essential for getting the unique sound when transposing the CD-skipping sounds. There was also a Korg Wavestation for some bass sounds. We tried different CD players, I think the CD player of Frank's sister provided the best results. Most of the time, we first recorded the CD skipping on compact cassette and transferred the most interesting parts later on to the sampler. I'm not sure if we used the 1/4" Fostex 8-track for something on "Systemisch".

JT: What is your favourite piece of commercially available software right now?

SO: The estimated shipping date of the first publicly available version of our real-time video synthesis toolkit vvvv is about mid next year, so I will not count this -- but I have currently three books on Microsoft Com on my bed-shelf. It is an amazing piece of software architecture especially if you consider that it works remarkably well with even the most horrible programming languages like C++ on the most hated platform. What I really want to go into are nvidia pixel shaders. Max (www.cycling74.com) is an all-time favourite, with Photoshop, Freehand and Delphi very close.

on the subject of marketing

JT: [] To what extent does market trends influence your creative, aesthetic and philosophical approach? Does the conceptual structure derive from the nature of the marketplace and if so, is the European market the model and/or the global context? Also, what is your opinion of other market driven artwork that you have encountered?

SO: We constantly tried to see things in the most complex way possible. So, thinking about the reception side and marketing strategies was a very essential part of our discourse. I personally was bored with releasing or even listening to records (as I really have bought too much in the years before) so I was looking for other options (Napster finally got me back into listening mode these days). After jumping in some real marketing driven business contexts, fascination is complemented with some real horror though.

JT: Is the current version of OvalProcess still competitive with the new bells and whistles that new software programs provide?

SO: Obviously, even the most basic tools today (like you describe) provide far more options than OvalProcess. But, it might not be that simple: a reduction of options is often a good way to discover new things. [I think the best part of OvalProcess are its samples]

restrictions or expanding
the options

JT: What is your opinion on plug-in driven composition in general? Does it ultimately expand or limit one's options? For example, my early work was criticized for relying on plug-in filters to induce compositional diversity and that the work came across to some expert listeners as "lazy" and "effecty".

SO: Like a music instrument… some sound cheesy, some are classics. Even cheesy instruments can sound wonderful when put in the right song. Most of the synthesizer presets probably will not help anyone's song. There is [] a very limited subset of effects where the human perceptual system can instantly adapt in a natural way. To most of the effects no consumer has the time to relate to. Anyway, most work is discovering why somebody would like to do something. .

on the subject of
musical progression?

SO: Instead of describing a what-if-scenario, I would rather describe some of the works I have done in the mean time. My first take on OvalProcess was basically OvalProduct *. OvalProduct allowed restructuring any audio material on CD by continuously moving the playback position on a CD-Rom drive with a simple max patch and putting all in one big groovy triplet delay effect.

JT: {laughter!} Now anyone can reproduce that classic Oval sound. Speaking of triplets, one 'song' on Oval sounds like a waltz. As I'm sure you know, Germany has mastered the tradition of the waltz. Especially by the 19th century. Did your nation's history influence your aesthetic approach? This may sound strange but was Strauss an influence?

SO: From all I recapitulate from my German elementary school music courses, they enumerate all meters starting with the waltz as 3 is smaller than 4. So the waltz somehow sticks in your mind. That may be part of the cultural heritage of Germany and attributed to Richard Strauss. In fact, it took me years to notice that virtually no pop song on the radio ever used a waltz. One of the biggest innovations when recording "Systemisch" was the invention of setting all snap to beat features to "off" and just listening to the results instead of relying of some predetermined grid.

[JT: But tell me more about the main OvalProduct]

SO: The two simple rotary dials on OvalProduct negated about any aspect of musical craftsmanship, which was fine, and it worked surprisingly well if you take the right CDs.

JT: And that is where the author returns to the scene, as a selector of sources. The composer as prosumer and compiler. […]

SO: A series of later works, which were influenced by things like techno, Acid-house and Drum 'n' Bass (that's where Karl and Martin and the label involving systems - come in) focused on creating music which sounds plausible and controlled even when untrained users were interacting (involving systems update 2.0 - 2.3). Later on, we worked on remixing installations which approached the point of being musical instruments by their own rights, but always included an archive of musical legacy (involving systems update 2.5 - 2.7, brk_b.t, mutable muzzy musics). The "heavy rotation revisor" continues where earlier installations left. It continuously takes samples from five different radio stations and allows the visitors to arrange the samples and make audio loops out of them (the process is heavily based on granular synthesis*). It might be interesting to discuss authorship issues on this piece: obviously the original authors of the radio programme just provide some audio data - the sound (syntax) is kept by the granular synthesis, but all of the semantics (actual song, meaning of spoken words) are lost. Four visitors can arrange the material by using four industry standard Microsoft mice. As a composer, I introduced 8 patterns [that] can be used to create structures in the loop. I refused to put in any recording functions. All samples are lost when removed, and you will never be able to recreate a given piece, as you will never have the same sound samples.

JT: I am reminded of the shortwave Radio compositions of John Cage. Was he an influence for this project?

SO: My mother occasionally visited some concerts at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, and probably introduced me to some of Cages' ideas, but I think the greater influence was the short wave receiver my father once bought. Shortwave was much more interesting back in the 70s, wasn't it? []

on expectations
JT: [] So, back around 1993, Oval was more of a band, right? I did read the interview on your website where it mentions your contributions to "Wohnton" but I'm still not so sure the exact nature of what your position in Oval was at the time. Was Oval strictly an audio band at the time? As you said, you were a computer science major. What initially drew you to Oval? I didn't hear Oval until my personal favourite "Systemisch" CD was released in 1996. My friends and I agree that "Systemisch" sounds like it was composed and arranged by only one person. In fact, the structure is so conceptually tight and precise, one would think that such a disc would have pleased Anton Von Webern. So, is this possibly why Markus went on his own? Because he realized at least on audio terms, he didn't need anyone else

SO: Oval started rather real-time. We usually progressed very fast from something like a first idea to improvising to something which we recorded and never ever used again. After Markus bought the first sequencer, it more and more transformed in a round-robin-style of all three of us working on a single track. Later on, I increasingly focused on production works and sound engineering, figured out how to get special setups working, provided general strategical inspirations, but was not involved in the actual sequencing of the samples. Looking from today's standpoint, most of the experiments of the time back then were not that interesting and most of the material was reworked over and over again by all of us, but it laid down some groundwork which ultimately lead to the tracks in "Systemisch". I cannot really reconstruct which of the "Systemisch" track was initially started by Frank, by me or by Markus, or even which parts each of us contributed []."Diskont" which was released later and included some of the earlier tracks [].

JT: It seems like you were helping out with the visual imagery more than the audio?

SO: That is the official reading, yes. It is true for the time after the release of "Diskont", but before that it wasn't that simple.

JT: But you began with Oval in 1993 or earlier as an audio programmer, correct? You mention real-time...I do not get the sense that Oval is primarily about 'real-time' at least judging from the nature of the studio products and Markus' show at the Western Front in Vancouver last year. In retrospect, did you want Oval to be as real-time as the graphic systems?

SO: I was not interested in programming audio effects which could be used to prepare even more samples or fragments (we already had zillions of them) but more in the systems aspect of creating something which opens up some new contexts to work in. []

back to oval


	Interview with Sebastian Oschatz by Jeremy Turner conducted by e-mail Sep 21-, 2001 Jeremy Turner is instructing a new course on the "History of Digital Audio" starting this October, 2001 at the Vancouver Community College in Vancouver, Canada. Turner is also a composer and inter-disciplinary artist. Turner used to be a regular Arts/Entertainment critic for AOL Canada and website reviewer for Intelligentagent.com in New York. Sebastian Oschatz is formerly a member of the innovative German electronic group, Oval. He currently is working as an interaction designer at the German media design collectium "Meso" (www.meso.net) with a special focus on real-time video synthesis. He worked on sound installations with the Meso group and "Involving-Systems" (www.involving-systems.com). In addition, he teaches interface design at the University in Ulm. Oschatz lives in Frankfurt, Germany.
setting the context	JT: I met Markus Popp in Vancouver when he was giving a free lecture on his "Ovalprocess" software. I only heard recently that you also designed the interface with Richard Ross. I originally assumed that OvalProcess would be shareware where people could upload their own samples from CD and then 'ovalize' them with some customized plug-ins. In other words, any user could also be the author as they chose the CDs and the only authorship attributed to "Oval" per se would be the code preset to remix the chosen sources in a restricted way. So, when I saw the demonstration, I was rather disappointed to find that all the samples were his from the "Oval" audio-disks and that the format for aligning these samples were not all that different from say, Sonic Foundry's ACID. My question to you is, if it was entirely up to you, how would you have created OvalProcess? Also, are you still in contact with Markus Popp? SO: […] I will start with the second question, which can be answered "no". The first part is also very simple but I also have to step back and set the context: somehow around 95 we started thinking about doing a [piece of] software to complement our audio works. Myself, coming from a computer science background, this didn't seem to be very far fetched. I was much involved with academic user interface design issues and was programming real-time graphic systems. Unfortunately, I wasn't much into audio programming, so I was very happy when Markus met Richard, who was willing to work on some of our ideas. JT: Is Richard still working with either of you guys or was it a one-off event? SO: He continued to work on the installation version of OvalProcess. we have some intermittent email conversations but there are no projects going at the time. JT: Okay and my question about the current format of Markus' OvalProcess software? SO: What you describe is very much what we thought what might be an interesting next-generation-marketing ploy back then. From today's standpoint, Macromedia Director might not be the tool of choice, but it was amazing what Richard was able to accomplish back then. As this was a part time project for all of us, schedules delayed over and over again and nothing really happened. Richard did lots of programming but our feature requests changed considerably each time we met. JT: So you all had differing ideas as to the best method to presenting the user-interface? Was Markus' idea of having the interface installed in a Skodapark sculpture-kiosk suggested as early as 1995? If so, did that pose obstacles towards getting the project finished? SO: [No, I dont think so,] I think it was more some last resort to get. I think he met some guys who were very much into building these plexi-glass boxes. Putting a real product onto a CD is a much greater effort. Markus, coming from a media theory background, wasn't obviously much into software engineering, and Richard had millions of other things going on. At some point (all the recording functions were still missing), we did some presentations together. JT: What were the initial reactions to your early presentations? SO: we did some really good TV coverage and some interesting contacts, but as everything was pretty vapour-ware nothing really happened. Soon afterwards, Markus considered me as having left the group. I was rather surprised that in 2000 Markus really tried to resurrect the beta versions of process as a considerable option for sound design. Another thing to consider: Markus is a brilliant songwriter, so he just didn't like other people messing around with stupid samples -- it wouldn't be of any interest to him. That's why he never really wanted the sampling options. (but I think his sales pitch spells different)…
the OvalProcess interface	JT: So, do you see the current OvalProcess interface as cutting-edge? SO: [Not at all..] There have been some changes in the graphic design but the basic functionality is the same as 1996. JT: Yeah, that is what the interface looked like to me...eerily retro. When I first asked Markus what software he used to employ for albums such as "Systemisch", he wouldn't tell me saying it wasn't important and then he finally caved in and admitted to using Cubase. SO: That's correct. All of the samples were played by a completely awkward to use Yamaha tx16w. The 12-bit sampling was essential for getting the unique sound when transposing the CD-skipping sounds. There was also a Korg Wavestation for some bass sounds. We tried different CD players, I think the CD player of Frank's sister provided the best results. Most of the time, we first recorded the CD skipping on compact cassette and transferred the most interesting parts later on to the sampler. I'm not sure if we used the 1/4" Fostex 8-track for something on "Systemisch". JT: What is your favourite piece of commercially available software right now? SO: The estimated shipping date of the first publicly available version of our real-time video synthesis toolkit vvvv is about mid next year, so I will not count this -- but I have currently three books on Microsoft Com on my bed-shelf. It is an amazing piece of software architecture especially if you consider that it works remarkably well with even the most horrible programming languages like C++ on the most hated platform. What I really want to go into are nvidia pixel shaders. Max (www.cycling74.com) is an all-time favourite, with Photoshop, Freehand and Delphi very close.
on the subject of marketing	JT: [] To what extent does market trends influence your creative, aesthetic and philosophical approach? Does the conceptual structure derive from the nature of the marketplace and if so, is the European market the model and/or the global context? Also, what is your opinion of other market driven artwork that you have encountered? SO: We constantly tried to see things in the most complex way possible. So, thinking about the reception side and marketing strategies was a very essential part of our discourse. I personally was bored with releasing or even listening to records (as I really have bought too much in the years before) so I was looking for other options (Napster finally got me back into listening mode these days). After jumping in some real marketing driven business contexts, fascination is complemented with some real horror though. JT: Is the current version of OvalProcess still competitive with the new bells and whistles that new software programs provide? SO: Obviously, even the most basic tools today (like you describe) provide far more options than OvalProcess. But, it might not be that simple: a reduction of options is often a good way to discover new things. [I think the best part of OvalProcess are its samples]
restrictions or expanding the options	JT: What is your opinion on plug-in driven composition in general? Does it ultimately expand or limit one's options? For example, my early work was criticized for relying on plug-in filters to induce compositional diversity and that the work came across to some expert listeners as "lazy" and "effecty". SO: Like a music instrument… some sound cheesy, some are classics. Even cheesy instruments can sound wonderful when put in the right song. Most of the synthesizer presets probably will not help anyone's song. There is [] a very limited subset of effects where the human perceptual system can instantly adapt in a natural way. To most of the effects no consumer has the time to relate to. Anyway, most work is discovering why somebody would like to do something. .
on the subject of musical progression?	SO: Instead of describing a what-if-scenario, I would rather describe some of the works I have done in the mean time. My first take on OvalProcess was basically OvalProduct . OvalProduct allowed restructuring any* audio material on CD by continuously moving the playback position on a CD-Rom drive with a simple max patch and putting all in one big groovy triplet delay effect. JT: {laughter!} Now anyone can reproduce that classic Oval sound. Speaking of triplets, one 'song' on Oval sounds like a waltz. As I'm sure you know, Germany has mastered the tradition of the waltz. Especially by the 19th century. Did your nation's history influence your aesthetic approach? This may sound strange but was Strauss an influence? SO: From all I recapitulate from my German elementary school music courses, they enumerate all meters starting with the waltz as 3 is smaller than 4. So the waltz somehow sticks in your mind. That may be part of the cultural heritage of Germany and attributed to Richard Strauss. In fact, it took me years to notice that virtually no pop song on the radio ever used a waltz. One of the biggest innovations when recording "Systemisch" was the invention of setting all snap to beat features to "off" and just listening to the results instead of relying of some predetermined grid. [JT: But tell me more about the main OvalProduct] SO: The two simple rotary dials on OvalProduct negated about any aspect of musical craftsmanship, which was fine, and it worked surprisingly well if you take the right CDs. JT: And that is where the author returns to the scene, as a selector of sources. The composer as prosumer and compiler. […] SO: A series of later works, which were influenced by things like techno, Acid-house and Drum 'n' Bass (that's where Karl and Martin and the label involving systems - come in) focused on creating music which sounds plausible and controlled even when untrained users were interacting (involving systems update 2.0 - 2.3). Later on, we worked on remixing installations which approached the point of being musical instruments by their own rights, but always included an archive of musical legacy (involving systems update 2.5 - 2.7, brk_b.t, mutable muzzy musics). The "heavy rotation revisor" continues where earlier installations left. It continuously takes samples from five different radio stations and allows the visitors to arrange the samples and make audio loops out of them (the process is heavily based on granular synthesis*). It might be interesting to discuss authorship issues on this piece: obviously the original authors of the radio programme just provide some audio data - the sound (syntax) is kept by the granular synthesis, but all of the semantics (actual song, meaning of spoken words) are lost. Four visitors can arrange the material by using four industry standard Microsoft mice. As a composer, I introduced 8 patterns [that] can be used to create structures in the loop. I refused to put in any recording functions. All samples are lost when removed, and you will never be able to recreate a given piece, as you will never have the same sound samples. JT: I am reminded of the shortwave Radio compositions of John Cage. Was he an influence for this project? SO: My mother occasionally visited some concerts at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, and probably introduced me to some of Cages' ideas, but I think the greater influence was the short wave receiver my father once bought. Shortwave was much more interesting back in the 70s, wasn't it? []
on expectations	JT: [] So, back around 1993, Oval was more of a band, right? I did read the interview on your website where it mentions your contributions to "Wohnton" but I'm still not so sure the exact nature of what your position in Oval was at the time. Was Oval strictly an audio band at the time? As you said, you were a computer science major. What initially drew you to Oval? I didn't hear Oval until my personal favourite "Systemisch" CD was released in 1996. My friends and I agree that "Systemisch" sounds like it was composed and arranged by only one person. In fact, the structure is so conceptually tight and precise, one would think that such a disc would have pleased Anton Von Webern. So, is this possibly why Markus went on his own? Because he realized at least on audio terms, he didn't need anyone else SO: Oval started rather real-time. We usually progressed very fast from something like a first idea to improvising to something which we recorded and never ever used again. After Markus bought the first sequencer, it more and more transformed in a round-robin-style of all three of us working on a single track. Later on, I increasingly focused on production works and sound engineering, figured out how to get special setups working, provided general strategical inspirations, but was not involved in the actual sequencing of the samples. Looking from today's standpoint, most of the experiments of the time back then were not that interesting and most of the material was reworked over and over again by all of us, but it laid down some groundwork which ultimately lead to the tracks in "Systemisch". I cannot really reconstruct which of the "Systemisch" track was initially started by Frank, by me or by Markus, or even which parts each of us contributed []."Diskont" which was released later and included some of the earlier tracks []. JT: It seems like you were helping out with the visual imagery more than the audio? SO: That is the official reading, yes. It is true for the time after the release of "Diskont", but before that it wasn't that simple. JT: But you began with Oval in 1993 or earlier as an audio programmer, correct? You mention real-time...I do not get the sense that Oval is primarily about 'real-time' at least judging from the nature of the studio products and Markus' show at the Western Front in Vancouver last year. In retrospect, did you want Oval to be as real-time as the graphic systems? SO: I was not interested in programming audio effects which could be used to prepare even more samples or fragments (we already had zillions of them) but more in the systems aspect of creating something which opens up some new contexts to work in. []