Have you ever heard the sound of the nature? What if the mother earth was singing to you with the help of technology? German media and sound artist Bartholomäus Traubeck is making it possible to hear what’s in the DNA of trees. Born in Munich in 1987, Traubeck’s works are the delightful mix of nature and technology.
ORSIAD Journal: Can you please tell us how it all started?
Bartholomäus Traubeck: I don’t actually remember, but I remember that I had the Jurassic Five record Quality Control in my collection. It has a tone arm on a tree stump as a back-cover. Maybe that image just stuck to my brain. At some point in 2009 I was playing around with the idea again, building prototypes in software only. But I thought it would be more interesting to have an actual machine to make the music, so in 2010, I applied for the Award for Media Arts of Salzburg and got financial support for the idea from them, which made experimenting with more expensive hardware a lot easier. Then in 2011 it was finally finished.
ORSIAD Journal: How do you describe your music?
Bartholomäus Traubeck : I would say my approach in general is very process-based, algorithmically in nature and with a strong focus on aleatoric music.
ORSIAD Journal: What are your future projects?
Bartholomäus Traubeck: At the moment I mostly try to find different ways to base musical compositions on natural phenomena through machines that analyses and interpret data. Right now I am working a lot with feedback loops through materials and instruments like in “two axes in a forest”.
