Skip to main content

ARTIST: Timo Kahlen - Sound Sculptor and Media Art

Timo Kahlen - Intermedia

Sound sculptor and media artist Timo Kahlen (* 1966) has been creating subtle, intriguing, eye- and earcatching, temporary media sculptures and sound installations for more than 30 years.
Presenting challenges to our imagination and perception, Kahlen has chosen to work with new, often unusual, transient and ‘immaterial‘ media: with wind and steam, with light and shade, with pixels and dust, with sound, vibration and noise.
"It‘s a paradox. In the dirty twittering, gurgling, hissing, roaring, growling, whistling, thundering, humming, droning, grinding, snapping, rustling and crackling noises we discover unexpected beauty...”
Source: http://www.timo-kahlen.de/projectsbiogr.htm

WORKS and PROJECTS

Works that Kahlen has created have been categorised under the following headings:

Recent experimental photography work: Isolation, 2020

from the series "Rasenstücke" (Turf), 2002 - 2020 by Timo Kahlen

Isolation, 2020


Isolated fragments of turf, temporarily removed from their contexts.
How can the pandemic experience of our times, the experience of 'social distancing', the lack of physical personal contact, be visualized ?
Series of works created in March 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic and times of 'social distancing

Sound Installation: Timo Kahlen. Rohschnitt (Rough Cut), 2016

Interactive net art

Timo Kahlen. Rohschnitt (Rough Cut), 2016 Interactive net art

Interactive projection with multiple layers of embedded sound. Touch and investigate objects
with the cursor, click at or pause to generate your individual, interactive composition of raw sound.
Take your time ! Initially a virtual, hybrid, rough cut model tailored for the "Hoerschwelle" sound art exhibition in the project space at Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin 2016.
The sounds embedded in the room represent sounds recorded when constructing the model from scratch, from cardboard and paper, and when reworking the model on the computer: raw, rough sounds of drawing,
cutting, creasing, folding, ripping, copying, pasting and reediting; acoustic fragments of 'work in progress'.

Experience live at:

Publications

Kahlen not only produces and creates art works and installations but also lectures and writes and has amassed a really exciting collection of catalogues on his work and processes, only a fraction of these are listed here:
Timo Kahlen: Noise & Beauty. 25 Years of Media Art (2010),
Sound Art : Sound as a Medium of Art, ZKM Karlsruhe (2012),
Timo Kahlen: Earcatcher. Selected Works 1990 - 2014, Berlin (2014),
Timo Kahlen: Phosphor. Phosphorus Photography and Film, Berlin (2016),
Timo Kahlen: Sculpting Light. Experiments in Photography 1986 - 2018 (2018),
Land_Scope. Muenchner Stadtmuseum and Snoeck Verlag, Köln (2018),
Flügelschlag: Insekten in der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Distanz Verlag (2019),
Timo Kahlen: aus der Luft gegriffen / in trockenen Tüchern (2020),
Sound Art : Sound as a Medium of Art. Peter Weibel, ZKM Karlsruhe
and MIT Press, Cambridge / USA (2020)

More Information

Tim Kahlen Website
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Contact - Augmented Acoustics

Felix Faire (UK), a Parametric System Designer had designed some very interesting interactive installations. One of these, Contact is an interface with which to manipulate and visualize sounds. Beautiful results. View Contact: Augmented Acoustics CONTACT: Augmented Acoustics from Felix Faire on Vimeo . "CONTACT is a tangible audio interface to manipulate and visualize sounds generated from interaction with a simple wooden surface. Any physical contact with the table generates acoustic vibrations which are manipulated and visualized LIVE as they occur using several communicating pieces of software. All code will be opensource and available on github. Bartlett School of Architecture Msc AAC Tutor: Ruairi Glynn" More information: http://www.coroflot.com/felixfaire/profile Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/felixfaire
Read more

D.D. Jameson - Colour Music (1844)

D.D. Jameson devised a systematic approach to create a colour music score for a specially adapted piano. His scores took the information from a piano music score and applied it to a sound-music colour scheme and translated it into a colour score. The colour score communicated the musical information - such as notes, rhythm, durations. His score was to link to a special adaptation of a piano music instrument that would have the keys prepared with the relevant colours. The musician could then play the piano by following the colour music score.  Not only were the piano keys to be coloured according to his colour to tone analogy system but the score was to also communicate other aspects of the musicianship such as: the intervals of the music, the notes and their octaves, by mapping the height of the colour to the octave of the note and the width of the colour to the duration of the note. "A pianoforte having been prepared in the manner described, any air may be slo...
Read more

International Call for Works - VISUAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

I am very happy to announce the call for works for visual music films for a visual music festival devoted to contemporary practice to be held at the University of Kentucky, US. Why I am very proud is one of my former students is involved in organising this, well done Kristine  SCFA Visual Music Festival 2025 @ The University of Kentucky Call for visual music films, Deadline is 15th December 2024 General Rules: • The films must be made entirely with abstract imagery, avoiding representation. That is: no cars, no people, no landscapes, no texts, etc. • You can use any technique you’d like: drawing, video composition, cgi, scratch, op-art, stop-motion, camera-less… • The soundtrack cannot feature any words, in any language. If you’re using a song, this must be instrumental or feature non-narrative voices, (no lyrics). • Maximum running time is 8 minutes. • Open and/or closing credits are welcome. • Films must have been produced after 2017. • We kindly request authors to enter their fi...
Read more