Sound Installation, glass body, hearing test device, speakers, amplifiers, tuning forks, cymbals
Group show, Infinité ∞² Für Eliane Radigue, Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin, 2020

Curator: Nathanaël R. Bartholomäus
Artists: Katharina Bévand, Cécile Dupaquier, Anne Gathmann, Harriet Groß, Robert Lippok, Svetlana Maraš, Carsten Nicolai.

The sound installation 1234567812345678123456789101112 is a playful approach to the work of Éliane Radigues.  In two separate rooms of the gallery, Lippok provides a musical experimental set-up that allows visitors to play musical positions such as those adopted by Radigues. The experimental set-up includes a device for studying human hearing and psychoacoustic phenomena, based on a simple set of sound wave generators, filters, mixers and computer-controlled gate signals. This device can be used to produce beats and tiny, minimalist changes to overlapping sound surfaces, as Éliane Radigues does with the ARP 2500 modular system and tape machines. Lippok decided not to use purely electronic sound generators, but to supplement the installation with cymbals mounted on the wall, branches picked up by contact microphones, a brass bowl and two tuning forks, i.e. sound sources of the kind used in the early phase of the emergence of electronic music in the late 1940s.  1234567812345678123456789101112 refers to Radigue’s early creative period, between 1968 and 1971, which focused on the inner life of sounds and their development through listening. The title of the work is taken from a graphic chart on one of the gallery walls, which suggested the number of repetitions of the sound events to be played. In this work, Lippok removes the hierarchy between listener and performer, as the installation invites visitors to change roles. 

Infinité ∞² Für Eliane Radigue

Born in Paris in 1932, Éliane Radigue is one of the most important pioneers of contemporary music. Originally trained on the piano and harp, she discovered the suitability of electronic storage and sound systems, especially the ARP synthesiser, for artistic work at the end of the 1960s. Since then, she has created a series of timelessly floating, filigree sound works that have inspired an entire generation of the artistic avant-garde.
Still too little known is the fact that the level of contemporary electronic music has been largely determined by women from the very beginning, starting with Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Else Marie Pade up to today’s talents such as Clarice Jensen, Elisabeth Schimana, Hildur Guðnadóttir. Despite this exclusivity, Éliane Radigue occupies a special position as a composer. Since the early 1970s, she has created electro-acoustic works of remarkable dimensions, which in their complexity opened up new standards in the creation of subtle, sensitive soundscapes, initially in endless loops and “feedback works”. She is still active as a composer today, although she has returned to the repertoire of classical instruments in recent years without deviating from her consistently minimal-structured compositions. As Emmanuel Holterbach says, these pieces are based on “infinitely delicate and enchanting sounds, so that her current work does not represent a break with the aesthetics and beauty of her electronic work.” –
The exhibition honours Éliane Radigue with installations that are in direct RESONANCE with her work, in the symbiosis of space, sound, time and movement, with works that are for the most part created directly in the gallery.