Der Sensible Raum

Eine interaktive Medienkunst-Ausstellung von Leo Neumann und ⇾pretty bloody simple.

6.–26. August 2022, Di–Fr 13–18 Uhr

Breite Str. 11, 23552 Lübeck 

Das ⇾KulturFunke* Projekt ist als temporäre Pop-Up Galerie konzipiert, in der Erfahrungen mit allen Sinnen gemacht werden: den Augen, den Ohren, den Händen, der Nase und dem Mund. Es zeigt Medienkunstwerke, die einen spielerischen Zugang zu Kunst, Musik und Technik ermöglichen. Die Ausstellung ist ein Erlebnisraum, der zu grenzüberschreitenden Sinneserfahrungen einlädt.

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Kolophonium

Kolophonium is a piece featuring my brand new sliding bass. It is the first string module I have built hence its name “C.1” which stands for chordophone number 1. It is also the first time that I added amplification to an instrument and I made sure that the sound is emitted from the module itself according to my ⇾Tonlicht manifesto.
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Solenoite

Solenoite is a new tool for testing magnets. It is insanely useful when choosing the right solenoid for a project. One can quickly test magnets, measure the required fire time, check its power consumption and put it into loop mode to free up hands. In Portuguese sol-e-noite means sun-and-night which I find a very poetic way of paraphrasing the typical cycle of fire-and-rest states. I just love Portuguese. 

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Excerpt from Finland

This is the first minute of a new piece called Finland. Sometimes it is quite difficult to come up with a name for a piece and generally I think of words that I associate with the music. This time however I chose to do the opposite and pick a name that I feel has nothing to do with it and randomly came up with “Finland”. So I could equally have named it “Zucchini Soup”, “Adhesive Destruction” or “Ode to Gertrude Stein”. But I didn’t. After a while I noticed that for me the song has something to do with Finland as it bears a sense of fatalism which I would attribute also to some of Finnish culture. I guess my subconsciousness tricked me out, darn!

The Studio 2020

Visual Portfolio, Posts & Image Gallery for WordPress

Finally! I moved my studio to one of Lübeck’s most famous streets: ⇾Mengstr. 44. The historical building is a typical merchant’s house from the 16th century. It is an inspiring place and I am really happy to have found it. Lots of space for lots of new ideas…

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Jazz Champion

Recently, I turned an old dysfunctional chess computer into a jazz computer. In the video I play some moves against or rather with the machine. To score points, one has to enter jazz chords that match the last one played by the computer. It’s a fun way of discovering chord alterations and matching harmonies. 

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Prototype

I am working on a completely new interactive installation for the Science & Fiction Festival. It is based on an algorithmic composition and I created a small non-interactive prototype to evaluate emerging audiovisual patterns. This is going to be great …

Make Munich 2019

For the 2019th edition of the Maker Faire in Munich, I created a touch controller allowing for quick remixing of a tune. The simple interface was especially popular among children age 5-10. I noticed that adults mainly wanted to understand how it all works. Children instead wanted to experience and play. Or destroy.

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Lichtmaschinen

How does it look like when musical instruments do not make music but instead illuminate to other music playing in the room? Here are my light and sound machines shining along to Raymond Scott’s Lullaby.

Work Bench & Vice

The more I get involved in instrument building, the more I appreciate simple but well-made tools. In this vein I am very glad about the lastest addition to my studio, an old sturdy workbench and a Schlegel 125 EMF vice. Welcome guys!

“Transit”

This piece is called Transit as it reminds me of my journeys through Portugal, France, Spain and the many strange places I encountered there like seedy ports, noisy train stations and sad industrial zones. It features a newly build module – the I.4 – which is a kind of illuminated xylophone with lots of inharmonic overtones. The composition is basically only one large pattern which is built-up and torn-down. It is as monotonous as most journeys tend to be…

Beatmachine

The family of percussion modules has grown to five instruments allowing for more interesting drum patterns. The latest addition was a cymbal-like instrument made of a coat hanger.

The I.2

I created a new module: the I.2 is built upon rotary magnets that produce variations of click sounds. The discs only rotate if the current is applied for a sufficiently long time accompanied by a loud click-clack. Otherwise there is only a click without a clack.

A new hope…

The studio has found a new home in 09/2016. It is now located within the FabLab Munich. I am extremely happy to be able to use its facilities for creating novel sound and light machines.