Hinaus:: In den, Wald. (DVD Surround Mix)

The electro-acoustic composition and multi-channel sound installation Hinaus:: In den, Wald. is based on the work of Swiss art brut artist and schizophrenic mental patient Adolf Wölfli. In Hinaus:: In den, Wald. (which translates into: ‘Out:: Into the, forest.’, deliberately written with ‘Wölfliesque’ punctuation) I transfer Wölfli's written transformations, abstractions and creations into my own sound language. Points of reference are Adolf Wölfli's idiosyncratic punctuation and orthography, the rhythmic-repetitive character of his listings and testaments and Wölfli's biography and megalomania in general. I tried to express his permanent creative urge through an additional recording, which is based on my own walking, running and breathing "out there in the woods".

Different text passages are interwoven on several layers - from totally untreated phrases to modified elements. Language always oscillates between functional clearness and sonic abstraction, but also between conscious and unconscious perception. As a listener you enter Adolf Wölflis mind, hearing voices whispering inside your (his?) head, running through the woods, breathing. All texts were spoken by myself or by Stella Kao, a Taiwanese girl who didn’t understand German at all. Stella’s voice can be seen as a cross reference to a) the voice of young Wölfli himself or b) the voice of one of his victims.

As a sound installation ‘Hinaus:: In den, Wald.’ was presented in a completely dark environment, the resulting perceptual situation (to be listening to close-up voices in a quite intimate - even claustrophobic - setting without any visual cues) made some visitors feel quite uncomfortable and might be regarded as a spatialization of Wölfli's subconscious. For Aspect Magazine I created a 5.1 surround mix in an attempt to re-establish the spatiality of the original installation version.

A full-length CD-version of this piece was released by the Austrian label Klanggalerie in early 2004.