Tempest (2001)

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tempest is an experiment on de-materialisation by means of repeatedly translating pictures into sounds and back. All audible events are generated from visual objects, e.g. computer graphics or live video. All visible events are produced from sound.

We use different techniques of translation of the data, e.g.:

• the direct playback of bitmaps through the soundcard (within the digital context it is insignificant, whether the data represent sounds or pictures. Significant are only the ways of input and output, thus of interpretation), as well as


• the technology of "listening by radio" to electromagnetic fields of data streams radiating around computers, cables and monitors. For example, a radio receiver, tuned to medium wave, is put nearby a computer monitor which displays certain patterns. These visual patterns actually can be heard as rhythmic and melodic structures.

Electronic data streams produce electromagnetic fields, which can be intercepted by any person equipped with suitable technology. This technique, called "tempest", is used to eavesdrop data from remote electronic devices. Our intention is not to decipher codes to specify certain meanings but to keep the codes in their ambiguity. Not solutions or interpretations are presented to the listener, but s/he is free to reconstruct their own images. The result is not the sound event, but the synaestethical artefacts in the consciousness of the listener. "Multimedia" in this context is not about a deliberate connection between sound and image (like the connection of picture and soundtrack in a film), but sound itself becomes a medium for pictorial events. Radio becomes a producer of images, redefining itself as a visual/acoustic medium.

The project and the band tempest rose from a co-operation between Norbert Math and Ludwig Zeininger for the project "Replay Update" by ORF Kunstradio, which related to the beginnings of Austrian media art in the 70s. We focused on the then developed methods of "de-materialisation" as means of producing pieces of art which do not exist materially and therefore cannot be exploited by the art market (ernst caramelle).

Today tempest is a live band which operates in a improvisational context. The starting point stays the same: machines are put into a situation which forces them to reveal otherwise hidden data. These data are fed back into the system in real time.