Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, is a German artist who uses electronic sound and visual art as a form of hybrid tool to create his own microscopic view of creative processes. Closely aligned with geometry, mathematics and science, his work has the quality of a fractal object, focusing on the shape and materiality of our world. Since 1996, with the establishment of his collective label, Raster-Noton, he has been producing his own recordings and collaborations. Nicolai has won two Golden Nicas at Ars Electronica (both in 2000 in the music category for 20' to 2000 and in 2001 in the interactive category for polar). He has shown his work throughout the globe, most recently at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin with syn chron (2005). Following his Insen CD release with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, he has been touring Europe with their live collaboration.

Robin Rimbaud caught up with Carsten Nicolai the day of his London Barbican performance of Insen.

Additional Info
Carsten Nicolai website
Kunsthaus Graz audio visiual performance (09/2003)
P.S.1 Bed of Sound exhibition (07/2000)
Sonar presentation (1999)
silo #5 stream (21 minutes)
Artnet.de article (03/2005)
Parallel Lines Cross at Infinity review (05/2002)
Wire review (08/2001)
pinmag interview (05/2005)
Media Art Net interview (1998)
Rob Young on Raster-Noton
polar images and video stream
vrioon CD review
KF syn chron photo essay
KF preview of Insen performance
KF review of Insen CD

This interview was conducted in person at the Barbican on 10/10/05.

Robin Rimbaud: What I'm interested in are issues that affect everyone, not necessarily born from the artistic process, and how they can inform what one is producing. I'm more concerned about a scenario where if you could make this work without being having to be physically present, would this be preferable?

Carsten Nicolai: We (Sakamoto and I) had a really funny joke because when you have computers and you have to control a lot of things you need some stuff that runs efficiently, because at the moment my set up is three computers, and of course you only have one head and two hands... [laughs]... and Ryuichi has a Midi piano that can record everything he's doing. So we could play the song without physically playing, which is a kind of robot's idea! But naturally it needs to be played.

RR: That's interesting because many of our peer group create music for particular situations, without the idea of taking this out live into a performance situation. Since you've made CDs with Sakamoto, at which point do you choose to transform this into a live show?

CN: That's a completely different thing, and this is the tricky issue. When you create a CD you think completely differently. You work on a track, and you try out things, you work quietly. In a live situation it's completely different.

RR: It's a curious thing isn't it? You just don't know how this will develop.

CN: Well I always say I'm not a real musician or performer but what makes it easier is that I know this, so I don't have the pressure. What becomes more obvious is that I'm a computer guy! The real instrument is the piano so I build a contrast around this.

RR: That's interesting as now I have this group (Githead) which offers a way around the issue of ego, where I'm no longer the focus on the stage; I can step back from the frontline.

CN: It's not quite like that with us. I mean it's still two people but it's not like you can disappear. Things happen or don't happen. We do have some situations where one of us takes over. Time wise a show could be very fast or very long.

RR: Another issue that intrigues me is trying to find this balance with your work and your life. Often with visual work it's possible to send this out without having to be physically present, so I've shown work in New Zealand or Australia without actually needing to be there.

CN: It's different with my work though as I need to control the environment as for the moment I work with light and sound. So I have this double life. With the Frankfurt and Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin shows recently it was two and a half years of work, and then it's a bit sad as it's just there. You don't have a great moment; the opening can be quite boring. But with music you have immediate feedback.

RR: That's true. I recently created a permanent work for a morgue in Paris. It's a work designed to help the living bid farewell to the dead but there's no obvious "audience" if one can even speak of such a thing. There's no review, no feedback.

CN: Yes, that's funny for syn chron in Berlin where I worked on it for so long and then it opens to the public, and I am exhausted and I disappear and it is at exactly at that moment people come to see and experience the work. Then someone tells me that 11,000 people came to see the piece and I'm sitting quietly in my studio thinking about other things, but I'm disconnected which is nice as the work can live without me.

RR: Does this make you nervous though? With performance you can control all the parameters but with time-based work it's a little like leaving a child outside the supermarket whilst you are shopping inside. You are constantly nervous.

CN: Absolutely, it's still the same problem for me! I have the feeling that perhaps it's been unplugged! I have to think totally differently with presentation in a museum show. The background and the content is identical but the form is very different.

RR: So is performance still crucial to your work?

CN: No, no. I think the key is the background, the ideas, and sometimes they work much better as performance or as a long-term installation. There was a time when concept art was significant, but with everything written down it remained embedded in language but with music you have a universal language. And the same when you work with object or light -- it doesn't exclude people who don't understand your language.

RR: That's interesting as I've recently been working in territories where I don't understand any of the local language, as in Vietnam and China, but I've enjoyed the fact that it's beyond a verbal language.

CN: Absolutely. I've always wondered if I was invited to a little African village, with no electricity, would there be something that I could present? In moments like these you realise how much you are attached to certain technical and cultural backgrounds and when you work with a universal language as you do with music, you have to be aware that you are not losing this.

RR: There's a curious element in electronic art as it comes both with and without a history.

CN: It's one thing I'm fighting with at the moment. Recently for a show I had one particular critic who said this isn't art anymore, which I found very interesting as you always listen to the ones who are not saying it's great! [laughs] What I realised is that my work has little reference to art history, but is closer to science or mathematics or geometrics and this is where people get scared in Europe. Every year a new army of art historians is released lacking these reference points!

RR: Exactly. It's something that concerns me. I've realised that we are in an odd situation with the work we produce where the art world lacks a historical context and clear understanding of this electronic media work and the music world is intimidated by the ideas and aesthetic. Many curators I've spoken to think of Martin Creed as a strong sound artist, whereas…

CN: Yes, it's a simple thing. Many curators think sound is music. I always say in the first place that I use sound as a physical material. We don't have a clue how it's affecting the body.

RR: Perhaps we are still trying to learn about sound, as much of the acoustic around us is produced by machines -- air conditioning units, fridges -- and it's difficult to have a relationship with these things.

CN: There's a really funny story. I had a request from Wim Wenders. He wanted to use my music for the first minute of a new movie and he wanted to do justice to the scene. So I asked what the project was about. It turned out that they thought they could have this for free because everyone gives everything for free. I asked him what the project was about and if I liked it then I’d give it to him for free. Then at least my costs would be covered just to be fair. It turned out that they said what I do is not music, "We could do the same thing in a minute". It's funny, you meet people in these situations and then they try to tell you what you do is just noise!

RR: It's rather like when I was sampled by Bjork on her song "Possibly Maybe" some years ago. The record sold 4 million copies but her record company had failed to clear the use of my work and it reached a curious point where a musicologist was about to be employed to decide whether or not my work was in fact "music" or not! It's at that point that I simply gave the sample away.

CN: Yes, and I think it exactly describes our generation and the way we listen very differently. Maybe you had the same feeling -- I had this inspiring moment when I was listening as a kid to radio in East Germany. This was the source for all music. I was taping these transmissions and sometimes there would be these Russian military codes on the radio, interference and noise. I liked the open situations when the music came out of the hum.

RR: Well, that reminds me of when I was 16 years old and got a copy of Brian Eno's LP On Land. I sat in my bedroom and listened to this recording and was seduced by this cool elegant music but was especially struck by these tiny voices embedded just beneath the surface of the record. I listened back to the record the next day but there were no voices. I hadn't imagined them, it wasn't a serious psychological problem, but in fact what I was hearing were intercepted transmissions from my next door neighbour on her Citizen Band radio talking to her friends, that were interfering with my hi-fi system.

What happens today I wonder when people actually listen? Walkmans were just invented after we began listening to music but today people listen to music on buses, trains, planes, etc. What influence has mobile listening had on you and your audience?

CN: I listen to music more in a mobile situation because there isn't much time to just sit down and listen anymore. I now have this obsession for headphones, which is probably born from this way of listening! I have a set for every situation!

RR: Exactly! It's interesting the way in which these listening devices are sold to us too. For digital cameras we are sold a machine that exploits quality -- it's sold on the strength of how many mega pixels each camera offers, whereas with MP3 players it's never on the actual quality of the music but the quantity.

CN: I think this shows a problem for our time -- compression has taken over the quality in sound. Transmitting and distribution of the sound file is more important than the quality and I wonder if next year the industry will pick up on this and tell us "listen, last year you bought compressed audio, now you need to buy the real thing". We've already re-bought our LPs as CDs, then as digital versions. Now quality will come back as a marketing strategy.

RR: That's true. All the music industry has ever done is sell you a copy. An LP was a copy of the recording sessions. CDs were copies of these items, but again just reproductions. Now digital sales are copies of copies of copies.

CN: But that's what we are doing with Raster-Noton's [Carsten Nicolai's record company]. We are about creating objects. The music is essential but we wish to communicate with the whole package, especially at a time when this matters most.

A few years ago I bought this Joy Division Still album in a limited edition and I love this record so much as a physical object. I look at it often, but listen to it less. I realise how much this object is part of me, as much as the music. This thing has survived much more than many others. I feel the same with the concerts we perform. You can sense with the audience, as this isn't pop music in the traditional way, that it's more than simply the musical aspect. How to transfer the ideas behind this package?

Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) is an artist whose restless explorations of an experimental terrain have won him international admiration from, among others, Bjork and Stockhausen. As well as producing compositions and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations. He has performed and created works in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA (USA), Hayward Gallery (London), Pompidou Centre (Paris), Corcoran Gallery (DC, USA), Tate Modern (London) and the Modern Museum Stockholm (Sweden). He doesn't drink alcohol, tea, coffee, smoke or watch TV but he does have a modest addiction to white bread and milk.