Klaus Osterwald Short report of my artistic work during the residency at th e Universidad El Bosque

Transcription

1 Klaus Osterwald Short report of my artistic work during the residency at the Universidad El Bosque and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in November I am a freelance visual artist from Germany. I studied painting and Graphic Design at the Folkwangschule für Gestaltung in Essen, Germany. Since 1986 I also make sculptures from various materials like steel, glas, acrylic glas, and ceramics. After having been a jazz musician in the 70th I started to collect sounds of various origins without knowing what I wanted to use them for. But little by little I began to combine the sounds with my visual work developing sound installations. I am interested in the psychoacoustic field of sound research: the process of provoking visual equivalents of sounds in the mind of listeners. The way of producing images and visual impressions by hearing sounds not only in synesthetic ways but in scanning personal experience is the aim of my research. Technically underwater sounds can map the space and objects via echo sounders. Communication between the inhabitants of a lake can be surprisingly eavesdropped. One of the projects I invented is entitled "Donatus Subaqua". As Art in Progress this project devellops since I did it in countries like Great Britain, the Netherlands, South Korea and now in Colombia. In the project I develop and construct microphones for underwater sound registration (hydrophones).

2 With them I record the sounds in freshwater lakes and sometimes detect a tremendous variety of sounds of bubbling gas from the bottom of a lake, from plants and insects and also communicating fish. These sounds I combine with some self-made loudspeakers from ceramic or other materials. Sound Installation Donatus Subaqua at Tullie House, Carlisle, UK, 2012

3 During a residency in Bogotá I went to Guatavita for three days and realized 9 hours of underwater field recordings of sounds in the Laguna de Guatavita. For that I got a permission from the Corporación Autónoma Regional de Cundinamarca - CAR. Since my sound recordings are more conceptional than aesthetic works it does not really matter what kind of sounds I might find down there because this is an open art work and I will accept any sound.

4 In an exhibition the sounds are emitted by old, used loudspeakers I bought on a fleemarket in Bogota.

5 They might remind me on the way people keep their history in mind like an old reminescence of their identity. I cannot explain it better it is just a cloud of various associations. Like a documentation of an old expedition of those for instance that Alexander von Humboldt made I also show my hydrophones on long fishing rods in the exhibition.

6 For me the unexpected and unpredictible results of a concept is a way of finding new solutions in my personal artistic development. I like to react on the conditions of the place of the residency. Thus the new idea to take the old used speakers for my installation gives me a new impulse for comming works. The technical equipment I brought from Germany exept the hydrophones are 3 stereo amplifiers with CD decks, 3 CDs with 6 channels, cables etc.. On the computer I work with the sound program "Audacity". The results of my artistic work during the residency at the Universidad El Bosque and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Bogotá are on display in an exhibition at the museum from 20. November January 2016.

7 I thank the Universidad El Bosque and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Bogotá for the generous residency. My special thanks go to Maria Angélica Madero, Ximena de Valdenebro and Claudia Robles Angel. I also have to thank the Corporación Autónoma Regional de Cundinamarca - CAR for their readyness to give me the oportunity to make underwater records in the Laguna de Guatavita on 15. to 17. October Klaus Osterwald November 2015