How Code Made its Way into My Music


'Antye Greie Antye Greie

As a singer and producer, I rely primarily on content, and that can get to be a real encumbrance. After many years of creating music, I feel that I’m being confronted over and over again with the fact that listeners—and especially when it comes to Germans dealing with the German language—have problems getting to the music. Content always comes first—the message, the brain. In cutting the tracks for my album head slash bauch, I wanted to use my voice more like an instrument. I wanted to free myself from this coercive pressure to have to say something understandable and emotional. On my way to becoming an independent producer, I geeked my way through the process of self-education in matters of hardware, software, user’s manuals and all the other stuff that goes with it. And that’s how the computer/laptop came to exert an extremely positive—except for the chronic back pain—influence on my working and lifestyle options, my communication and production possibilities, and makes possible more and more flexibility, speed and personal control. More and more mixtures of “think in code” lead to phenomena like “when I go to bed, I’m shifting into sleep mode, etc.” and user’s manuals suddenly become good friends (joke).

So, that’s how I discovered the poetry and beauty of this technically practical programming language. Since then, I’ve been experimenting with this tension between technical coolness and rhythm and melody in connection with reality/feeling/vision.

For the opening of the Klangpark at Ars Electronica 2003, I’ll present a 30-minute live performance featuring some of this work and integrate into it a composition especially for the festival based on the dictionary entry for “CODE.”