Heavy Metal. zgodlocator as a techno-visionary phenomenology of material

Granular Hardware
A desert landscape consisting of granulated computer hardware that has been decoupled from an industrial recycling process. Electronic components, such as circuit boards, connectors, integrated circuits or semi-conductors, contain raw material that is valuable to industry, not only in conducting the flow of electricity as a carrier of information, but also in being returned to the flow of capital.

zgodlocator stages granulated hardware as a desert and the metallurgic circulation of electronic information media in the industrial reproduction machine. Material and information, the real and the symbolic are, in fact, inseparable here, forming instead a deep, haptic surface as a material-force relation.

Sound/Vision Surfaces
The dynamic modulation of hardware is based on a procedure from sound synthesis: granular composition. This is exactly what zgodlocator does with electronic hardware itself. Computer media are “sampled”, once they have been granulated into the smallest particles. The resynthesis of these granular hardware elements takes place through electromagnetic induction in a landscape surface. Using a controller, the observer and listener gives midi signals for an active-passive sound environment. The controller signals are translated into electromagnetic patterns and generate deep surfaces in the techno-granulate.

Hardware Live Modeling
In zgodlocator, software and hardware are conceived the other way around. It is not the hardware that generates specific effects in sound, but rather the sound as code translated into electromagnetic fields induces and configures the hardware.

In the electromagnetic interaction with electronics, it becomes evident that particularly those techno-granulates derived from the computer as an image medium attain a special depth. The deflection coils from cathode ray tubes are especially sensitive to electromagnetic induction and generate a haptic and deep surface landscape.

zgodlocator thus implies an image theory statement. Electronic images are, in fact, effects of a surface from the start. zgodlocator is not only aware of the surface character of electronic images, but even goes beyond this in terms of image theory, as the image is activated via signals as a haptic and deep surface. The signs of electronic media, which are formed on the basis of circuits, can be modulated here as a surface in electromagnetic codes. It is not the images themselves, but rather their technical preconditions as granulated circuit diagrams that are synthesized by sounds. The synopsis of electronics in zgodlocator is thus no longer audio-visual, but rather techno-visionary.
(Axel Roch)

This text by Axel Roch is published by kind permission
from Medienturm Graz (http://www.medienturm.at). First published in
CAMERA AUSTRIA Nr. 75, Graz 2001.

With special thanks to:
F. X. Randomitz (NI Reaktor-Input)
Timothy Ingen-Housz, Harald Milchrahm
Kunsthochschule für Medien, Köln
http://www.native-instruments.de
http://www.demel.com