Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf

Der dritte Körper (The Third Body)

In the turret of the St. Michael Church in Cologne, two small loudspeakers hang by thin cables from the 12-meter bell tower.

Two artists, Li Song and Jia Liu of the algorithmic network music ensemble [ _  _  _ ], are absent; they’re programming their algorithms in real time from their respective cities, London and Karlsruhe. The sounds they play are transmitted through the two speakers hanging in the turret. 

The audience is only able to experience the performance by listening – through the third artist, Shuoxin Tan, who wears a binaural microphone, makes sound recordings, and plays with the speakers, moving through the room depending on their changing position. During this site-specific performance, the speakers become not only senders of the remotely programmed sounds, but also receivers of the entire room – the instability of the sound installation transforms the thin cables into very sensitive antennae, transmitting the signals throughout the church. This instability is uncontrollable and can be heard in the sonic outcome of the entire performance. 

Every person and element involved in this small experimental happening constitutes “The Third Body”: the two artists at a distance and the third one on site, the sound installation with the noises in the room, the attentive ears of the listeners and the spaces in which they find themselves. For the 20 minutes of time of which the work consists, the small turret room is a sonic microcosm.

“The Third Body” by Shuoxin Tan was created during the artist’s time in the Klang und Realität master’s program at the Institute for Music and Media at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf, where she majored in Epistemic Media. The work was supervised by Prof. Julian Rohrhuber.

*Listening with headphones is recommended.

Project concept: [ _  _  _ ]  | Shuoxin Tan (Cologne) , Jia Liu (Karlsruhe), Song Li (London)|

Project organization, sound installation: Shuoxin Tan
System programming, live coding in SuperCollider: Song Li, Jia Liu
Video recordings: Shuoxin Tan, Jia Liu
Website: Song Li
Poster: Shujia Chen
Text (German): Shuoxin Tan
Text editing: Yannik Stecken

Special thanks to the project sponsors: the Initiative Freie Music e.V. and the Kulturamt (Culture Department) of the City of Cologne.