I am interested in art in which the artist is not at the centre, but the other person.

Electronic Sound Portraits is an ongoing project in which I explore a form of sound production that places the other person at the centre of the artistic process. The other person might not necessarily be recognizable in the artistic result, but is a basic condition for my own artistic inspiration.

This approach may have grown out of my years of ethnomusicological research and its underlying principles — in particular, the attempt to understand how another person perceives and experiences the world. Electronic Sound Portraits is an attempt to develop a personal artistic method that brings these two areas of my practice into dialogue. It does not claim to be a method capable of objectively portraying the other person, but rather a personal method for applying the same attitude towards others when engaging with my own music or with ethnology.

For commission inquiries: ch.strothmann[at]googlemail[dot]com
Please allow some time for a response.

 

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Example Sound Portraits

In the following examples, the sound is generated from my own voice and processed through a complex Max/MSP granular synthesis system. The system implements the possibility of dividing the octave into any equal-tempered scale — in some cases into as many as 230 divisions — creating microtonal structures beyond the threshold of conscious auditory differentiation.

Other tuning systems are used depending on the sonic source material and the individual composition.

 

Sound Portrait 1: