Gummibaum (for Thomas Bayrle)

Gummibaum (for Thomas Bayrle) has its roots in the long-standing collaboration between Thomas Bayrle and Bernhard Schreiner. Known among other things for his sound experiments, Schreiner worked intensively on Bayrle’s kinetic motor sculptures, in which they cut open the cylinders of car, motorcycle, and even airplane engines to make the movements of the cylinders visible and mix their sounds with recordings of people praying the rosary, for example. Gummibaum (rubber tree) also refers to a black-and-white film (16mm, 1993/94) by Bayrle, which shows crowds of people walking from a bird’s-eye view, scattered across the leaves of the plant.

Bernhard Schreiner’s performance is based on signals generated by activities in the rubber tree itself. These minimal fluctuations in the measured resistance in the induced electric field (galvanic response) are processed and edited live in a modular synthesizer. The moisture content in the plant, light, environmental influences, chance, the type of circuitry in the synthesizer system, and his live interventions in this system are equally relevant to the output of the sound performance.