TORSO#1

TORSO explores variations on accelerating and decelerating sound sources. The first version of TORSO (#1) received the golden Nica for digital music and soundart at the Ars-Electronica Festival in 2019 – an interview with Peter Kutin can be found HERE

A quadrophonic setup of 100V-speakers rotates on a biaxial structure with a diameter of 2.5 meters. The emitted sonic signals travel within the space in an unfamiliar, yet strange and multidimensional manner.  Rotation speed, acceleration, deceleration and amount of feedback are the key parameters for this Audio-Video-Light instrument. Kutin’s virtuos orchestration leads to bizarre movements of sonic fractals, feedback-patterns, and noise bursts that provoke otoacoustic emissions and other auditory illusions, reaching lucid and hallucinatory heights. Kutin therefore composes with feedback-patterns as well as abstractions of the human voice – working with the soprano singer Johanna Baader – a reference to the human-made environment behind the technical facade. This sculpture loosely refers to a Klapotec – a type of bird-scaring windmill found in central Europe – from which Kutin drew inspiration. (Tristan Bath)