shut up and listen! 2024
Permanent presentations @echoraum, October 10–12, 2024
Kaspar König: EARphones: an acoustic journey with yourself
Sound Installation
Opening: October 10, 2024, 7:00 p.m.
EARphones: an acoustic journey with yourself
The EARphones are a new kind of instrument that is played by your body movements, especially the movement of your head. They invite you to listen attentively to small movements and subtle sounds. Although they can become loud when moved, they are muffled by gravity and surface resistance. Slow movements can create mysterious soundscapes that make mechanical machines or granular synthesis audible – thanks to the ingenuity of EARphones. No WLAN, no battery, no advertising. Simply connect with yourself!
[Kaspar König]
Kaspar König
Kaspar König is a designer and sound and performance artist living and working in Zurich since mid-2012. As a former deputy professor of sound art and composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Mainz (Germany), researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), he combines the audible in the environment with art, sustainability and joie de vivre. Kaspar König’s work combines a wide variety of styles and forms of expression, through which he also acquires skills outside the arts. With the founding of Environmental Artistic Research (EAR), he integrates these skills into one Community and Platform. The pandemic has led to an intensive digitalization of his work, for example in the workshop “Deep Digital Listening”, which transfers the principle of “Deep Listening” by Pauline Oliveros into a digital format, premiered by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble during the symposium “Sonic Ecologies”.
As a transdisciplinary artist, I am interested in the narratives that shape and threaten our environment. The motivations of humans to endanger their own planet and thus their livelihoods always fascinate and engage me. I ask myself what countermeasures I can take as an individual or in a group. How can I use artistic measures to influence planetary health and provoke changes in behavior?
[Kaspar König]