On artistic autonomy, musical micro-organisms and the charm of the interfaces.
"The machine is an independent life-form. Liberate the machines!" is the demand of the English pop theoretician Kodwo Eshun. After the oft-cited "death of the author", the end of "literary thought", the loss of the old representational model and the failure of all promises of authenticity, the artistic subject no longer has a choice: If he wishes to use the New Technologies creatively, he has to try and "disappear in the machine", to adapt to its logic. In this situation is it only sound design that still counts, the molecular structure of its materiality? What would be the consequences for a subject of this subject's disappearing in a stream of self-generating structures? Can a coming "man-machine" interface still have a history? How are sound viruses bred and when do they begin to have a life of their own?

This and more extensive questions are to be dealt with in a dialogue which participants can control and configure with prefabricated acoustic material. The ideal result could be a kind of theory performance which comments on and contradicts the discursive part of the conversation by means of artistic actions.

Dietmar Dath
journalist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Jan Werner
musician, Mouse On Mars

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