Volksliedmaschine is conceived as a self-generating radio play. The starting point and material is the German folk-song. The hardware basis is a computer which contains an audio archive. This archive is based essentially on voices: verses, sentences, terms. A programmed software accesses the individual segments of the archive: excludes, extends, combines, layers, changes and edits the sound of the "vocal apparatus" and renders it audible.

The result is a non-determinable, repeatedly newly constituted voice, speech and sound texture, a self-generating "text", whose panorama gradually changes, shifts and updates itself in slightly differentiated nuances in slow to fast movements.
As soon as the apparatus is set in motion, it reproduces a new selection from the folk-song archive in constantly and autonomously changing variations. Volksliedmaschine is part of the heimat theme of the artist group TEXTxtnd.

Volksliedmaschine can be heard throughout intermedium 2 as an accessible installation and as a permanently active sound event. Extracts are being played in the daytime programme of hr2 and in all intermedium radio programmes from 22.3. to 28.3.2002. It is planned to conduct discussion forums with the authors present on the spot on 23.3. and 24.3., at 18:00 in each case.
On the Internet, Volksliedmaschine can be visited for several weeks: www.hr2.de

Oliver Augst
performer, composer, stage designer, vocalist, studied visual communication and popular music/performance in Offenbach and Hamburg; various grants, numerous radio/live performances including spoken, sound and musical materials and compositions for stage performances; since 1999 co-curator of pol festival neue musik at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm; lives in Frankfurt/M.

Christoph Korn
musician and composer, studied political science, sociology and philosophy; concerts (guitar/electronics), numerous compositions, audio art work, spoken pieces, film and stage music, texts, co-curator of pol, lecturer for aesthetics and improvisation at the University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt; lives in Frankfurt/M.

hr/intermedium 2 2002