Arranged like a symphony orchestra, approximately 200 antique vacuums, mixers and washers are transformed into musical instruments. They form an ensemble that the conductor, harpsichordist and composer Michael Petermann, alias weiserrausch.de, has now completed after eight years of preparation: The Stupid Orchestra.
watch the making of stupid orchestra: http://www.vimeo.com/28190836
more informationen: www.weisserrausch.de
Supid Orchestra is going…
Arranged like a symphony orchestra, approximately 200 antique vacuums, mixers and washers are transformed into musical instruments. They form an ensemble that the conductor, harpsichordist and composer Michael Petermann, alias weiserrausch.de, has now completed after eight years of preparation: The Stupid Orchestra.
This is the making-of documentary. The real thing will be showing again in 2012. More tour info here as we proceed.
www.weisserrausch.de
»You are a Renaissance Man!« This attribute has been bestowed on Michael Petermann repeatedly since his work
with the Stupid Orchestra. All this was possible because several paths had crossed in the artist‘s life: classical music
studies, technical skills and a playful talent for invention with a distinct inclination towards getting to the bottom of
what things are.
Michael Petermann grew up at a time when people still wrote
»You are a Renaissance Man!« This attribute has been bestowed on Michael Petermann repeatedly since his work
with the Stupid Orchestra. All this was possible because several paths had crossed in the artist‘s life: classical music
studies, technical skills and a playful talent for invention with a distinct inclination towards getting to the bottom of
what things are.
Michael Petermann grew up at a time when people still wrote the names of Beuys, Warhol, and Lichtenstein with an
exclamation point. While young he learned to play the organ and synthesizer and at the same time took an interest
in their technical attributes. After studying conducting and church music in Hamburg and his first compositions at
the Kampnagel contemporary arts venue, Michael Petermann formed the Formation Weisser Rausch artists‘ network
in 2000. In his studio in the Hamburg Medienbunker venue he is developing a series of works entitled The Well-Generated
Clavier using historic and modern instruments. His compositions Bachmaschine and Ave Bach were premiered in Berlin
Cathedral. The second of these is available on CD.
Inspired by pop art and functional industrial design, he began a collection of household appliances from the period of the
economic miracle. The collection now contains some 250 items, of which the more talented have found their way into the
Stupid Orchestra. Creating the orchestra involved restoring the appliances technically and visually, arranging them on a
podium, creating a MIDI-controlled interface to convert music data in to control pulses, and composing the noise music.
Currently Michael Petermann is again engaged with the many forms in which keyboard music appears, from the clavichord
via the Hammond organ to software sampling. The concert series he has moderated, Bunkerrauschen, has made him
an important initiator in the classical and contemporary music scene.
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