Erwin Stache

“SAITEN-KÄSTEN-MATRIX“, 2007/2010
Installation with wooden boxes, guitar strings, mobile phone motors, microcontroller

Sixty-four drawers from worn-out chests of drawers and cupboards set at right angles to each other on the floor, each fitted with a guitar string. Vibrators from mobile phones strike the strings and produce sixty-four acoustic images that wander from one side of the installation to the other or perpetuate themselves in blocks and lines. Along with the battery and the display, the motor that vibrates a cell phone is one of the largest parts, an old-fashioned-looking elec- trodynamic object. An asymmetrical weight sitting on the motor axis produces the hum and sets the cell phone vibrating. In the Saiten-Kästen-Matrix [String-Box-Matrix] the motor swings freely, guided by a micro-controller. The sounds move over the floor as if the individual motors set each other in motion. The boxes themselves sometimes convey the image of a city in which agreements between individual inhabitants are apparently made and are then perceivable as lines of sound.