Befreit die Maschinen | Hannes Seidl
English | Deutsch
Gruen 211 | Audio CD (+ Digital) | Digital > [order]
Reviews
The promise has for a very long time been that machines will free us from idle labor. They are to take the drudgery away from us so that we can turn our attention to the beautiful, pleasant and sublime things. And music machines have long carried with them the promise that they would enable everyone to make music. Any music that can be conceived and dreamed should be able to be sounded. But neither are people working less today, nor has the fascination with true virtuosity disappeared. On the contrary, the possibility of a world in which the apparatuses satisfy our basic needs seems almost a naive dream today. In his radio piece Frankfurt based composer Hannes Seidl listens to the machines. What has become of the promise? Various computer programmes generate the sounds, of which Seidl himself “only” selects which ones make it into the piece. With “Befreit die Maschinen” (“Liberate the Machines”) he shifts music-making from virtuosity towards “thoughtful listening”. These automated sounds are juxtaposed with samples from a lecture by philosopher Michael Hirsch. Hirsch ponders the question of a society in which wages and work are decoupled from each other. Central to Seidl’s piece is Hirsch’s call for “less work so that everyone can work and live better.”
Composition, production: Hannes Seidl
All texts are excerpts from the lecture “Die Überwindung der Arbeitsgesellschaft.
Eine politische Philosophie der Arbeit” (“Overcoming the Labour Society. A Political Philosophy of Labour”) by Michael Hirsch, Leipzig, Germany, 19.11.2016
Editor: Stefan Fricke
Design: Marc Behrens
“Befreit die Maschinen” is a commissioned composition from hr2-kultur,
© Hannes Seidl 2021
Excerpts:
1 Track (42′10″) | Radio drama
CD (300 copies)
Sound Art Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2023 / Gruen 211 / LC 09488 / GEMA / EAN 196925685191
Aurelio Cianciotta | Neural
Already in the beginning of the eighties the Kraftwerk, maybe little aware of this huge anticipation, promised that, pushing a special button, a little electronic calculator might play a short melody. Actually, the theme of the music machines is a suggestion that totally precedes contemporary, since the first proofs of music automatons date back to Third Century B.C. We need to get to 1970 and to the warnings of Alvin Toffler to imagine times and a daily life that is closer to us. The American sociologist claimed that the future often “arrives too soon” and even “in the wrong order”. He was so right, that now, in full-blown post-modernity, the idea that machines can satisfy our primary needs rightly seems to us like a naive dream. If the future has already come and just passed, The Frankfurter Hannes Seidl tries now to question what has left of the solemn hope that everybody might be able to make music. “Free the machines”, this is the answer, with the explicit invitation to pass from the virtuosity to an “aware listening”, being honored – we don’t know with how much critical sense and with how much irony – to go beyond the society of work and recovering time and energy to dedicate to the good, pleasant, and sublime things of the life. Seidl’s project has the form of a sort of robot radio drama, an only track lasting more than 40 minutes, with automized and electronic sounds mixed with fragments of a conference speech by the philosopher and political scientist Michael Hirsch. There are many computers software able to generate the sounds Seidl used, other among the existing ones more or less do the same things and it’s necessary to be a valid musician and scholar to be able to have some quality results, because everything is anyway based on a choice, a conceptual elaboration, that is not all the result of automatisms. If Hirsch makes us think of how much in a hyper-capitalist society the human work is being more and more obsolete, Hannes Seidl make us aware of the conceptualism of the historic avantgarde being already at the end. Everything became irremediably faster, optional from a range of pre-determined choices and derivative from what are the settings of a device. So, this accelerating thrust, powered by a disposable logic and by a short-term mentality, will unavoidably see a lot of people on the other barricade’s side, while not a blind resignation or a blind resistance to the use of the “machine” might be more useful instead. If we try to remember the theories of Toffler, “a whole series of creative strategies to selectively shape, divert, accelerate or decelerate change” would be needed. We must give Seidl full credit for the excellence of the sound sequences and for questioning such important matters.
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textura
Both of these recent ‚Sound Art Series‘ releases from Gruenrekorder embody the label’s experimental aesthetic and forward-thinking sensibility, the first from Mexico City-born and Austria-based sound artist Angelica Castelló and the second Bremen-born and Frankfurt-based Hannes Seidl. Whereas Castelló’s fifty-four-minute Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin (Fourteen Reflections on the End) spreads fourteen electroacoustic miniatures across two vinyl sides, Seidl’s Befreit die Maschinen (Liberate the Machines) presents its forty-two-minute ‘Radio drama‘ as a single-track CD, each release available in 300 physical copies. […]
In Befreit die Maschinen, Seidl meditates on a number of ideas, including the one that promised automation would free us from the drudgery of repetitive labour to devote time and energy to higher pursuits. Related to that is the fact that digital technologies have made music production possible for a greater number of people. Yet given that people are still working as much today as before, that anticipated future now begins to seem like a naive delusion. To explore such themes in his 2021 radio piece, Seidl used various computer programs to generate sounds and then augmented them with samples from a 2016 lecture by philosopher Michael Hirsch, “Die Überwindung der Arbeitsgesellschaft. Eine politische Philosophie der Arbeit” (“Overcoming the Labour Society. A Political Philosophy of Labour”). Consistent with the content Seidl wished to explore in the work, Hirsch’s lecture visualizes a society where labour and payment are separated, resulting in “less work so that everyone can work and live better.”
Befreit die Maschinen begins with stuttering voice treatments emerging alongside an engulfing mass of granular static, metallic eruptions, and white noise, and pretty much continues in that vein for forty-two uninterrupted minutes. As the voice-and-electronic stream flows, one might be reminded of Terre Thaemlitz, Akira Rabelais, Alva Noto, and assorted ‘clicks-and-cuts‘-styled figures operating within the experimental-electronic milieu. As Seidl’s material crackles, flutters, percolates, and sizzles, Hirsch’s voice rises to the surface of the electronic swamp, his words often stretched, strangulated, and distorted beyond recognition. For that reason, including the text of the lecture on the release package’s inner sleeve might have been worth considering, though it’s possible that Seidl chose not to in order for the focus to be solely on the sound design. Regardless, Befreit die Maschinen is quintessential Gruenrekorder, as is Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin.
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Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY
One of the things I remember from reading scientific magazines for kids in the seventies was the thing about machines that would make life easier, freeing us from stupid jobs. The future has arrived, and yet we seem to be slaves of devices, looking at our phones or using AI to answer a question for us (or worse, to be honest – I have not yet gotten a review from AI that I liked). Hannes Seidl uses excerpts from German that translates as „Overcoming the Labour Society. A Political Philosophy of Labour“ by Michael Hirsch, from 2016. Seidl has various bits of software, none specified, to generate sounds, and they go along with the computer-processed sound from the lecture. Seidl selects which becomes part of the piece, so it’s not entirely machines taking over; perhaps, as predicted: machines do not easily take total control (I admit I only follow such developments when handed in my newspaper; I don’t dig deeper). The piece is forty-two minutes and was commissioned for radio. The lecture part is completely lost on me, even when my German is quite alright, but that might not be a problem. I would think it is all rather about the music as a whole, and as such, the piece is quite nice. In some odd way, something that reminded me of computer music from the earlier part of the century; this release would have fitted the later catalogue of Ritornell quite nicely; computer music and a philosophy theme. It’s not about playing carefully constructed compositions but making quick choices about what happens next in the piece and letting it continue before doing a new intervention. Not at all delicate, which is another excellent feature; some of this reminded me of a machine world, all lively and working over time. That’s how we like machines best.
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Rigobert Dittmann | Bad Alchemy Magazin (120)
Mit „Stadt Land Fluss“ war HANNES SEIDL bereits auf Gruenrekorder. Als freier Kompo- nist – „We Can Be Heroes“, „Six Pieces to guide you through the Night“, „21 Songs in a Public Surrounding“ – und Musiktheatermacher – „LIEBE“, „ingolf“, „Die Flexibilität der Fische“ – in Frankfurt hat er da ja auch einen kurzen Draht. Ebenso zum Hessischen Rundfunk/hr2-kultur, mit etwa „Das Wetter in Offenbach“, „Good Morning Deutschland“, „selbstLAUT“. Oder Befreit die Maschinen (Gruen 211), als Radiostück, das um die Forde- rung des Philosophen Michael Hirsch kreist: „weniger Arbeiten, damit alle arbeiten und besser leben können“. Hirsch denkt über die Überwindung der Arbeitsgesellschaft nach, darüber, wie sich Arbeitszeit vermindern, Lohn und Arbeit entkoppeln, Reichtümer ver- teilen lassen. Seidl verschiebt den Fokus von virtuosem Selbermachen zu einem ’nach- denkenden Zuhören‘ und praktiziert das, indem er aus computerklanglichen Vorschlägen auswählt. Da spielt schon ein weiterer Vorschlag von Hirsch mit hinein: Ich muss als Ein- zelner sozusagen so tun, als ob es auf mich ankäme, als ob ich Spielräume hätte, um ein anderes Leben zu führen als das herrschende. Im falsch Bestehenden dem anders Mög- lichen, im Molarem dem Molekularen vorgreifen, selbstbestimmt und zugleich im kantia- nisch imperativen Sinn und auf einladende Weise modellhaft. Doch so wie die neolibera- listische, sadomasochistisch verfestigte Unterordnung des emanzipatorisch Politischen unters Diktat des Ökonomischen kaum mehr aufzuheben scheint, bleibt auch Hirschs Plädoyer dem Diktat elektronischer Granulationen und gepixelter Bombardements unter- worfen. Als gedehntes Gurgeln, verzerrtes Raunen, nicht ernst zu nehmendes Babbeln, ausgeleierter Loop, übertönt von plattrigem Sirren, anhaltendem Dröhnen, Noise in Wellen und in knarzigen Teilchen. Dazu kommt Artwork mit leerem Papier… Als wollte Seidl einen nochmal mit der Schnauze ins Falsche und in die Ohnmacht und Konfusität der Kritik da- ran tunken wie Welpen in ihre eigene Pisse, um nachdrücklich spüren zu lassen, worin unsere Aufgabe besteht? Oder ist es bereits zu spät, wenn am Polit-Pol faschistoide Cä- sarenfressen und reaktionäre Volksverhetzer bejubelt und am Innovations-Pol ‚befreite Maschinen‘ propagiert werden, die immer besser dichten, denken und fälschen und die Superreichen nur noch reicher machen? Während ‚wir‘ Überflüssigen als Bio-Batterien in der „Matrix“ das Glück der letzten Menschen finden und blinzeln werden?
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Guillermo Escudero | Loop
The German composer Hannes Seidl works in different fields such as electroacoustic music, experimental cinema, contemporary classical music, radio, sound installations, video and musical theater. “Befreit die Maschinen” (“Liberate the Machines”) is an electronic music composition consisting of a single 42-minute track of sounds generated by computer programs. Seidl selects the sounds that will be included in the piece, to which samples from a conference by the philosopher Michael Hirsch are included. He declares the maxim: “less work so that everyone can work and live better.” This is linked to the idea of some scientists that robots or machines will replace the human being in those more mechanical or undesirable jobs, so that he can dedicate themselves to leisure, culture and social relations. The afore mentioned maxim is not yet fulfilled, but rather, on the contrary, society fears that robots will cause unemployment and leave it totally defenseless. In this sound design, a wide variety of glitches, noise clouds, static, clicks, twisted voices, and saturated sounds are combined, some of them unidentified, evoking amorphous images.
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