Performing Organum - a contemporary organ work composed by Wolfgang Mitterer especially for the occasion - the event was broadcast live via satellite to the Karlsruhe State Academy of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung, HfG). At the academy, the live video feeds from the organists playing and the music itself were set to a technically and artistically challenging sound and image installation, with the help of two Lawo V pro8 video processor units and a Lawo mc 36 audio mixing console.
Rastatt-based Audio Broadcast Services (ABS) supplied the Lawo video and audio equipment for the event, and worked with Lawo's Service Department to overcome its technical issues. The IP-based V__pro8 - compact, fully digital 8-channel video processors - were required for de-embedding the satellite streams received from the eight churches, and providing separate audio and video signals. They were also used for image processing.
Together with the Lawo mc²36, the V pro8 supplied the surround mix of the concert for both the live PA system and for recording. The separate elements were combined to create a complex work that called not only on the skills of the musicians', but also those of the technology's operators.
With the concept for the work established, responsibility for its realization was passed to Dr. Achim Heidenreich of the Department of Education, Media and Economy Karlsruhe, who took on overall management of the project - now called Organum.
Together with the organists, Dr. Heidenreich envisaged a completely new artwork, based on the music composition commissioned from Wolfgang Mitterer, one of the most renowned contemporary composers of organ music. He created an opus for a concert that merged sound and video in a square installation at the HfG called Carée - here visitors could walk among eight loudspeakers and projection units, creating their own personal experience of the music and the visuals.
It was designed as a "democratic piece of art" as Dr. Heidenreich explains, "Music that sounds perfect only at one particular spot in a concert hall is an outmoded relict of feudal times. In those days, everything was tuned so that the best sound arrived only at monarch's box. In our installation, visitors were invited to find their own listening position and to change it at will."
Technical design and coordination of the project was overseen by Tonmeister Sebastian Schottke, who works in the field of contemporary music at the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie), as well as at other institutions.
(Jim Evans)
