if you can`t give me poetry, can`t you give me poetical science ? (Ada Augusta Byron, Countess Lovelace)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the last really universal scholars, had one point really clear: the numeral one represented god - the creator - whereas the zero stood for the devil - the destroyer. thus foundation was layed for the binary system which brought us the computer, 300 years later. the video artist Gudrun Barenbrock pursues, in an intriguing cross-medial performance, the track of the punched card through history. guided by the music of composers Udo Moll and Wolfgang Mitterer we encounter Jacquards mechanical loom, Charles Babbages Analytical Engine and the groundbreaking 80-digit-code of the IBM 360 mainframe.
captivating personae have their entry: Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace and notably the first computer programmer in history (before computers even existed…), Konrad Zuse, the german computer pioneer, misconceived for a long time, as well as horses, volcanic eruptions and the Plankalkül. the music combines the acoustic sounds of a chamber ensemble and pipe organ with electronic augmentations and enhances the immersive imagery of Gudrun Barenbrock. not least we see and hear one of the last still functional card punching machines, the IBM 029.
- Udo Moll (Cologne) live-electronic, composition
- Gudrun Barenbrock (Cologne) video, concept
- Wolfgang Mitterer (Vienna) organ, live-electronic, composition
- Eve Risser (Paris) piano, theremin, card puncher
- Frank Gratkowski (Berlin) clarinets
- Ronny Graupe (Berlin) guitar
- Jens Ruland (Basel) percussion
For more information please see : www.punchcardmusic.de