Klangquellen

Ulrich Eller

 

The fact that sounds alter our perception of objects, that even profane objects as the resonating bodies of sounds can develop completely new interpretive potentials – these are the motifs that play a role in many of Ulrich Eller’s works. Plastic canisters, for example, first appeared in 2004 in Strandgut – aus den Meeren kommen die Kanister [Stranded Goods – The Canisters Come from the Seas]. Eller converts the industrial containers into modified sound sources, as resonators for composed sounds. For him the charm of the objects lies in confronting their purely functional interpretation as industrial product, or as a symbol of pollution, with their artistic utilisation as sculptural material, namely with the help of sound.

His work Klangquellen [Sound Sources] uses floating canisters for the first time. Around 400 of these white containers in very varying forms and sizes float in a more or less dense cluster on the western moat. To this optically bright and even surface Eller adds a multi-channel composition, which comes from loudspeakers in some of the canisters. The sounds give the sculpture acoustic plasticity. Different sonic characteristics, gestural sound structures and movements create the impression of a multidimensional development. The compositional principles were guided by the immediate acoustic environment, such as the continual rise and fall of the traffic noise on the nearby main road.

 

Ulrich Eller, born in 1953 in Leverkusen, lives in Norderheistedt in Schleswig-Holstein. Eller studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He has worked in the area of site-specific installation since 1981. In 1994 he became professor of sculpture, space and interdisciplinary artistic staging at the Hanover Academy. He has been professor of sound sculpture/sound installation at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2004.