installation

A Land Unknown (2022)

Lim & Zaes’ installation piece collects various visual, tactile, sonic and human-made phenomena, all of which unfold at, and on, the material surfaces that are on display. The pieces are sculptural, and yet they stand in as placeholders for that which is absent. They open themselves to the visitor’s actual and imaginative perception. In a sense, these pieces may be, to the artists as much as to the visitors, a land unknown.

Exhibited April 2022 at QSS Gallery / Sonorities Festival Belfast, UK.
With artistic contributions by Clare French and Grace McMurray.

Supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
and by the Canton of Zug

photos & video © 2022 Cyrill Lim & Marcel Zaes

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Oxford SPACEBASE (2023)

A research based electroacoustical composition for the theatre production Oxford Spacebase
 about the history of the former Oxford barracks in Munster / Gievenbeck.

A production by Till Wyler von Ballmoos / Ballmoos Productions in cooperation with Theater im Pumpenhaus Munster .

Shows: June 2023

Funded in part by the Canton of Zug

Pictures:

A Land Unknown (2020)

Lim & Zaes’ installation piece collects various visual, tactile, sonic and human-made phenomena, all of which unfold at, and on, the material surfaces that are on display. The pieces are sculptural, and yet they stand in as placeholders for that which is absent. They open themselves to the visitor’s actual and imaginative perception. In a sense, these pieces may be, to the artists as much as to the visitors, a land unknown.

Exhibited Jan/Feb 2020 at Granoff Center, Providence, RI.
Funded in part by the Brown Arts Initiative
and in part by the Canton of Zug, Switzerland

photos & video © 2020 Cyrill Lim & Marcel Zaes



Pictures:

The Navidson Records (2016)

New Music Theater as an installation

Someone opens a door. Something is concealed behind it. At this moment the situation spins out of control.

Performance by: Noémie Brun, Dragana Bulut, der chor, Andries Cloete, Marie-Clémence Delprat, Maxine Devaud, Leo Dick, Michael Feyfar, Béatrice Gaudreault-Laplante, Ole Hübner, Kristian Hverring, Katelyn King, Lana Kostic, Rosalba Quindici, Ruben Mattia Santorsa, Pierre Sublet, Tassilo Tesche, Sibill Urweider, Till Wyler von Ballmoos,

Artistic Director: Till Wyler von Ballmoos und Tassilo Tesche

For “The Navidson Records” 18 performers and a choir emblematically
develop together the concept of a labyrinth with the help of texts, music, and choreography. By means of a cross-media and extensive installation the performance
examines that moment when the situation tilts, that moment between when one feels at home and this everyday. What should we do when we suddenly are in nothingness and are nowhere? This uncanny moment can represent situations when we believe we are lost and thrown back on our own. In a mutual performative/musical exploration the performers investigate with the audience the morphogenesis of unsafe situations.
An open work process will be selected for the production and
the performance, deliberately taking into account the intermittent loss of orientation.
The constant question is: Which decisions do we have to make in order to reach the center of the labyrinth?

Münchener Biennale 2016
Festival für neues Musiktheater
Original mit Untertitel

The Navidson Records
Commissioned Composition from Landeshauptstadt München for Münchener Biennale

Coproduction from Münchener Biennale with KonzertTheater Bern and the Hochschule der Künste Bern - Studiengang Théâtre musical
Winner of the Internationalen Plattform Neues Musiktheater 2014

In Cooperation with Lothringer 13

Artistic Directors: Till Wyler von Ballmoos und Tassilo Tesche
Composition: Ole Hübner, Rosalba Qindici, Benedikt Schiefer
Sounddesign: Kristian Hverring
Electroacoustics: Cyrill Lim
Singers: Andries Cloete,  Michael Feyfar
Musicians: Noémie Brun, Marie-Clémence Delprat, Béatrice Gaudreault-Laplante, Katelyn King, Lana Kostic, Sibill Urweider, Ruben Mattia Santorsa, Estelle Costanzo
Musical Director: Pierre Sublet
the choir; Director: Auður Jónsdóttir
Dramaturgical support: Malte Ubenauf
Participationg Observer: Leo Dick

Photo: Anika Rukofski

Pictures:

pochen (2014)

installation by Cyrill Lim and Marcel Zaes

seven audio transducers on suspended panels of metal, plexiglas,
MDF, styrofoam, foam rubber, carton and ceramic,
multichannel audio player, amplifiers and sine wave sounds,
dimensions variable

Panels of different materials, spread all over the space, are used as resonators. Each panel is stimulated with an artificial audio impulse that, in resonating on the panel, becomes audible. Since the very same audio impulse results in different sounds on panels of different materials, the characteristics of the respective material are emphasized. Rhythmically, all impulses follow a leading pulse, each deviating minutely from that lead. The result is a diffuse beat which acts as the soundscape for the swarm of suspended panels that, were it not for air movements, would be utterly still.




photos & video © 2014 Cyrill Lim & Marcel Zaes

Pictures:

Ansichten von Zug

Contribution to the project "Ansichten von Zug" (mid October until mid December 2014):

http://blog.forumjungekunst.ch

A project initiated by the forum junge kunst which deals with the perception and changes of the city and living environment of Zug. Several authors of different background are invited to publish their records in a blog.

Pictures:

colours beneath the white (2014)

ephemeral sound installation by Cyrill Lim

six hours-long installation conceived for Eugen Jans' exhibition during the "black cube", an event of the series "RäumesindTräume".

Out of its entire panoply

More and more material is being stripped of white noise

More and more forms of colours of sound uncover

More and more colours cover

And float back into black


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Videos:

wellen (2004)

Downloads (Flyer, concepts etc... download with right click and "Save as"):

Arbeit minimiert.pdf

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ever become again (2012)

by Lilian Beidler and Cyrill Lim

ever become again  are three sculptural pictures that are referring to each other on different levels. Central to this work is the topic of time, which is an immanent and essential part of our process orientated work as media artists with an emphasis on sound / music.
 Intrigued by the limitation of the 9 x 12 envelope, our goal was to combine these interests to create a sculptural work. As a result our triplet is thematizing sound - and therefore time - as well as the symbolic system and the relations and contrasts of material and media.
 ever consists of a small music box run with a perforated tape. This tape is glued together at both ends and therefore the pierced melody forms a loop. The recipients can play the music box by turning its crank.
become is a digital photo frame which shows a photo of an inactive digital wrist watch.
again is a tablet of about 30 x 22 cm made from cotton wool and cress seeds. During the exhibition the cress plants will be growing and gradually be deforming the word "sound".

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infinite silent redundancy (2012)

by Marcel Zaes und Cyrill Lim

Audio Guide for the Swiss Institute in Rome on ocassion of the final group exhibition of all the scholarship holders of the year 2011/2012 at Villa Maraini.
Marcel Zaes and Cyrill Lim developed an audio guide, which corrupts the exhibits in a non-destructive way.

Photos © Ela Bialkowska

Downloads (Flyer, concepts etc... download with right click and "Save as"):

isr.pdf

Pictures:

wispern (2010)

by Cyrill Lim for five with the aid of satellite dishes focused speakers

At the beginning of the nineties David Hockney made "photographic collages", pictures out of many small photographs which, put together, display the whole scenery. Although the single photographs are not all made from the same point of view nor at the same time or with the same lighting conditions, what emerges in the end is a single picture which one could see in a kind of overall perspective. Analogous, in this installation a poly-rhythmic structure is split up into its components and spread throughout the room. With some patience and a attentive ear one could not only find the single components but the whole sound structure. To make this possible the speakers have to be very focused to build a kind of sound beam similar to pointing at a single spot with several laser pointers. To this effect I am using satellite dishes. The speakers are headed towards the satellite dishes which focus' the sound and send the beam to a specific point.

This very silent and soft installation requires huge concentration. Even very silent noises could be disturbing.

Photos © David Schwery

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scherbeln (2010)

sound-  and lightinstallation for 15 windows
concept, realization: Cyrill Lim and Marcel Zaes
Realization light: Ruedi Steiner and Daniel Meuter of Lichtbau

This sound-light-installation has been made on the occasion of the Museumsnacht Bern 2010 for the window facade of the arts school of Bern.
Each of the 15 windows are illuminated from the inside by one source. The brightness of each source is changing in a specific pattern dependent on the numbers of windows and the overall duration, in this case during the overall duration of eight hours.
So the installation's pattern is determined by the building itself and therefore at each building the installation will be a unique location-dependent work which can be realized at any similar facade.
Additionally, the seven lower windows are equipped with a special speaker which will get the windows to audibly oscillate. As a sound source we use sine waves which frequencies are based on the same pattern that is controlling the lights. The base frequency, and at the same time the resonance frequency of the windows, is determining the lowest pitch. At the beginning of each period every two hours all the sound sources are at this frequency. In each hour between, the seven pitches are forming a predetermined chord.



Photos © Marcel Zaes & Lichtbau

Pictures:

I, Phon (2008/2010)

by Cyrill Lim for five individual speakers

Actually, the reality of acoustic actions is a conscious-depending, subjective actuality. Therefore, to playback a sound as "real" as possible the use of a speaker is a paradox.
Every time a speaker is used the sound is going to be medial distorted several times: By the constructor, the electronics and the recipient. "I, Phon" is an installation which is characterized by the "sound-interpretation" of each individual speaker (and amplifier).
So the musical content of the installation is composed based on the sound characteristic analysis of the used speakers.

Each day we are exposed to sounds, talk and music played back through speakers: Mobile, train station announcements, iPod / iPhone, the background music in department stores, ...   Some listen to music with headphones, others buy expensive stereos and overboost their subwoofers and kill their linear frequency response (which made the stereo expensive in the first place). It is these differences in the construction method of the loudspeakers which make each model unique. Whilst in normal situations one's blinding out this intervention of the soundness of the playback and is using the speaker to listen to one's favorite album I would like to specifically direct the focus of the listener towards the speaker as a medium.

Photos © David Schwery, Timo Loosli und Tobias Reber

Downloads (Flyer, concepts etc... download with right click and "Save as"):

BernBerlin.pdf

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