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Re:mote Induction Feature
Our interview with the Belgian label Foton is the second interactive interview to have run on the re:mote forum - participating in this feature were Hans and Peter, the co-founders of Foton, Tom from Baradelan along with j0hn and ptr of team induction - this text contains the discussion that took place over a period of a week along with that from other relevant discussions on the forum. Foton so far they have released two cds (Urawa and Ultraphonist) and put on several events. Through their website they are running the Osaka Remix Project, have a variety of other things up their sleeve and are about to release a cd by the band Object. Behind Foton there are strong artistic and multi media ideas which comes through in everything they do.
PTR: To start, can you tell us what you were doing before the two of you put together Foton in its current form and what ideas from your pre-Foton days lie behind this step forward?
Hans: Wow, that's a big one to start with :).
Peter and I met about 7 years ago and it was like immediately clear that we both had an interest in counterculture, especially those forms where the relationship technology-society is an important topic, like cyberpunk and the initial industrial movement. At that time the whole concept of the net and the people involved with it nicely fitted in the same line of thought. From the beginning we also shared a passion for music. As a dj Peter listened to a lot of dancemusic like early techno and electro. I was more into agressive music like hardcore à la Agnostic Front and 'industrial' à la Foetus.
In the years that followed Peter started his own online marketing firm and i worked on my doctoral thesis, being the construction and control of a one-legged hopping robot. When you look at Foton now, Peter's net-related knowledge helped us a lot in building our site and promoting our music online, whereas my robotic activities reflect themselves in the urge to make installations, like the fotoninformator, for example.
Of course the main reason behind the whole Foton project is that we like having fun together and that we like organising activities where other people can join and share in the fun.
PTR: What is Foton as an organisation - you are involved in several areas - is there are a clear limit to your activities or are you going to get involved in whatever comes up at the time?
We're absolutely not interested in the greatest piece of art ever in case it's made by an asshole.
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Hans: When we started Foton the main idea behind it was to create a platform for experimental digital 'art', including music, video, photography, design, ... you could describe it as a multimedia project. However the term is, imho, used too often recently; as soon as there's a computer involved things seem to be called multimedia nowadays.
We like to call ourselves the Foton Family, and the events we organise the Foton Factory, to stress the fact that collaboration is extremely important to us, as well as the fact that everybody involved in Foton, be it a musician or a graphical artist or whatever, shares to a great extent the same aesthetic idea. This idea could be described with keywords such as minimal, abstract and experimental. From the beginning (and that's the reason why it took us more than a year to prepare our launch) we tried to develop a consistant image, tying together all the elements involved: logo, website, layout cds, flyers, ...
When you look at the cds we released until now i think the elements mentioned above, being different artforms, collaboration and consistancy, become clear. A Foton CD is not just music, it's also a carefully designed cover, a photograph, a graphical poem on a slide, ..., it's really a collective effort.
To answer the second part of your question on a let's say ideological level, the two main factors influencing the direction we're going as well as the limits we impose ourselves, are again experimentation on one hand and consistancy on the other hand. This may seem contradictory at first, but i think it's the only way to be innovative (bringing down borders) and focused on quality at the same time. It's not because something is experimental that it automatically becomes interesting. It's not because something fits our aesthetic view that it automatically becomes interesting either. You really need both aspects at the same time.
When new people approach us to present their work it should also work on a personal level, they should nicely fit in the family/factory. The idea behind this is not an elitist one, it's just to avoid dilution. We're absolutely not interested in the greatest piece of art ever in case it's made by an asshole.
There's also a more concrete answer to your question. We currently got approached by a guy who's in charge of the development of a new Belgian, more or less experimental, musical school/institute and he wants us to develop a travelling act. The idea is to create a program where the classical point of view of a concert on stage is abandoned and expanded into a performance/installation where interactivity with the public as well as multimedia are involved. Osaka will definitely be part of it, inviting the audience to make their remix in situ.
PTR: It's interesting what you are saying about experimentation given the discussion we are having in one of the other threads about minimalism and experimentation. maybe come back to this....
But to keep us going I guess it's fair to talk about your two CD releases to date, which will be one of your most visible projects to date - you released Urawa's Villa Vertigo and Ultraphonist's Discover The Antistress With... at the same time - as you say these both had a consistent look and feel. Tell us about these two releases - including something about the artists involved in both releases (and by artists I mean - music, photograph and graphic poem).
Also you are about to release your third release - the Object album - will this fit in with the previous 2 releases or do you have something new planned for it?
 
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Hans: Our first cd is indeed Villa Vertigo by Urawa, a collaborative project between John Sellekaers (cfr a.o. xingu hill) and Olivier Moreau (cfr a.o. Imminent), who got a helping hand from Hervé Thomas (cfr a.o. Fragile). Peter and John were already friends when we started with Foton and we asked John if he'd feel like making a 'minimal', beatless cd. John contacted Olivier and since making something beatless was like a challenge to them, an experiment different from their regular work, they agreed. They conceived an imaginary deserted residence, each room of the building being a track on the cd. The listener is guided through the different rooms, each having its own peculiar atmosphere. The whole is like a minimal soundscape, full of organic details, fragile vibrations and subtle textures. You really have to listen to it with headphones to undergo the full impact of the disc.
Together with the music comes a photograph entitled Gors Gesternte, made by our photographer Caroline Eggermont. Caroline's work is always organic and abstract at the same time, making it difficult to see what her pictures represent. Just as is the case with the music, a lot is left to the imagination of the viewer/listener. Besides the photograph there's also a graphical poem on a slide coming along with the cd. The poem is titled Sorry and is made by Bart Bosmans. The idea was to give something away like a poster, allowing people to decorate their room by projecting the slide. The theme of the poem is the personal interpretation of the rhythm of time.
Our second cd is Discover The Antistress With ... by Ultraphonist. Ultraphonist is a project by Marc Moedea and Gabriel Séverin, who are known for their other projects Jardin D'Usure and Silk Saw. The way the whole Ultraphonist project as well as the CD were conceived is actually typical for a lot of the evolution of Foton. We didn't know Marc and Gabriel, but John and Olivier did, so one night there were these two guys coming towards us after a Fat Cat festival we went to and they gave us a complete cd, asking us to give it a listen. These guys were of course Marc and Gabriel. They had heard about Foton and our musical ideas through John and Olivier, upon which they created the whole Ultraphonist project and the CD. Afterwards they told us our general idea had inspired them so much that it had opened new, long awaited, more minimal approaches/possibilities for them in their sound. Now we've become really close friends.
Discover The Antistress ... consists of 95% bass and subbass, making it a very physical experience (sometimes being too much for some people in the audience of our live events). The optimal way to listen to it is by cranking up the volume of a decent soundsystem, making you feel the music at least as much as you hear it (and making everything in the room vibrate and join the sound). The music reflects the inner sound of the human body, full of humming, vibrations and resonance.
Again there are a photograph by Caroline, called Herbasplit, and a graphical poem on a slide by Bart, called Power, coming along with the CD. The poem is actually an attack on the corrupting and war-creating nature of power.
The general design, layout and ingredients of both cds are the same (only the color of our logo changes), and this will be the case for all our next releases. This again helps to create a coherent image, which makes it possible to recognize a Foton CD even without looking at it in detail.
This means that our next release, which will be Release The Object by Object, will nicely fit with the previous ones. Object is a solo project of Peter, who makes very intense music combining the subtlety of Ryoji Ikeda's work with the physicalness of Ultraphonist. Extreme frequencies working together or opposing each other and modular sounds are object's basic tools. He sees sounds as objects and makes compositions by positioning them, as well as by making them travel, in a sound-space. Without wanting to brag about it, I must say that everybody who had a sneak prelisten until now was more than amazed (myself included). Again there will be a photograph and a slide coming along, one depicting a very minimal painting by Ela Stasiuk (a new member of the Foton Family), in the monochrome and rothko tradition, and the other representing an abstract image by Antonin de Bemels, another video artist who also recently joined the Foton Family (Vidéoconférence being our other video collective).
PTR: This might be a good place for Peter to add any comments on his work as Object.
Peter: With the new foton release, Release The Object by Object. We've just finished mastering the album at Metarc studios, so it should be available anytime soon. As with the first two releases, additional tracks will be made available online. There will also be a collaboration between myself and at least two video artists/collectives. These are Videoconference (see the Ultraphonist video's) and Antonin de Bemels, who is a very talented video-artist from Brussels. The sounds are finished, so it's up to the video-wizards now.
I can't say much more about the Object album, only that it has a very simple underlying principle: that of objects positioned in a musical space. The different tracks are all conceived with this principle in mind. With objects I mean events, sounds, bits of noise, even silent parts,... as an analogy, in this view, even thoughts can be seen as objects in a mental space. Of course, first and foremost, it's music: sometimes minimal, sometimes a bit rougher. You can call it experimental, but i think that only covers part of it. To me, being experimental or minimal (or whatever) is not an end in itself. It's more a method, a toolkit if you want. Anyway, I am very happy with the final results.
 MP3: 5.16Mb
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unified objects"the track, unified objects, was made after the completion of the release the object album. which makes it one of the latest tracks from Object. A decent sound system is needed to experience the music all the way - pc speakers will only provide you with a fraction of what's happening" |
PTR: What you say about the concept of music and objects is interesting. Which also makes me curious as to how you work when producing a piece - how much of what you do is sample based (event or "object") and how do you work from there?
Peter: On mode of production: I think my way of working is a combination of two things: first of all, it's very intuitive. That's a very important aspect of my music. Secondly, I always fall back on this notion of objects in a musical space (that's how I visualize music mentally), and this of course influences/accompanies whatever it is that my intuition brings along. It's like my thoughts on musical objects provide a background. The intuition takes care of the rest of the process.
Most of the tracks on Release The Object are sample-based. I work a lot with hardware because of the direct interface you have with the machine (imo something software can't really provide at the moment). In a later stage, musical structures are re-worked digitally on computer. Some tracks are completely computer-based, but the majority of the music comes 'out of a box'.
j0hn: Just reading about some of your thoughts about objects within a musical space. In some ways I can see a similarity to how I view music as I compose. From this I find that I struggle at times with particular objects within a piece such that I become too focussed on a single object and as a result struggle to find objectivity to be able to place all the elements in their correct place.
Given that you take an intuitive approach to composition, how much of a problem do you have with objects appearing out of place in your composition? Does your intuitive approach lessen the occurance of this? How easy do you find it to consider a piece as a whole sum of the objects once the piece is complete?
Peter: Those are some very fundamental questions. They require some musical self-reflection, so i'll give it a try ;-)
When musical objects seem out of place, i'm -usually- 'informed' of that fact by my intuition. It's not really a conscious mental process. Basically, adding and removing objects is what the process is all about. A large part of it is guided by intuition. But I don't think that the intuitive approach lessens the occurance of objects being out of place. For me it's just easier to 'spot' (not really a correct word when used in combination with intuition) incompatibilities such as being too focussed, or giving too much importance to a specific object.
Your last question is a very interesting one, because it deals directly with how i view the tracks on Release The Object. Some of them are indeed a whole sum of objects, others aren't. It has to do with the evolution of the objects within a track: sometimes I work from simple situations to very complex ones, where at the end the result is a whole sum. Other tracks still retain a sort of transparency, where the constituent objects are clearly distinguishable. So, I view different tracks in different ways.
Even with all this theory, at the end, the result is still music: a personal combination of (sub)consious mental processes, many influences picked up along the way and a certain view on sound design (cfr. objects).
Part 2>> - "there is no information without noise"
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