Uploaded January 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Winfried Ritsch discusses Ex Machina Dei, a work that utilises electro-mechanical instruments and sinus tones, appending the echo of the grand piano and the sustaining tones of organ clusters at Ambient@40, a two-day conference to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release

"Music Beyond Airports", edited by Monty Adkins and Simon Cummings, available now in hardcopy and free PDF download via Huddersfield University Press: unipress.hud.ac.uk/plugins/books/19

http://algo.mur.at/ritsch
ambientat40.wordpress.com
archives.electricspring.co.uk/Seasons/2017-2018/Electric-Spring-2018

This presentation took place as part of the Ambient@40 conference, conveyed by Monty Adkins, Simon Cummings, Rupert Till, and Kristina Wolfe.

In the forty years since the release of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports the concept and aesthetics of ambient music have proliferated, influencing artists as diverse as Taylor Deupree, Steven Wilson, David Lynch and The Orb, infusing drone, microsound, minimalism and experimental electronic music as well as aspects of contemporary instrumental music. The aim of this two-day conference was to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release.

The conference took place at the University of Huddersfield from Friday 23 to Saturday 24 February 2018, running alongside the Electric Spring Festival (www.electricspring.co.uk).

/// CREDITS

Video camera operator: Andie Brown, Pablo Galaz Salamanca, Sam Gillies
Edited by Sam Gillies

Title music: Music for Airports (1/1), Brian Eno. Performed by Decibel New Music Ensemble. decibelnewmusic.com

/// ABSTRACT

"Ex Machina Dei” commissioned by and developed in the St. Andre-Kirche by Robert Lepenik and Winfried Ritsch, features a meeting of two interesting strand of sound research: machine music and acoustic phenomenology. The work operates in micro-tonal acoustic universes, with electro-mechanical instruments and sinus tones that change frequency gradually, appending the echo of the grand piano and the sustaining tones of organ clusters. Using the potential of machine-based sound production, new harmonic structures seem to create themselves, incessantly changing, and constantly escaping perception.

“Ex Machina Dei” arranges a piano, a mechanical organ with robot players and a tetrahedron-speaker, spatializing sinus waves inside of a church in order to create an overarching machine which maintains a complex harmonic and rhythmic system by means of constant self analysis throughout 48-hours. The sounds produced are extended into the garden outside of the church, expanding their imprint and enhancing the total experience.

The role of machines and machine-music in Klangkunst, or sound art, is explored within this work: from machines as mirrors of humans, as Diderot describes them in the golden age of automata, the 17th century, through the industrial revolution and into the 20th century, where machine noises were harnessed musically, to the coexistence of machines and humans in our world today. A new kind of ambient music production is explored, reflecting on the reception of machines which cooperate and coexist with humans and presenting the possibility of the shift to “hu-machines” in the near future. The role of the surrounding environment and the importance of its acoustics in reception and integration is explored, as well as the extent to which the concert space and its acoustics become an overall machine itself.

/// BIOGRAPHY

Winfried Ritsch (b.1964, Tyrol) is professor for computer music at the Institute for Electronic Music (IEM) Graz and fonder of the sound-atelier, Algorythmics. He studied sound and electric engineering at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and the Technical University Graz. He was director of the netart-initiative, mur.at and the Mediaart laboratory at the Kunsthaus Graz. He has worked with the artist groups, FOND and TONTO, developing several projects in Graz. He has toured extensively in the area of experimental computer music and media. Besides his compositional work, he develops electronic music instruments, cybernetic models for generative and interactive music, and open source computer-music systems.

Co-Composer: Robert Lepenik

Robert Lepenik studied classical guitar at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. In his artistic work he focuses intensively on improvisation and electronic music. Lepenik is a member of the artist collectives Tonto and crew8020_music and has to date released 7 CDs of his own work, most recently mögliche unausweichlichkeiten (2012) and postpeno (2012). As a musician he has performed in concert with The Striggles, Fetish 69, Melville, Laleloo, Das Fotogene Gedächtnis, Fran Sancisco, The Gitarren der Liebe, Kap/Lep, and Picknick mit Weismann, among others. In addition he also works as a curator for various film programmes and writes music for theatre and film.