Stone-Ideas.com 
Okay, we concede: we sometimes tend to give crazy descriptions.
Perhaps this was also the case this time after we heard and saw the eight-minute video of the sound sculpture. It was created as part of the Vinschgau Symposium in the mountains of South Tyrol (Juli 13 – August 04, 2024). Afterward, we couldn’t get the question out of our heads whether humanity had perhaps already had contact and that the figures in the video were aliens. Because they always kept their faces hidden behind strange masks, made all sorts of strange movements and there were strange sounds that we couldn’t assign to any place on planet Earth.
But we can give the all-clear: These beings had come to the mountains with good intentions and they seemed to be working on the white Lasa marble with pleasure.
The sound sculpture we saw the video of was created by Johannes Kroeker & Elias Nunner from Regensburg, Germany. Together they are the artist collective Juhu Juhu, whose name is actually an exclamation of joy and already gives an idea of the direction in which their work was going.
They were one of the many special features of the sculpture symposium in the upper valley of the river Etsch. In addition to the six international artists who, as usual, carved their forms from raw blocks of local marble, two creative duos were invited to artistically approach peripheral aspects of the stone. Two of these “skaters,“ as the organizers called them, were the two German sound artists.
And, we learned: They too had created a sculpture, albeit an immaterial one.
In other words: just as the (real) sculptors reshaped the stone that is mined in the mountain at around 2000 m above sea level, the two sound artists had taken on the sounds and images that were created in the process.
And only these sounds and images, as they emphasize in an email.
That was their material, and that was what they had reshaped. “Johannes formed beats and melodies from the raw sound recordings by digitally modeling them. Elias visualized the resulting sound through images and made it visible,“ they wrote in their email reply to our questions.
Young people in their mid-20s like them no longer do such work with large studio equipment. “We sat on the terrace with laptops and coffee,“ they describe their preferred workplace.
However, they are not against larger tools: “For more complex projects, we borrow the technology.“
Johannes Kroeker is responsible for the sound side of each sound sculpture. “I don’t work with musical instruments, but only model the sounds that we have collected on site. I process them with effects so that they can sometimes sound similar to instruments.“
Elias Nunner is the man for the images and their processing. Through them, not only the level of hearing but also the level of seeing is played. “This creates additional depth,“ they write quite relaxed from another terrace. “The interaction of sound and video creates a spatial experience that cannot be physically touched, but can still be experienced spatially.“
Elias studied art history, trained as a digital/print media designer, and also works freelance as a graphic designer. He came to the medium of film via photography.
Johannes trained as a wood sculptor and is active as a musician and DJ. In the sound sculptures he is able to combine the different worlds well.
Both of them “acquired the know-how for this through self-study,“ as they write.
Photos: Tobel
