Ping tschä, tschä

In “ping tschä tschä” we hear birds chirping and singing, are immersed in the ‘natural soundscape’ of the work - until we slowly realize the setting to be strangely distorted, fragmented and manipulated, somehow mechanical and remote. Kahlen’s early interactive film and sound projection “ping tschä tschä” (2005) embeds scientific, ornithological descriptions and digital, synthetic sounds closely imitating birds’ voices in the image of a wood. Viewers generate their individual and live composition of ‘natural’ sound as they explore the image, move their cursor across, hover or click at the visual projection. “ping tschä tschä” was installed at the Ruine der Künste Berlin, and simultaneously published online, in 2005. The work alludes to a process of a scientific and exact, mimetic, yet strangely abstract and fragmentary acoustic re-creation of nature. The utterances of birds and their descriptions have been of interest to the artist ever since his very first works of sound art in 1988.

zewidewit zizidäh - dü hüitt - trijet tret tret tret - ping tschä tschä - dschü - tschjak - tetui tic tic tic – hiiüp