The motif goes back to the sculpture Tipu’s Tiger in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. There, however, a white man lies on his back with the tiger on top of him.

“I had […] been influenced by the old automatic band organs, playerpianos and other automatic instruments. I saw these machines in a museum and became fascinated with the inherent mechanical sound.” (S. v. H. in: Interview with the magazine MIZUE, Tokyo 1973; reprinted in: Stephan von Huene, Split Tongue, Texts & Interviews, München 2012, p. 55)

“The sculpture is controlled by a punched tape and a pneumatic mechanism that moves the dog figure and plays the accompanying sound. The controlling continuous loops work in a phase pattern. Wood, leather, and metal were the main materials used. This and all the following sculptures function completely automatically.” (S. v. H. in: exhib. cat. Stephan von Huene: Tune the World. Die Retrospektive, Ostfildern 2002, p. 185)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-3–4.)

“Originally, sound and movement were programmed on a perforated strip, again not unlike a player piano. Tap Dancer was not intended to imitate human gestures, nor to be a dancing puppet à la E. T. A. Hoffmann. […] It was not meant to perform the kind of music that is normally performed with the hands, mouth, or feet. It was intended as a non-performance of music and movement.” (S. v. H. in: exhib. cat. Für Augen und Ohren. Von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment, Berlin 1980, p. 142)

“Tap Dancer consists of two shortened but not cut off legs that seem to move mechanically. […] The sound they make is produced by blocks of wood inside the box. The movements […] are made by pneumatic equipment similar to that once used for automatic pianos. […] Unlike music machines and automatic pianos, the sculpture plays all by itself.” (S. v. H. in: exhib. cat. Stephan von Huene: Tune the World. Die Retrospektive, Ostfildern 2002, p. 186)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-6)

In the US, in the 1930s, in order to earn money, unemployed Blacks would travel around the country working as one-man bands.

“I speculated […], that I woud build a machine that would not try to play music written for performance but would in some way play itself and retain the mechanical sound as an inherent element. I wanted to remove the live performer in favor of an anonymous performance.” (S. v. H. in: Interview with the magazine MIZUE, Tokyo 1973; reprinted in: Stephan von Huene, Split Tongue, Texts & Interviews, München 2012, p. 55)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-7)

“[Rosebud Annunciator] plays like an automatic piano […]. The patterns of sounds come from the music and form a collage with the aid of photocopies, scissors, and tape. They are programmed, but not controlled, and are not the result of pure coincidence, but more of the hope for a happy fate. […] The optical appearance of the rosebud is based on the architecture of the houses where I lived in Los Angeles. In the past, violins, cellos, and other instruments were custom-built to the rooms they were played in, and made in harmony with the furniture.” (S. v. H. in: exhib. cat. Stephan von Huene: Tune the World. Die Retrospektive, Ostfildern 2002, p. 188/8)

S 1969–1.1
Totem Tone I
230 x 92 x 50 cm
Collection George Wanlass, Los Angeles

The tone modification is controlled by the length of the pipe. Dimensions and proportions correspond to the pitch levels. The small pipes consist of a multidirectional series of tones, which can be played in any desired succession.

S 1969–1.2
Totem Tone II
240 x 92 x 50 cm
collection William M. Roth, San Francisco
(permanent loan in the Oakland Museum, Oakland, Kalifornien)

The sculpture exploits two mechanisms in order to alter tones and pitches, namely a movable flap and a movable upper lip.

Tones and pitches are altered by movable lips on both pipes. These upper lips move independently of one another, but always produce interrelated acoustic and tonal effects. This is explained by the basically equal tuning of the pipes, and the fact that the upper lips play only tones that come from the structure of the pipes.

“With Totem Tones, the external appearance is a function not just of the architecture of the housing, but of the instrumental architecture as well, of the organ pipes themselves. The title Totem Tones also alludes to Helmholtz, the author of “On the Sensation of Tones”, and finally to Dayton Miller, who produced synthetic vowels using organ pipes. I have built five Totem Tones. Each consists of three organ pipes, which produce tones through the air stream of vacuum cleaner motors. Each pipe changes its tone in a different way: first, through a movable upper lip that opens and closes the mouth of the pipe; secondly, by closing the end of the pipe with a lid; and thirdly, through a hole in the side of the pipe that is opened and closed with a vent. Each pipe alters its tone together with its partners, by competing for a no longer entirely sufficient portion of air. Other tone alterations result simply from the combination or non-combination of tones that sound simultaneously or concurrently. The entire work is programmed by two opaque strips and photocells. Sound and environment are as dependent upon one another as music and performance, therefore I did not want to make them even more dependent on one another.” (S. v. H. in: Für Augen und Ohren. Von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment, exhibition catalog, Berlin 1980, p. 143.)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-9.)

“Glass Pipes consists of two glass tubes, of equal length, which I constructed to play like organ pipes. In cross section the tubes form an ‘O’. Seen in length they form an extended ‘O’ or ‘OOOOOO’. […] The two glass pipes play simultaneously, sometimes screaming, sometimes growling, sometimes humming, and sometimes just breathing. The acoustic activity of combination sounds produces a variety of textures, densities, and spatial dimensions within the sound.

The transparency of the pipes is not arbitrary but indicates the sculptural direction toward nothing. The more perfectly we can see-through (be enlightened) the less our vision is obstructed. Following this orientation, to see everything is then to see nothing.” (S. v. H., The Glass Pipe Enterprise 1976/1987/1993, in: exhib. cat. Stephan von Huene: Tune the World. Die Retrospektive, Ostfildern 2002, p. 229/231)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-27.

Text Tones is an installation consisting of six narrow white, painted bases on top of which aluminum tubes are mounted, each struck by a pair of small hammers installed below. Mounted on the first base is a tube of a specific length; when struck by a gong, the internal column of air vibrates at the same frequency as the tube itself. Stephan von Huene called this the “absolute pitch” (here, he was stimulated by the story of Ling Lun, who was commissioned by the ruler Huang-Di to cut a piece of bamboo whose length would fix the suitable basic tone of the Chinese musical system). In relation to the first piece, the pairs of tubes mounted on the other bases are either shortened or lengthened in such a way that two octaves are segmented into five intervals. The ambient noises of the exhibition space, i.e. voices, closing doors, etc., are taken up by a microphone, stored, and separated into an analog and a digital signal. These signals, which are stored on audio tape, are then played back by the sculpture. The digital signal is divided between two little hammers, which strike the tube; the analog signal is played through a loudspeaker, and sets the air in the tube into a state of oscillation. Since both frequencies are the same, the ambient sounds of the room are reproduced in a monotone reflection. Later, the Text Tones were reworked and the mallets, originally mounted on the sides, were replaced by little hammers set beneath the tubes.

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-10)

“Sometimes artists anticipate future developments. In his ‘Ursonate’ Kurt Schwitters created a poem just using phonemes. The phonemes he used were seemingly arbitrary: for instance making word-like sounds out of proofs for print type or pronouncing the abbreviated signs used along the railroad tracks. Schwitters arranged this tone-material in the form of a sonata. I think that in his ‘Ursonate’ he anticipates possibilities offered by a present day electronic phoneme-generator sometimes called ‘talking chips’. Although the intended purpose of these chips is to imitate speech, they also offer the user something one could compare to a word-sound-palette.

In my work Extended Schwitters I translante the tone-material of the ‘Ursonate’ into electronic generated phonemes. Each time the work is played, different from Kurt Schwitters, the tone-material is randomly selected and then placed in the sonata-scheme of Kurt Schwitter’s ‘Ursonate’.” (S. v. H., Notes on Extended Schwitters, undated typescript, Petra von Huene, Hamburg)

I wanted to separate the speech experience out of Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Ursonate’ so as to bring the phoneme sounds more specifically to the border where timbre and what might have been a speech sound, now divorced from meaning, meet.” (S. v. H., Erweiterter Schwitters. A Study in Experimental Reality, in: exhib. cat. Stephan von Huene: Tune the World. Die Retrospektive, Ostfildern 2002, p. 239)

(see also Mind Maps, D 1991-12.)

Audio material (each lasting 1.5 min.) for the three clothed figures:
speeches by General Eisenhower (peace), President L. B. Johnson (civil rights), Jesse Jackson (after losing the nomination for the presidential election).

Audio material (2.5 min.) for the unclothed figures: excerpts from Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Rinaldo” and Georges Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers.”

(The triggering by the viewer of the individual sculpture is a component of the work, pauses last 3 min., each activation is followed by a brief dance movement.)

S 1997–5
1997, colored metal on iron base,
computer, speakers

Foundation “Brandenburger Tor”, Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin

In 1979, the art historian Martin Warnke published an ideologically disconcerting collection of citations from popular arthistorical publications (including Reclam’s “Kunsthefte” or “Blaue Bücher”). These passages are recited and accented by drumbeats. The double projection of the cited works of art on the drums alludes to the practice of arthistory-lectures, where slides are presented in pairs for purposes of comparison.

The word “semiconductor” is a reference to one of the most important technical inventions of the 20th century; but the German term “Halbleiter” literally translates “half a Leiter” (the German “Leiter” means “leader”). This half-figure is reminiscent of the busts of celebrated professors previously found on display at universities. The figure moves in nine brief dances, apparently indicating directions with its arms.