OBLIGATION: STUDIO
Lukas Varady-Szabo
EEEEEE

OBLIGATION: STUDIO is an interactive soundpiece. By clicking the elements, different layers of the composition will play. The total playtime is 7:30 min, or the time it takes to make coffee. (Works best on desktop with Chrome)

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ABOUT

Getting in in the morning, working on jobs, making test prints, brewing coffee, typing mails, leaving again in the evening.

Last year, Niklaus and I were confronted with the growing routine of working in the studio. To provoke a change we wanted to organize a concert right there, in our usual working space. We would leave everything as it was, just emptying two desks to turn them into a makeshift stage, all with the idea of bringing music to what threatened to become an office.

Around the same time Lukas was wondering about what to think of his obligations; jobs he takes on to keep busy and pay the bills (many of our studio jobs certainly also fit this description). He suspected that they were mainly making it easier for him to postpone the things he would actually like to do; making and recording music. But making free work is hard, and so to play his own procrastination mechanisms a trick, he started to see these obligations as a material.

One day in September he visited our studio with a recording device.

It takes 7 minutes and 30 seconds to make a coffee on our induction plate. Niklaus’ perfume mixer adds a certain rhythm and when I write an email I apparently hit the keys hard. Sometimes the printer adds a signal sound. These are the constant noises framing our space. In between them hides a melody made of us interacting with computer programs and electronic devices. Every once in a while these loose elements fall into place and they coincide in something like a song.

In October Lukas performed that song in our studio on a stage made of desks. Now it is available right here.

Since March we haven’t really been able to work together in the studio and a second concert had to be cancelled. Who would have thought that one day we’d miss these studio routines and their dull sounds so much. Getting in in the morning, working on jobs, making test prints, brewing coffee, typing mails, leaving again in the evening.












Composition: Lukas Varady-Szabo
Visual score and website: Marius Schwarz
Inscent: Niklaus Mettler

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