KARLSRUHE.- The ZKM is presenting a space-filling sound installation by the artist Julia Bornefeld in the Subspace of the ZKM_Cube from March 16. An over-sized, metallic-gold shining gramophone funnel is connected to a rotating platform hovering above the ground. Two musical compositions especially produced for the kinetic installation Vanity and High Fidelity sound from the funnel. Visitors are invited to step onto the platform and to themselves become part of the interactive installation.

In her sound installation, Julia Bornefeld critically examines one of the first devices in media history – the gramophone – for which she composed two pieces of music Vanity and High Fidelity. The archetypical scratching sounds of the record emanating from a huge, shining gold gramophone funnel merge with contemporary electronic sounds layered with piano and accordion sounds. The visitor steps on a rotating platform apparently hovering above the ground which assumes the form of a needle head. In 1986, Friedrich Kittler described the gramophone as one of the three cultural storage media to have revolutionized media history around 1900. Film, the typewriter and the gramophone brought to an end the historical preeminence of the book of the Gutenberg galaxy (Marshall McLuhan, 1962). Julia Bornefeld continues this media history by having the digital code, which defines our contemporary world take the place of analog mechanics. She interlaces the general history of music and media history with her personal history, and mixes present-day sounds in a collage-like fashion with the music of her grandfather, Rudolf Graf.

Julia Bornefeld, born in Kiel, lives and works in Berlin and Bruneck, Italy.