CTM 2021: Lucas Gutierrez & Robert Lippok – SPIN

An audiovisual sculpture inspired by Aristotle’s teachings on art and nature.

Across his career, German composer Robert Lippok (formerly of post-rock trio To Rococo Rot) has worked extensively on sound art and installations. In his latest work, created in collaboration with visual artist Lucas Gutierrez, Lippok scores an “audiovisual sculpture” called SPIN.

Showing as part of CTM Festival 2021’s virtual space, Cyberia, Gutierrez (who also had a hand in creating Cyberia) and Lippok’s piece sees the duo conduct interdisciplinary research on the borders of nature, technology and time, using Aristotle’s ideas of physis / φύσις (nature) and échne / τέχνη (art and craft) as a starting point.

“The critical distinction between art and nature concerns their different efficient causes: nature is its own source of motion, whereas téchne always requires a source of motion outside itself,” CTM explains.

“In [SPIN], Gutierrez and Lippok represent the two principles as two primeval ring-shaped bodies that comprise a mechanism that layers the sounds of everyday life. Within its rings, SPIN becomes a listening space where sounds of nature and civilisation meet, and chaos, silence, wilderness, evolution, and disaster are in constant motion.”

SPIN can be experienced inside Cyberia until March 14, 2021. Find more highlights from CTM 2021’s programme in our archive.

Credits:

Image / Visuals: Lucas Gutierrez.
Composition / Sound design: Robert Lippok.

SPIN is a co-production with L.E.V. Matadero Festival 2020. Special thanks to Nacho de la Vega and Cristina de Silva.