The path to the amalgamation of music and painting was quite natural and compelling. In my life as a sound engineer, I ran full of music, and also learned to use the possibilities of the computer quite intuitively. The transfer to painting by computer, with pen, mouse and MIDI controllers was then a step that opened new worlds, everything suddenly wanted to go out to play. Since music is art in time, painting intertwined with it necessarily had to be moving as well.
Since then I have been working on smaller and larger media arts fantasies that are completely worked out and through, from the composition of the music, the recording and mixing of the sounds to the animation of the painterly elements. It's amazing to me: as a painter, I'm more inclined to the realistic; the abstract is often not sufficiently complex for me. As soon as movement comes into play, it turns completely.
This is consistently continued in the work with live improvised visuals
in the project "Scriabin Code" by Martin Albrecht.
All Media Arts work can be adapted to a wide variety of spaces. Ask me:
Initio strepitus - initially: a noise only
MediaArts Fantasy, ultra wide screen video 5460 x 2100 px; Multichannel holistic sound.
"Initio strepitus" explores noise, or dust, as a source material for artistic formation. This happens consistently and meaningfully at the primeval event par excellence: The Big Bang. Here, out of nothingness and undefinable time, EVERYTHING comes into being: All matter, all time, all space dimensions, all energy (all fantasy, all hunger, all hoidoi and mumbo jumbo...)
All this is really fantasy and hard to prove scientifically, the Big Bang and everything else.
And of course also my fantasy.
Tempus
MediaArts Fantasy, ultra wide screen video 5460 x 2010 px and 18 channel holistic sound
Tempus" is fundamentally about time. Music apparently only works in time. With painting or sculpture, however, time seems to be frozen. Moving painting liquefies this frozen time again. But is frozen music also possible in time? Such and other questions are explored artistically, aesthetically, playfully, and also naively scientific.
SoNoVin
MediaArts-Symphony, 2013, Panoramic-Video (5760 x 1080 px), 10-Channel-Sound; 43 Min.
Created for the "TransEuropean CultureGrooves" 2013 in Ebertsheim/Pfalz. Since then, the MediaArts symphony has been shown many times. SoNoVin intertwines music and moving painting in the most intimate way. Despite all complexity, there seems to be an immediate access, although it is hardly possible for the numerous spectators/listeners to express what they experience in words. Therefore I will not even try. I rather provide an adapted, web-suitable version of the last 12 minutes of the altogether 43-minute piece, which at least gives an idea of what can be experienced there on the 15 m wide panorama screen with super HD video and holographic 10-channel sound. Please imagine that the image occupies the entire viewing area, the surrounding space disappears. You are not watching, you are inside. There is a pull into a world all of its own!
The video tries to trace the curvature of the screen. It might help to read the introduction to it, which was printed in the catalog. And please: use proper speakers or headphones! Thanks...
Lullaby for an Underwater Continent
MediaArts Fantasy, 2014, Panoramic-Video (3840 x 1080 px), 2-Channel-Sound; 14:48 Min.
This work means Africa: in its tragic yet hopeful present and its status as the cradle of humanity: we are all Africans.
The music formally follows baroque forms: Ouverture, Choral Fantasy. Stylistically, however, it is - analogous to the visual worlds - a superimposition of many varieties. A superimposition is also the projection of a video onto a painting panel. This results in a constant in the culminatively very stirring events.
Lullaby for an Underwater Continent was first shown at the Ebertsheimer Kultursommer 2015.
Music for Heroes and Cheap Instruments
Interactive MediaArts Fantasy, 2015, 15 Min. Video (3840 x 1080 px)) Live Visuals, Music
Music for Heroes and Cheap Imstruments is a very playful MediaArts project, created for the Ebertsheim Cultural Summer 2015, which had the motto "Stars Over Ebertsheim". This small Palatinate village at the Eisbach was founded 1250 years ago by a certain Eberolf. Nothing is known about this "hero", which on the other hand opens all doors to fantasy.
In this production, the audience can join in: The "Cheap Instruments" are ready to be played. They are not classical instruments. No one has ever played on such. The music is very rhythmic, danceable. The pictures follow that. The Cheap Instruments influence the images, you immediately see a reaction to the action on the instrument: a bending and dancing and grooving.
Park in the Dark
MediaArts Fantasy, 2017/18; Panoramic-Video (3840 x 1080 px); Multi channel sound; 28:11 Min.
At the end of the symposium in Gienanth Landscape Park in September 2018 there was this video-music performance. A sound reactive video was projected between the trees and the music was added in immersive surround, partly pre-recorded, partly played live and sung with a choir and three of the artists playing as musicians on the steel sculpture, a collaborative work by Carmen Stahlschmidt, Motz Tietze, Uta Schade, Uli Lamp and me. The video and more about the symposium "Der Park lebt" can be found here.
Martin Albrecht - Scriabin Code
Multimediales polysensuales Musik-Visual-Live-Projekt
Genre- und Zeit übergreifend, Klassik, Improvisation, Live reaktive Visuals, Performance
The SCRIABIN CODE originally dealt with the universe of Alexander Scriabin (1872 - 1915). Here, the protagonists follow a "decoding" of his work into contemporary music.
The classical pianist Asli Kiliç plays the selected originals of Scriabin and directly in the context comes the dialogue of the ensemble, represented by the pianist Daniel Prandl, Martin Albrecht on clarinets and electronics, Dirik Schilgen on percussion and Christopher Herrmann on colorful cello and electronics. Frequently invited as a guest is Eva Pöpplein, who adds another dimension with electronic sounds and live sampling. A line-up that moves as expertly as fearlessly in improvised contemporary music as in jazz, electro and pop.
I take over the visual part with a live video performance projected all over the walls. Not only color improvisations, but also forms and movements are used: painted ballet, excited color symphonies, dynamic forms, all bidirectionally reactive and closely intertwined with the music.
In 2019, we also paid homage to Bauhaus and gave our thoughts on what Bauhaus might mean today. The result: #BauhausMatrix. The premiere was at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Where else?
In Corona, we also looked at streaming projects and in 2022 created "Kreisler's Salon," a pure Schumann program and showed it at many special venues.