Philipps Fanfaren

By Haug/Wetzel

Project website>
Churches use bells to draw attention to themselves; the town uses sirens; and the cockerel on the town hall plays out, in a polyrhythmic manner, the relationship between administration, spirituality and humour. In the 500th year of its existence, the university will install a symbol that echoes the interplay between its various units on a daily basis: 19 ‘fanfares’ – permanently installed on 19 buildings – will play a composition in which only one of the 19 audio tracks is audible at any one building at a time.
 
An electronic piece whose material originates from the university and can be updated semester by semester. Once a semester, a check will be carried out: is this still right? What has changed? How do we sound now? Can we even still be heard? And then a correspondingly updated version will be fed into the system.
 
This way, it can sound different every semester; in 20 years’ time, it will certainly sound very different. And in 500?
 
With “Philipps Fanfaren”, Haug and Wetzel are asking members of the university community across all disciplines: What specific sound accompanies your work at the university? And what would we hear if the university were a sound, in general? The responses now comprise hundreds of descriptions and numerous recordings, which are constantly recombined and incorporated into the automated composition – from the sound of a bone saw, an ultrasonic water bath, the beeping of transponders, tablet-cutting machines, the slamming of doors, the tapping on desks at the end of a lecture, the turning of pages in a book, the tapping on a keyboard, the gurgling of the coffee machine, the chord formed by the sound of the B3 motorway and the train, the lift’s voice, footsteps in the corridor, the rolling of a bottle down the lecture theatre…..
 
When describing the university in terms of sound, respondents think of the sound of many voices, a clear gong, free jazz, a melodious orchestra with dissonant undertones, and much more – 25,000 people, 25,000 soundscapes. ‘Philipps Fanfaren’ aims to keep alive the question of how differences can harmonise, just as the rooster raises the question of the Enlightenment and every ringing traffic light reminds us that some of us have questions in areas where we all think we know the answers.
 
Whilst these 19 fanfares, scattered throughout the whole city, make parts of the whole audible, the “Fanfarium”—a device in the art museum—brings all 17 voices together into a single ensemble and makes them audible.
 
 
By: Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel
Programming / Technical Direction: Joscha Eckert
Design / Scenography: Dominik Steinmann
Research Support: Tabea Gruß
 
in collaboration with the Marburg Student Symphony Orchestra e. V. and the composer Jieun Jun