Open Lab 123 “On Being A Band” – DasArts

Musical Reading & Workshop by Jan St Werner
October 11th – 23rd 2005
DasArts, Mauritskade 56, 1092 Amsterdam



“By learning with others you can get instant feedback from other creative minds (each bringing to the table different experiences and insights) DURING the learning process. This enables a kind of collective experience that can be drawn upon when internalizing information the first time. I don’t believe collective learning is stressed in the west. Performing music in a creative group is collective learning as is playing in a big band of some sort but I’m speaking now of collective learning in the more general and traditional concept of studying and conceptualizing together with others..”
O. Coleman, “An Interview”
“We came together to try out a kind of aesthetics of failure i.e. an aesthetics of the non-ability, of wanting and willing. And this is a very painful aesthetics, it is an aesthetics of embarrassment, blamage and renouncement. But as it is actually all about seizing an emotional affect on the listener and how it naturally feeds back as disgrace and how this embarrassment becomes a play of being taken away and feeling painful… ”
Oswald Wiener on the occasion of the Berlin concert of “SELTEN GEHĂ–RTE MUSIK” 1974
Dasarts archive. Please scroll down to view this project

meshbox – STEIM


The meshbox is a real-time sample-based drum sequencer designed for live performances. It allows the sampling of any soundsource on the fly and is syncable to midi. It’s using a junxion board to send controller data to a junxion software patch which translates the controller events into midi. A mac powerbook running LISA is used as sound giving device. The meshbox has been contrived by Jan St. Werner and was programmed by Frank Balde and designed by Jorgen Brinkmann at the STEIM workshop.