G.H.O.S.T.

PLAY

G.H.O.S.T. (Giant Hamburger Overcasts Sunken Terrain)

Volkswagen Golf Bon Jovi edition. Big Mac with organic beef. A branch in Berlin. The image of an object is the overall impression that you construct, predominantly through your emotional engagement with it. It is something subjective, similar to the perception of an aura or a lingering preconception, an image can but doesn't have to correlate to its objective facts and their complex implications, and it adheres stubbornly to seemingly everything that surrounds us. The word organic might make you think of sustainable economics, Berlin of creativity, affect-ladened vocals of highly polished pop and a string quartet of central European high culture. 

An image can also be of use to another object, it can be transferred back and forth. With this transfer new meaning can be conveyed, and both credibility and the number of supporters increased. Making images rather attractive to the commercial sphere.

In the business world, to transpose the images of one object onto another a so-called image transfer is undertaken. A prognosis about the expected outcomes of the transfer is made in advance, in order to reduce the risk that negative attributes could be transferred. The analysis methods that are used are complex and referred to as exploration, projective processes, semantic differentials, assignment tests or non-verbal image measuring. They serve as instruments with which to reconstruct and to measure the complex relationship between image and content to the best possible extent. In times of saturated markets, image transfers are required at an ever increasing pace. Analysis, evaluation and the implementation of the transfer, as well as the demise of the transfer's value, occur within ever shorter periods of time.

G.H.O.S.T. (Greatest Hits Of Suspended Time) imagines a constantly repeating, two-way image transfer between the music of high culture and pop culture. Musical motifs that carry the image of their cultural milieu are exchanged. From the outset the transfer frequency is extremely high and increases consistently. At a certain critical point the image and content of musical material are ever more difficult to apprehend and it becomes less and less possible to classify the usability of the recurring motifs. Yet, in order to be able to follow the ever accelerating transfers and to remain accountable for the elaborate and high performing transfer methods, the musical material from G.H.O.S.T. (Go Home Old Sex Turtle) that is to be exchanged, is continually reduced in size and complexity. This enables the transfer method to successfully fulfill its duty even at the highest speeds. However, at such hurtling velocity, at a certain point in the acceleration only the elementary musical particles of G.H.O.S.T. (Get Help Or Stay Troubled) are exchanged. They are, due to their tiny size, no longer able to be deciphered. The images and content that these particles transfer are, if at all still visible, highly unpredictable. The two-way image transfer becomes an image transfer feedback loop, veering off into uncontrollable momentum. It leads to a flimmering state, in which content and images are like ghosts playing strange games that remain to us quite hidden.

Credits

Andrés Fernández Pérez – oboe | Luisa Lohmann – clarinet/ bass clarinet | Florian Bensch – bassoon | Damir Bacikin – trumpet/ piccolo trumpet | Alexandre Zanetta – horn | Florian Juncker – trombone | Guillaume Vairet – drums | Biliana Voutchkova violin | Hannah Walter – violin | Johannes Pennetzdorfer – viola | Tilman Kanitz – cello | Ofrin – Vocals  

Thanks to Clare Molloy, Daniel Eichholz, Tomas Svensson, Jean-Boris Szymczak (Studio P4 Berlin), Wolfgang Heiniger and Daniel Plewe (Studio for Electroacoustic Music, HfM Berlin) | Photos: Nina Hoffmann