Annika Henderson (Photo: Shinya Kato) & Raoul Sanders
»White cables hang from hearts, beats they’re guided synchronised«, musician, writer and poet, Anika writes in her »Scratcha« poem, observing today’s world. Man created machine by abstracting reality into a binary rule set: 1, 0. We made a model. Now it changes, as reality tries to fit that abstract model. Music and our tastes have been guided and influenced by common denominators; we want more of what we already know. But what does this hold for the future of art? For the future of musicians and the future of writers? Are artists making themselves redundant by sticking to the winning formulas of the past?
Such questions form the frame of this very special performance, when Anika takes to the stage next to a writing robot. The machine generates the lyrics, the artists intones them, opening-up an ongoing conversation between lyrics, voice, and music. »The Writing Robot« is a collaboration between Anika and Computer Programmer, Raoul Sanders, and marks Anika’s third appearance at »Pop-Kultur«.
Anika: vocals, musicRaoul Sanders: concept development / tech specialist
Robot: words, mind, body and soul
Hendrik Otremba – concept Typewriter-Klangwelten
About Typewriter-Klangwelten
Sound worlds are designed linguistically; writers listen to music as they write. Literature inspires song; lyrics follow a rhythm. Literary writing and music are interrelated, and they even live off of each other; the boundaries between them are blurred. »Typewriter-Klangwelten« [»Typewriter-Worlds of Sound«] is a multi-day experiment that searches for new hybrid forms at the open interface between literature and music. Following a concept developed by the musician, journalist, and author Hendrik Otremba, other musicians will meet with authors, not rarely within the brain of a single person but always with varying perspectives, in order to fathom and interpret these relations anew. These interpretations will appear in the form of a talk, the concert performance of a novel, a literary radio play, and a man-machine that serves both disciplines. Here’s a quote from Blumfeld to start off with: »Ich hab' keine Knochen mehr / Dafür Tinte für zwanzig Bücher im Bauch« [»I have no bones left / But ink enough for twenty books in my belly«].