Carsten Nicolai

Two nights of minimalist electronic music and video to put you in the holiday spirit.

Nicolai as Alva Noto presents works Telefunken and Transform, building propulsive rhythms from sinewaves, white noise, clicks and pops, accompanied by real-time visuals. This Lampo performance is his Chicago debut.

Carsten Nicolai (b.1965, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany) is a German artist and musician based in Berlin. He works intensively in the transitional area between music, art and science. In his work he seeks to overcome the separation of the sensory perceptions of man by making scientific phenomena like sound and light frequencies perceivable for both eyes and ears. Influenced by scientific reference systems, Nicolai often engages mathematical patterns such as grids and codes, as well as error, random and self-organizing structures. His work is held in major international collections. He was part of Documenta X and the biennales of Liverpool, Istanbul and Venice, among others.

Together with Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider he is co-founder of the label Raster-Noton. Diverse musical projects include collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ryoji Ikeda and Mika Vainio. Nicolai has toured extensively as Alva Noto. He has performed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London.

Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College; support provided by the Goethe-Institut Chicago