Roland Olbeter is a German artist who has been based in Barcelona for a long time. A key name in the field of robotic engineering and stage design, Olbeter has worked with La Fura dels Baus – on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games Barcelona in 1992, among other projects – and with Marcel·lí Antúnez. Among his main personal projects are the creation of "Oikos", one of the themed squares at the Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, and his chamber opera "Orlando Furioso!", a concert for string quartet, drum and soprano.

"Soundclusters 2", a series of four string instruments and a drum, is a platform which musicians and composers from any musical genre can use to experiment. These instruments work by means of pneumatic and electromechanical actuators which operate the strings. They make a sound halfway between the electric guitar and classical string instruments, and they are tuned in the same way as a violin. The upper twenty pistons act as "fingers" to define the tone. The sound is created by two pneumatic plectrums (pizzicato), a mute and an electromagnetic resonator acting as a bow. The sound is gathered by pickups, and sent to a modular sound processor which controls the timbre and the dynamic. Apart from the sound aspect, the work also operates at a visual level, through the movement of the instruments. Ten actuators can be programmed to create various choreographies.

For this piece, Sónar and the English festival Faster Than Sound commissioned Jon Hopkins and Tim Exile, two of the most highly respected musicians in the new wave of British electronica, to produce compositions for the quintet of robot-instruments created by Olbeter.

Project location: CCCB - Floor -1
Live Performances: Friday 19th and Saturday 20th at 1pm, 4pm and 7:30pm.

http://www.olbeter.com