Light Bulb Music & Expirateur

Light bulbs and vacuum cleaners

Q-O2, the Brussels workshop for experimental music and sound art, is presenting a double concert at Performatik.

Michael Vorfeld, musician and visual artist, plays percussion and self designed stringed instruments and realises electro-acoustic sound pieces. Light Bulb Music is an audio-visual performance working with sounds generated by the use of different light bulbs and actuating electric devices. The changes in the light intensity, the rhythm of the flickering and pulsating lights are directly transformed into a rich microcosmic world of sound. Within this expansive installation of various types of incandescent lamps Michael Vorfeld creates a multi-layered and vivid sound and light performance.

Michael Vorfeld works in the field of improvised, experimental music and sound art and is often involved in site-specific art projects. He realises light installations and performances and works with photography and film. Besides his solo activities he is a member of various groups and collaborates with artists from different art forms. His list of activities includes numerous concerts, performances and exhibitions in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia.

Pierre Berthet, composer and percussionist, designs and builds sound objects and installations. One of his inventions is the reversed vacuum cleaner. At the end of the tubes of the reversed vacuum cleaners are fixed flexible tubes (bicycle air chamber). When it is switched on, the flexible tube gets in regular motion on the ground. An assortment of rigid tubes of various dimensions are disposed along the way of the flexible tube. The air blowed in the tubes results in sounds. For his concert in Performatik he will bring together and make a piece for a ‘chamber orchestra” of vacuum cleaners.

Pierre Berthet (°1958 - Liège, BE) studied percussion with André Van Belle and Georges-Elie Octors. Improvisation with Garrett List. Composition with Frederic Rzewski. Music theory with Henri Pousseur. Designs and builds sound objects and installations (steel, plastic, water, magnetic fields,…). Presents them in exhibitions and solo or duo performances with Brigida Romano (C.D. "Continuum asorbus" on the label Sub Rosa) or Frédéric Le Junter (C.D. "Berthet Le Junter" on the label Vandœuvres). Collaborated with "13th tribe" (C.D. "Ping pong anthropology"). Played percussion in Arnold Dreyblatt’s "Orchestra of excited strings" (C.D. "Animal magnetism", label Tzadik ; C.D. "The sound of one string", label Table of the elements).