Insides: Jakob Schauer
Where are you right now?
I am hanging out in my shared flat in Vienna, 1200.
Which sounds surround you?
The most present is the clicking of my keyboard, my mousepad and my phone vibrating repeatedly. I hear lots of music that I come across while searching online. It mixes with all sounds from outside, since my windows are open permanently when it is warmer.
Loudest of all: trams and cars, which I already stopped hearing. I hear people talking, kids screaming and there is this one women passing by from time to time, yelling from the top of her voice all over the neighborhood, in a voice and language, nobody understands, I think.
My bedroom is in the corner of our house facing the crossroad. There is an outside windowsill and I hear some pigeons toddle on it every morning.
No planes.
Have you been productive so far? What are you working on?
Yes, I try. But updated to Catalina which is a big PITA. ^^
I am simply working on my next album, which is going to be more gestural than the releases before. Further I am trying to work on a music video for the theme track (“Gaia’s Theme”) of the last release “Gaia’s Birth”, which came out in November 2019. I am recording images of laser beams broken through a moving glass object.
What inspires you right now?
As always inspiration comes from everywhere: internet, weather, phone calls, video conferences or the view out of my windows. The main problem to me is to become motivated. I have my studio at home, but that does not really help.
To listen?
“I think the process back to “normality” will be as chaotic as the beginning of the crisis in every aspect.”
To watch?
https://cass.itch.io/blackroom
“The Lord of the Rings” extended versions. All of them!
What’s your opinion on live-streams? You see any alternative ways to support the music community?
At the moment my first option is the streaming platform echoraeume.klingt.org, which was initiated by a small group of artists and programmers, like Christine Schörkhuber, Arnold Haberl, Philip Leitner, just to name a few, who where searching for a quick substitution for their Klangmanifeste Festival at the beginning of the month. It was supposed to happen at echoraum, Vienna, so they more or less quickly came up with an online version of the event. By using Jitsi chat rooms, they tried to reconstruct the social areas of the concert space like the bar or the balcony.
In the course of this, we formed a small research team, that I was part of, to search and experiment on technics for online jam sessions, streaming and ways to be able to play with each other from different locations!
Another really nice event was the online “Sounds of the Underground Festival”, where Stefan Voglsinger and me performed a streaming concert with our duo “I0O!” lately. The Festival invited tons of different artists, streamers, online initiatives to play and stream concerts, videos, performances and content. I was impressed by how nice some of that stuff was!
What are you missing most? What are you afraid of?
Concert-wise, to me, streaming is nice, but honestly, I wasn’t as excited as some of my colleagues. I think it really depends on what is streamed and if artists manage to produce stuff that “works” under these circumstances. I saw a lot of great content, which often was a kind of digital internet performance, than just a streamed concert. About most “music-only-shows” I thought, it would probably work in a concert setting, but not as a video!!
Socially, of course I miss my friends and family, the music community, the concerts and of course Wow! Signal in its physical form.
What will change you think?
Hmm… society is really hard to read at the moment. I often think about the end of the crisis and try to imagine how people act and deal with each other. I do not expect a big emotional coming together after everything is “back to normal” and I feel lot of skepticism and distance remaining for a while.
I also expect chaos. I think the process back to “normality” will be as chaotic as the beginning of the crisis in every aspect. Although I found chaos always very inspiring.
Politically:
STAY STRONG EUROPE!
Rethink globalisation!
What is the gig or occasion you were most looking for, that was cancelled in this period?
Germany tour, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, end of May.
Festival in South France in June.
Jakob Schauer