Productions

Audiovisual performance with vintage computers

Author and director Robert Henke

CBM 8032 AV is a journey into the beauty of abstract graphics and sound, created with five iconic early personal computers. The work is about the ambivalence between a contemporary aesthetic and the usage of obsolete limited technology from more than 40 years ago. 

CBM 8032 AV is performed with five Commodore CBM 8032 computers, each with a single 8bit CPU running at 1 MHz and with 32kByte of total memory.

These machines were never meant to be used for the creation of audiovisual art, and the results are slow, harsh, geometric, with low resolution and exclusively in monochromatic green. Yet they radiate their very own groove and visual appeal. The sonic spectrum includes digital noises, deep gritty sine waves, sparse clicks and glitchy percussions: very cut-up and metrical, with interwoven quiet or even silent moments, further processed and refined with studio electronics from the early 1980s.

CBM 8032 AV has been awarded Best Production of the 67th International Festival of Contemporary Music – La Biennale di Venezia.

Robert Henke explores abstract patterns in space and time, made of sound and light. His tools are computers, code and electronics. He creates music, audiovisual performances, installations, and computer graphics.

Robert Henke's installations, performances and concerts have been presented at Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, PS-1 in New York, MUDAM in Luxembourg, MAK in Vienna, Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, STRP Biennale in Eindhoven, and on countless festivals including Unsound, CTM, MUTEK, Sonar, New Forms Festival.

Duration: 65 min

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