I first witnessed Voice Crack's cracked everyday electronics in their Atlanta performance in 1996. A duo -- Norbert Moslang (above right) and Andy Guhl (above left) -- have been working together since 1972 and are based out of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

I was living in the Mattress factory at the time -- home to many art/ performance shows in the last decade. Once we found out that Voice Crack would be performing in the factory we spent a week getting the place set-up for the performance. When Norbert and Andy arrived, I was expecting too see a couple anvil cases with a lot of electronic gear. Instead, they arrived with two small suitcases and spent the better part of an hour, taking out little gadgets and connecting them all up on the large table that we'd provided for them. Scott Childs was in charge of the P.A. system and once he had finished setting up , they gave him their two lines and he connected them up.

That night a large group of people gathered at the warehouse to witness their performance. When Andy and Norbert started creating sounds out of their radio controlled devices the air was filled with sounds I had never heard . Both exercised complete control with sound waves.

I felt as if I were a fly on the wall of the Death Star. Sounds became stronger and more obtrusive. People in the audience were rooted to the ground and could not move . For an hour and a half they manipulated sound, it was as if I had just witnessed an exorcism. The show ended spectacularly with one of the P.A. speakers catching fire. This added an extra enlightened edge to the performance. I grabbed the speaker and went running out of the warehouse to throw it out of the third story window. To this day, many people thought that this was simply part of the performance. I can assure you, it wasn't.

When they completed their performance the audience was dumbfounded, and kept applauding.

The mattress factory had never sounded like that, and to this day whenever I think of all the shows that I had been involved with, the Voice Crack show sticks out with fond memories.

In planning the "One People " expedition, Switzerland had come up as a possible destination. I knew that "Voice Crack" would most definitely need to be a part of such a journey.

They have their workspace in St. Gallen at the base of one of the hills/mountains (I called it a mountain, Norbert and his wife corrected me with 'hill'), that surround the town. The space is filled with old electronic equipment. Old televisions and computer monitors. There is a photographic darkroom which is often in use and countless remastered and rebuilt electronic keyboards and gadgets that eventually are beyond description.

 

 

 

 The studio is a beautiful space overlooking one of the oldest church's in St.Gallen. We spent three nights sleeping in the building and were captivated each evening with sounds of the church bells going crazy at 7 pm. In addition to their sound work Voice Crack has spent the last fifteen years creating installations utilizing visual wavelength manipulation. There work is based completely on sound waves and their relationship to band signals. In their installations they have transmitters and contact mics placed in areas so that the audience will in effect create the performance. If there is no audience all one would hear would be the hum of little electric motors running

 

 

 

Paul Jorgensen