- Title
- Strategies against architecture: spatial tensions in Einsturzende Neubauten
- Creator
- Chapman, Michael
- Relation
- In the Place of Sound: Architecture, Music, Acoustics p. 83-97
- Relation
- http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Architecture---Music---Acoustics.htm
- Publisher
- Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2007
- Description
- Einsturzende Neubauten's 1983 composition "Vanadium I-Ching" appeared on their influential album Zeichnungen des Patienten 0.1 [Drawings of Patient O.T.]. Marking the first track on the band's second album, "Vanadium I-Ching" is a confluence of two ideas. Vanadium is a metal alloy used in the construction of industrial spanners. I-Ching is an ancient Chinese system of cosmology and philosophy that, as well as being central to the music of John Cage (1981), is based upon the simultaneous union of opposites and the ephemeral nature of events. The two themes embodied in the title of the composition provide an important starting point for understanding the enigmatic music of Einsturzende Neubauten and its broader relationship to architectural discourse. The majority of "Vanadium I-Ching" is comprised of the sound of spanners being dropped onto a concrete floor, producing metallic echoes which re-sound around an empty industrial space. As the song unfolds a cacophonous collection of metal objects is launched against the boundaries of the space; the bells and crashing tools start to articulate an architecture which is not only spatial, but material as well. Over this noise emerges the opening vocal line, asking "do you hear the din of beating hearts" as the echoes created by the metal projectiles engulf the space.
- Subject
- Einsturzende Neubauten; Vanadium I-Ching; architectural discourse; music
- Identifier
- uon:5838
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/44620
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781847183750
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