Grains - Elektronische Klang- und Licht-Improvisation

"Grains"
An electronic sound and light improvisation in St. Aegidius

Date: Place: Time:

22.11.2025
St. Aegidius Wahn 8:00 p.m.

On this evening, Numinos, a pioneer in the field of electronic sound art and Folkwang lecturer in electronic music, and light artist Gunther von Morgen will enter into a concertante, artistic dialog. In the midst of the visually and acoustically impressive parish church of St. Aegidius, the two artists embark on a multi-layered journey of light and sound in which modern digital media interact with the venerable sacred building. The special acoustics of the neo-Gothic church, with a reverberation time of well over seven seconds, lend every sound an otherworldly impression, while the play of light simultaneously sets the architecture in scene and mystically alienates it. The church interior, which has always been a place of pause and silence, thus becomes a modern invitation to detach oneself from the everyday.

About Numinos:

Numinos is a composer, sound artist and lecturer in electronic music at the Folkwang University. In his current creative phase, he deals conceptually and aesthetically with the topic of granular synthesis. The sonic nucleus here is the grain - the smallest unit that the granular synthesizer he uses reads out of samples. In a way, it is a frozen moment from a larger musical context. This gives the Cologne sound artist the opportunity to connect with the entire musical world archive, to extract and recontextualize tiny components from it purely on the basis of their sonority and thus to work out structures that are not audible at normal tempo. The results are polyrhythmic drone miniatures that seem weightless, artificial and alien at one moment, only to transform into warm and familiar layers of frequencies minutes later.

About Gunther von Morgen:

Light artist Gunther von Morgen is considered a pioneer of VJ art in Germany. As early as 1994, he mixed VHS video images live to techno music, thus shaping the early electro aesthetic. This was followed by performances with Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin and Fatboy Slim.
Soon the industry also discovered his visual language: in 2003 he designed the VJ concept for the world premiere of the smart at Zurich Airport. In 2005, he created an interactive widescreen projection in Cologne called "Bewegter Raum" - one of the first of its kind.

With video mapping, video objects and interactive shows, Gunther von Morgen developed new forms of audiovisual performance. In 2008, he had dancers interact with projections for the first time - the beginning of the Fantastic 5, which was officially founded in 2011. The group wowed audiences around the world - from Berlin to London to Beirut - and reached over 25 million viewers on Arabs Got Talent. Today, Gunther von Morgen works with interactive LED structures, holographic projections and drone systems.