CARSTEN NICOLAI, experimentation, technology & dissolution

Interview by Maria Orciuoli



In the seminal 1968 Artforum essay ‘Systems Esthetics,’ [1] Jack Burnham proposed a view of art as a tool that extends human capabilities. He argued that the value of art lies in its ability to reveal relationships. I often think of Burnham’s words when I encounter the work of Carsten Nicolai. If I were to liken his practice to an expedition—a theme that emerges in this interview—I would describe it as a quest to uncover the invisible architectures that shape our experience of the world.


With an ability to fuse the analytical curiosity of scientific inquiry with the intuitive sensibility of an artist attuned to abstraction, his works function as acts of cartography that map the contours of technological systems and natural forces while revealing their inherent poetics. To experience Nicolai’s soundscapes, particularly those released under the pseudonym Alva Noto, is to witness frequencies transform into both medium and method —tools of exploration that invite us to reconsider our perceptions of time, movement, and relation.


In the latest chapter of his ‘Xerrox’ series, Vol. 5, Nicolai reflects on memory, digital replication, and the dissolution of sound and image. This volume marks the culmination of nearly two decades of work, reflecting a shift from the conceptual manipulation of sound to a more emotionally driven process. Nicolai’s personal experiences and the passage of time play a crucial role in shaping this final instalment, with the music serving both as a form of emotional preservation and a poignant farewell to the series and significant people in his life.


reflektor distortion, Carstein Nicolai (2016). Installation view



In a 2021 interview with Max Dax for FACT, you mentioned writing down all ideas in sketchbooks without the pressure to complete them, allowing certain thoughts to resurface over time. How do you decide which ideas get realised, and how has your process been influenced by shifts in economic conditions and evolving cultural contexts?

When an idea comes back to me after years, I often find notes I had already made about it, even though I wasn’t sure at the time if the idea truly belonged to me. But when these ideas resurface, there is a sense of connection, a kind of inner urgency that compels me to act. This feeling exists beyond economic considerations.

Regarding the role of context, my approach to art is not heavily reliant on it. I try to work with universal languages—languages that do not require execution within a particular timeframe to be relevant. For me, it’s crucial that my works retain their relevance even when disconnected from the political or cultural context in which they were created.



How do you balance the generation of new ideas and experimentation with staying true to your artistic vision?

I enjoy working in different worlds. Sometimes, I don’t necessarily see connections between these worlds but rather consider them as places of refuge. For example, completing such an emotional work as Xerrox Vol. 5 while simultaneously being able to create works that have much less personal weight offers a form of compensation. Perhaps this is a kind of polarisation, as I’ve often described it to myself. I need the rational, minimalist, simple, mechanical, technical and cold just as much as I need the warm, poetic, emotional, and narrative-driven. It’s a very Yin and Yang approach—so to speak, I need both to be in balance. They are a duality in which I feel comfortable.

In most of my works, particularly in performance, I don’t aim to create a finished piece. I am much more focused on designing processes. In musical terms, it’s like creating a software instrument. In my case, this could involve analogue or acoustic instruments, which provide enough flexibility to include experimentation as an integral part of the performance. At the same time, I must learn how to play the instruments I design. For example, a live set is something I can adapt, perform, and experiment with in real-time. I can even adjust parameters mid-performance to respond to different situations—whether that’s the location, the audience, or my own mood.

Similarly, the visualisers I use in performances are often reactive to what I’m playing. I build audiovisual setups that allow me as much flexibility as possible in a performance context. This flexibility lets me expand, shorten, or incorporate additional elements as needed. I do have specific pieces that I want to be recognisable, so preproduction elements are included. These elements act more as guidelines rather than fixed components that must be executed.

If your question is about the initial stages of experimentation, then failure is an intrinsic part of the process. Things often go wrong. While I try to avoid such failures during performances, in the early stages of experimentation, they are essential. They help me learn how to navigate and overcome challenges. Sometimes, I incorporate these errors into the work; other times, I avoid them. The early phases of my process are much rougher compared to the final presentations. But this roughness is crucial, as it shapes the development of the final piece.



Your music is often regarded as bridging abstract sound design and emotional depth. How do you balance technical experimentation with evoking emotion?

 That’s a very beautiful question. There are many pieces where I try to escape the traditional classical idea of composition by focusing solely on sound, often mistakenly described as sound design. I think one of the greatest qualities of this century, or at least the last few decades, is that we no longer talk about compositional arrangements, notes and melodies but rather about sonic qualities that we can’t notate in a classical score. There’s, so to speak, a sculptural quality to sound, which I like to bring forth again and again. This has been the case in all my albums from the beginning.



The Xerrox series has been described as a sonic exploration of memory and digital replication. Xerrox Vol. 5 marks the latest chapter in this series, which started in 2007. Could you talk about the conceptual focus of this new volume and how it evolves from the themes explored in the previous volumes? What specific memories or influences did you draw upon for this final instalment?

This new volume builds on the approach I introduced in Volume 3, where I moved away from using existing samples and focused exclusively on original compositions. In Volume 5, I have continued this direction. The first recordings date back to 2005/2006, meaning this five-album series has accompanied me for nearly two decades. During this time, my perspective and conceptual approach evolved. The original idea was to create copies of images, including acoustic images, that we store and remember better than the originals. The question of the original versus the copy, as well as the invention of the copier, inspired not just the name but also the concept behind the series.

In Volume 5, I’ve completely moved away from this technological aspect—towards a more abstract and philosophical discourse. The original idea of transforming melodies into new, altered sound constellations using software and resolution rates or interpolations doesn’t play a prominent role. What began as raw and highly conceptual still explores dissolution, but now more through acoustic particles, with the dissolution understood as an emotional process. This volume probably took the longest to complete, partly because I first created the melodic sketches that became the samples on which the pieces were built.

Based on these samples, I constructed the process of copying, manipulating, and reshaping. Where I used to borrow samples or manipulated fragments, that no longer happened here. Perhaps an important aspect: between Volume 1 and Volume 5, I also entered a phase where I wrote many soundtracks, not just the well-known ones like The Revenant, but also soundtracks for documentary films or my own moving image works. Writing music for documentaries was an eye-opener, as sounds had to engage with real conflicts and images. This experience, of witnessing emotionally intense images, has undoubtedly left a mark on my compositional process.

In recent years, I’ve never performed the Xerrox pieces purely electronically but with larger ensembles. This experience of working with acoustic classical instruments has flowed into the compositional process for Xerrox Vol. 5, too. Specific instruments are designed with a potential orchestral translation in mind. I’m currently discussing how we’ll perform Volume 5 live, and there has been a long-standing idea to create an orchestral version of this work in the future.

I do believe that Xerrox Vol. 5 has a lot to do with farewell. Not only the farewell to the series itself, which I’ve nurtured like a ‘child’ for almost two decades, but also there were many farewells to people who were very close to me. I believe these people are recognisable in this music, and the pieces also serve the function of preserving these individuals in some way. It would be completely wrong to say that this isn’t a personal album—on the contrary, it’s a very emotional, personal album—of course.



Is there a specific visual dimension that underpins Volume 5, and how might this shape the way listeners experience the album?

The album unfolds like a journey, gradually building to a resolution. I set out to create a cycle of tracks that flow into one another. Many of the track titles reference The Odyssey, along with another significant influence: Jules Verne’s stories, particularly Captain Nemo. The sequencing of the tracks frames both the beginning and the end. While the motif of the journey and the Odyssey continues, this particular story reaches its dissolution.

The word “dissolution” (“Auflösung” in German) is a wonderful concept: on one hand, it can mean solving a puzzle; on the other, it can describe something dissolving like a pill in water. Xerrox Vol. 5 was an attempt to work on dissolution. I wasn’t initially interested in strong, emotional, melodic aspects. My goal was for the fragment to play the central role here. In a way, I only achieved this in the last pieces. I realised that there were still too many images and ideas I wanted to convey. As a result, it has become a highly emotional process, perhaps reflecting the sadness of this journey coming to an end.

During the same period, Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away—he was, as many know, a fan of this series and loved listening to the tracks repeatedly. He, too, has embarked on a journey of his own. There’s a profound sense of melancholy in the tracks, yet for me, they also carry a sense of solace.

There’s definitely a metaphorical, visual layer beneath this music, but I don’t want to convey it because I believe these images would be too explicit. I prefer to leave the music visually open—open to other images, open to personal experiences. Over the long compositional process, many of these images have also changed for me. I want to preserve that possibility, that the images can change for the listener.



Could you share any challenges or breakthroughs you encountered while working on Xerrox Vol. 5? Did any part of the process surprise you?

This album took such an extended period of time to complete, partly because I needed breaks from the pieces to find new approaches. Even when some of the pieces were structurally finished, that didn’t mean they were done.

Often, through listening over time, I would develop the sense that something was missing, and I had to figure that out. It took many attempts. Some pieces exist in up to 20 different versions. Toward the end of the composition process, I had to be careful not to work on too many of these versions and drift into an entirely new interpretation, losing the original starting point.

I believe this album strongly plays with contrasts between calm and instability. There was a general emotional foundation, but I also wanted to add an “acoustic virus,” something outside my comfort zone that could also turn the piece in a new direction. The track ‘Xerrox Ascent I’ is a good example of that for me.



How has your perspective on technology evolved over time?

There’s a significant and growing part of me that has become critical of it and no longer believes as strongly in the future-oriented promise of technology. This might have to do with my age or perhaps with the fact that I teach.

Technology has often been equated with progress—that was also the original idea behind research into new technologies, so it has a positive connotation. But I believe that the experiences we are witnessing in our world today—how technology is being controlled or how we are being controlled through technology—have intensified and clarified this scepticism.

From a musical perspective, technology has always been a source of innovation and, in many cases, the birthplace of new musical movements. I believe this situation has changed. It becomes harder to use technology uncritically without considering its broader context. Recommendation algorithms have revealed themselves to be systems that affect our decision-making. This realisation leaves its mark.

Unfortunately, the history of technology is inseparable from the history of power and military dominance—something that is well-known. What shocks many, however, is how openly and unapologetically this connection is now revealed. And yet, we continue to step into it.

Social systems are a much stronger force than what is presented to us as progress. I firmly believe in self-organisation. I also believe in the lottery of chance and am highly skeptical that the “dictatorship” of the algorithm will truly lead us forward.. 



How do you see the role of AI in creativity, and what impact do you think it has on human processes such as emotional connection and decision-making?

I would have been surprised if the question about AI hadn’t come up since we are talking about technology and the projections or visions we embed into it. AI is, of course, a perfect example. It undeniably offers us a new tool and will be helpful in managing the vast amounts of data we have produced. I believe that in certain areas, such as computer programming, these systems can develop and perhaps even create new technologies faster.

However, at this moment, I feel we are projecting too much onto this technology. Machines cannot build emotional connections to what they create. They don’t notice when they make mistakes. They cannot form social bonds. They don’t feel pain—and I could continue this list. The starting point of the Xerrox series was based on error, which is often associated with frustration and irritation. For nearly two decades, I kept returning to that one moment, and from it, I began a creative process that has held me for so long.

I believe that AI is predominantly a tool for optimisation. Work processes are optimised, programming processes are optimised, research can be optimised. Perhaps we should ask ourselves: What kind of progress do we want? Do we want to optimise ourselves so thoroughly? Do we need more multitasking, more options? Are we even capable of handling so much information, so many technologies, so many patterns and layers of stories or knowledge? Are we capable of that?

I am firmly convinced that we are not. And there is an advantage in the fact that we can’t pay attention to all these layers. Since we aren’t capable of seeing everything at once, we are forced to filter and focus. We need to sharpen and blur things constantly. These are very individual processes, but they are also very manipulable mechanisms. We must be careful not to let technologies into our lives that begin to undermine and affect this fundamental process of ours.



What’s your chief enemy of creativity?

Angst.



You couldn’t live without…

Lemons and love.







[1] Burnham, J. (1968, September). Systems esthetics. Artforum. Retrieved December 2, 2024, from https:// www.artforum.com/features/systems-esthetics-201372/










Website https://www.alvanoto.com/
(Media courtesy of the artist)
On Key

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