3.
When word started getting around about my invention in 2002, I was - believe me or not - rated among the best acoustic laptop players in the world. This should soon change. As other people started creating and using their own boxes, my talent was no longer sufficient. Ten years later well over a hundred acoustic laptops have been created by people in the workshops I have given. They have also been included in other people's workshop repetoires.

4.
The acoustic laptop standing unplugged and untouched is of course a static object, an aesthetic box of treasures, with the potential of energy released though plucking at it only hinted at. Art collectors have shown interest in them as art objects, since they prove both physical craftmanship and embedded digital contextuality. Representing something by being something else entirely. At an art fair one collector said it was the first time he was interested in a fully functioning art object "because it feels charged somehow."

5.
As art object: Once the wood boxes came into being, their visual identity manifested.

7.
Open the door at times - let fresh ear circulate

9.
To project these capsules of usually unlistened to sounds onto the acoustic horizon by amplifying them is to work with direct reality. The properties of these sounds are replaced through amplification, and their embedded information of previous activity reframed through near-musical organisation. This goes well with my feeling of "drawing in free air".

According to the relentless work of - uh, let's call this alchemist a reframer to avoid awkward associations to self-important men in pointy hats, I try to play with altering the experience of time and space. I project sounds in painterly movements across the canvas of the given space; creating arches, rainbows, edges, corners, cul-de-sacs of singular sound events as stand-outs over the blurred background drone of being, tuned to the heartbeat. An upfront dry sound will make the space contract, a wet sound will make it expand. I sometimes use recordings of other spaces - previous concerts even, and play them up against the current reality, creating a feeling of moving through different rooms. All good artists are illusionists.

10.
Because of the abrubt starts and stops - the tension and release, the tease and denial - the phrasing of my acoustic laptop playing has as much in common with Flamenco as it has with Morton Feldman.

11.
A work designed to be listened to in a headset or in an undisturbed environment will of course have to be constructed differently from one designed to be presented over speakers where the composer/performer either battles with the aural architecture and interfering sounds or allow these factors to interact with hir work. Thus it is more to the core of the project to play and record over speakers in an open space, particularly in a shared social setting.

17.
The digital gadgetry has been introduced to us only in the last 15 years or so, by very intense corporate marketing. There are so many words we use these days without giving it thought. One of them is "free", another "freedom". A silent occupation of our social spaces have taken place with noone to blame but ourselves, as massively passive. We pay shitloads of money to carry round small bricks, larger pads and portables, all filled with wonderful technical possibilities. We simply can't live without them, because they make us feel important, wanted and connected. What used to be a romantic dinner for two is now interrupted by the loving stare down at our own palm and then perhaps the most polite will add a "yes, I'm listening, I can do both". Traincars, busstops and such that used to be be spaces for brief meetings with strangers and social training through smalltalk are now private zones imposed on the public. A group of people become entangled in chargers and cables and beepysounds. Ears mostly plugged - or one ear plugged and the other ear, uh, concentrating on what your friend says? ADD (google it) is the new loud. The only uplifting thing - well, this is sarcasm if you remember that - is that the ladies are now just as addicted to tech-stuff as the men, and maybe even more. (The author is right now sitting in such a public space tagging these zeros and ones, when I should be conversing with the smiling family on the next table, as we're used to here south of the grey skies, but at least I can blame it on my work)

19.
"Identity based on tools? since when or as corporate issue / merzed up by the market / in-out of tune with contemp form / wave pattern merged / and YES we are adding "one to mass" / particle article / until we eat together / what bike do you ride? (peter says "the red one outside", halldor says "brandenburg") james said "please talk to us for five minutes". TAGGING. demonstrating certain principles / time not running out / loop / and yeah, right / duh" - amplified felt pen on the screen of the "ignorant teacher box" by Origami Boe, Berlin, 2009

22.
"I can say that the construction of a physical object is very different from programming stuff with a computer, because programming isn't visual, no one sees it, it's totally imaginary. In fact it doesn't even exist. If you build a physical object in order to create sounds, this becomes a sound instrument, but also a visual instrument. I believe that the pleasure that people have had from Acoustic Laptops, Deerhorns and Hallodrophones is more in the visuals than in sounds." - Derek Holzer (organiser, summercamp-workstation, Berlin), Digicult online magazine, 2009

24.
"Wow! Lap-tops that can actually make themselves!!! Incredible! Will they be touring on their own, unaccompanied?? (or with Carers? Nurses? Engineers? Servants?) - - did they take they're own snapshots? - is there a website where people who love laptops more than people can advertise for laptops as lovers, marraige partners, sex-slaves etc. yet? (if not, I may have a little business proposition for you...)" - Simon A209, USA, 2007

25.
"A small black boxing box open up to A --- top of a chaos pad. A girl at the edge of a spotless erdbeer. A(-nything)A(-t) A(-ll)" - Comment on the "Black Boxing Box" by Gaia Bartolini, workshop participant, Berlin 2009

26.
"A Japanese monastry recreation for the present music time. Like Zen says: Just Do it." - "Red Light" by Alfredo Barroso, workshop participant, Berlin 2009"

27.
"I suppose I'm not a musician." - Comment on the "Blue Small Monster" by Robert Kulovec Mueller

29.
"Nobody teached me to smoke at my school, then I learnt after class... Now I´m listening... Just one bee in a big room." - Vázquez Núñez, Alonso

30.
"Wasted German Youth (iFOLK e)" by Theresa Stroetges, Berlin/Germany (singer, songwriter/electronica, musicology) - "my laptop is maybe gonna be called "wasted german youth" because i can do hip berlin minimal techno with it and "wasted german youth" is what the clubkids proudly call themselves here."

33.
Merz-teater soundtrack instrument.

34.
The cigarbox guitars.

35.
(acoustic laptop fetish: a threesome > Duchamp, Morris, Larsen)

Duchamp's "Box With A Hidden Sound". Morris' "Box With The Sound of Its Own Making".

Caleb Larsen's "A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter" is a black box that will always be attempting to auction itself off on eBay. The collector who acquires it has to agree to relinquish it if another offers a bid higher than the owner's purchase price, and so on, forever. It's an answer of sorts to Robert Morris' "Box With the Sound of Its Own Making" from 1961, owned by the Seattle Art Museum. Larsen's is a box with the sound of its own selling." - Art As Transactional Residue, webpage

40.
"Sound artists orchestrates spaces of electroacoustical sound that turn built space into mere material background." - "Disconnection" by Doris Kleilein and Anne Kockelkorn in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

41.
"The field of hearing travels in a 360¾ angle with every movement of the head, while sight only encompasses half that space. In addition to that, hearing is of course always situational. Without an event, there can be no sound." - "Disconnection" by Doris Kleilein and Anne Kockelkorn in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

42.
"Inconsistencies, however, have great value in an artistic context where artists routinely create spatial surprises and contradicitions. In a cinema, the audience may see a vast open beach, while hearing music with a flute playing in a bathroom. The effect can be powerful, yet remains unnoticed at the conscious level." - "Aural Architecture" by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

43.
"A more careful examination of aural architecture throughout history shows that the role of hearing depends on cultural values, micro-culture activities, and individual life-styles, rather than being dominated by the neurobiology of our species." - "Aural Architecture" by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

44.
"Social spatiality is the experience of a space in terms of its influence on social behavior. Hearing provides an important sensory connection to other people, which is strongly influenced by the auditory properties of the space." - "Aural Architecture" by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

45.
"Space, and hence musical spatiality, becomes playable, like any musical instrument. When a recording engineer adds spatial attributes to each instrument, he is functioning as an aural architect of virtual spaces." - "Aural Architecture" by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in "Tuned City - Between Sound And Space Speculation" (Kook Books, Germany, 2008)

47.
"Listening to music is just an attention to the activity of sounds." - John Cage

55.2
I was working more and more with microsounds; the usually unnoticed reverberations of objects like grains of rice, a passport page, eggshells, styrofoam, hair and whatever else I could find. In live and recording sessions I used to fill a table with these items and then try to discover "musical" abilities and sound combinations in and between them. After a while I wanted to be able to recreate the various "set-ups", as they were often prone to randomness and unstability. Thus I started fixing things inside wood boxes. At the same time it made it easier to bring and set up, with the similarity to the digital laptop becoming obvious, as pointed out by a friend. Almost all my colleagues in the same genre went - if not smoothly, then willingly - with the digital "revolution", yet I felt I had more to discover outside in the real physical world, so I stuck to the acoustics.

56.
A sculpturist might be trained to see the sculpture within the uncarved stone. I was not trained to see the acoustic laptop I had in my hands before a close friend defined it for me. Suddenly I had a full frontal nudity motherboard in front of me.

57.
I have been giving concerts and small presentations with this boxes since their invention in 2001. I have shown them everywhere; to people in homes, pubs and tiny galleries and the whole spectrum through to some of Europe's most established stages and museums.

58.
AS RECONNECTION WITH REALITY>
The acoustic laptops are definitely folk instruments commenting on the current digital reality. The initial acoustic laptop box is neutral. It represents an open framework, and it is ready to absorb all sounds from in and around it.
If a contact-microphone is attached the whole box becomes a microphone, and amplification of these "microsounds" will set focus on worlds that have always been present. (and on a more subtle level also with the environmental sounds leaking in).

59.
Whereas much of the digital music and art is about escaping into the future, the acoustic laptop will take you and eventual listeners directly into now and here. Connecting to the marrow of sound and otherness of being. A rediscovery of hands-on creativity and direct response to physical activity. All this in a lively, virile and almost sensual way. No need to discredit the status of an object just because you can have fun with it.

60.
The acoustic laptop is automatically grounded. It does not create those electrical fields we keep our fingers in on the digital laptop. It is handmade and thus not massproduced. It can in fact be created almost anywhere in the world. An empty box and tiny cast-off objects are available to a great majority of people under almost any condition.
They are easy to plug into a mixer, so a presentation can be given anywhere (meaning it does not have to be on a stage, it can be through a home-stereo, or battery-driven amp on the street).

61.
AS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION TOOL >
They work as a social communication tool. They have a tendency of triggering ideas, associations and jokes, both among artists who are "into" these issues, and even more interestingly among people who normally have no interest in the experimental art/music world. All in all, for many a nice return to childlike wondering.

62.
The acoustic laptop is not dependent on the player/maker to join the headset-junta, it works well without wearing earmuffs in public. Should you decide to pluck your box in a public space, you will immedeatly make contact (or at least attract attention) from bypassers you wouldn't know in the isolated iPOD-culture. It works wonders as a mediator around which small-talk can evolve.

63.
AS RITUALISED OBJECT >Mankind has an instinctive need to control his environment. That has lead to the the explosion of digital fotos being taken, edited, shared and stored (memorized). It has also lead to the explosion in home-recording, editing, sharing and storing. This has also lead to the acceptance of the acoustic laptops as some kind of meditative object, and by observing this simple idea spread like wildfire, there must be something very authentic about them.

64.
We try to personalise our digital laptops by changing the desktop or the screensaver, through the use of open source software, even through the way some people put stickers on them. In varying degrees - depending on the tastes of the single acoustic laptop maker, the acoustic laptop can also become a ritualised object. Several people have added items of sentimental value (I have used the teeth of my children, a stone from Auschwitz, my own hair), or have put a lot of effort into the visual identity of their acoustic laptop. Some have even used boxes of significance. Since the box is amplifying sounds that usually go unheard (but still exist at all times), perhaps it can also work as a collector of personal thoughts, emotions, secrets, stories and sentiments.

65.
plastic wrapping during music performance, pencil on paper, underwater in bathtub, pouring soda over icecube in glass, newspaper page turning, milk on crackling cereals, fade-out after shutting off tv, bee buzzing around in frantic surround

meeting fluxus-criteria numero uno; "art should be for anyone..."

suddenly inviting - not arrogant - to play with back to audience | good people beside and behind me | peeking over shoulders

the sound of a needle falling is an illusion - but then it lands

66.
sometimes fingers projected onto videoscreen | too much for some purists | seconds later headfirst into boxes | yet requested by more | started mixing in previous concert recordings | a cough in the room or a cough on disc promptly answered by a pling or a screech from the boxes

67.
baunoten; ein bestandteil sein (2004, revisited 2008) -
six supporter acts for einstürzende neubauten | then another two added later | artist name complicated the urge to promote general origamism | full return to origami republika necessary | once again given the opportunity to sneak into another world | welcomed with "you are the guy with the sahara sandstorm recording, right?" | billed only as "boe" the question was popped quickly; "like in bo diddley?" | and why not? as we say in origamese | old rockabilly drummer as i am | i had re-recorded their rehearsal webcasts subscribed to via neubauten.org | remixed that into drones and waves | then i added micro-neubautenesque acoustic laptop live ("like seeing neubauten through binoculars the wrong way") | short intros with no records to sell | so be it | backstage often catered for a full band | i understood i only had to add the origami to the boe | so it became worklog 000 | sort of as a new end to an old beginning...