Tobias Koch

Tobias Koch's site-specific sound performances articulate various invisible auditory connections between space and sound. His digital compositions are amplified by the surrounding architectural material and its acoustic properties. These elements play an increasingly important role as the artist moves through the space, punctuating his performances with a series of instrumental interventions.

The audience's perception oscillates between purely aural listening and a more tactile apprehension of the spatial dimensions of the space throughout the performance. Using improvisational techniques, Tobias Koch places the musical emphasis on the physical environment, creating a score underpinned by a common sense of exploration and understanding, shared by artist and audience alike.

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Sound Fossils, 2022/2023

Glass, organic residues

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Tobias and Dominique Koch, who had already had the opportunity to work together, notably for Dominique's exhibition, Beyond Chattering and Noise, at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris in 2015, were in residence at La Becque in 2022. Using a wide variety of microphones (hydrophone, geophone, infra- and ultra-sound pickup...), they recorded the Vevey landscape in its grandest aspects as well as its smallest crevices, and fed thirty days of radio with the recorded sounds, arranged in real time.

The audio material from the terratones.fm project was then used to generate sculptures. These objects, created from the vibrations and atmospheric pressures released by sound to blow molten glass, can be likened to sound fossils. These are the sculptures on display at La Centrale.

The terratones.fm website features recorded sounds, images of the glass fossils and a series of conversations conducted by Tobias and Dominique Koch during their residency with Eduardo Kohn, Jeremy Narby and Salomé Voegeli. In English, they talk about sounds, silences, vibrations, plants...

The Terratones experience also fed into Dominique Koch's exhibition at MASI in Lugano in 2022.

Tobias Koch will also be putting on performances to close the Biennial on October 28 and 29.

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Tobias Koch

Born in 1986 in Basel
Lives in Basel and Berlin

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Tobias Koch studied audio design, composition and music theory at the Basel University of Music. He works as a musician and sound designer for film, theater and performance. He has accompanied performances by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins and Price at major international events. He signed the sound design and some of the music for Drii Winter, his brother Michael Koch's second feature film, which won awards and nominations at numerous festivals - best Swiss drama 2023 and the Prix Georges Delerue in Ghent for best soundtrack - and was released in German-speaking Switzerland.

At the same time, Tobias Koch is developing a personal body of work as a visual artist and sound performer. The shows he creates with dancer Thibault Lac(Such Sweet Thunder, Fool's Good) are halfway between concert, dance and sound installation.

Tobias Koch sometimes collaborates with his sister, visual artist Dominique Koch. This is notably the case for Sound Fossils, presented by the latter as part of the Son Biennale.