New Installation:

Indeterminate Structures

About Wouter

Wouter Jaspers (Netherlands, 1986) is an electro-acoustic music worker, composer, and (electronic) instrument designer making use of his busy tour schedule to amass a noise archive where the narrative qualities of sound become catalysts for dark ambient chasms and ear-splitting adventures.

Jaspers records and performs music under his own name, but also as Franz Fjödor, Das Gezicht, A Cryptic Mantra, Cock Cobra, Ambient Rage and others. He has performed as part of The Haters, To Live and Shave in LA, was one half of the Jim Morrisons and a member of 4daladiez & Meldy Peaches. With fellow Brabander Steffan de Turck he performs and records as Preliminary Saturation, with Dutch legend Frans de Waard he is Ezdanitoff, and with fellow Berliner Hainbach he performs and releases records as Odd Narrative.

Besides his research and composition work he also works regularly as a sound director and performer with Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin and does live sound direction and electronics with Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske.

Live

Since 2005 Jaspers has appeared at numerous festivals around the world, including Gaudeamus Muziekweek Netherlands, CTM / Transmediale Festival Berlin; Festival of Modular at Contact Tokyo (Japan), Disko Bay Festival Oqaasut / Illulissat (Greenland), Relative (Cross) Hearings Festival in Budapest (Hungary), Sønderborg Electronic Music Festival (Denmark), ZXZW Festival later: Incubate Festival (Netherlands), Interpenetration Festival in Graz (Austria), November Music (Netherlands) and Avant Music Festival in Wroclaw (Poland). Appearances have taken him to places such as Roulette New York (USA), Les Dominicains Guebwiller (France) and Mutek Montreal (CA) as well as to RAI Radio 1 in Italy, Dutch national radio at Concertzender and Lithuanian national radio LRT Klasik for classical and new music.

Instruments

Over the course of his career, Jaspers developed a fascination for modifying analog devices and was the co-founder and chief designer of the musical instrument manufacturer KOMA Elektronik in Berlin between 2011 and 2020. In this role, he designed electronic musical instruments for musicians keen to experiment, including the popular Field Kit series for electroacoustic sound experiments (exhibited in 2017 at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York City). In 2016 the company opened Common Ground in Berlin – a workshop and a shop for DIY instruments, workshops and meetings. After Jaspers left the company at the end of October 2020, he is concentrating his time on his artistic (musical) activities, gives workshops on electronic music and stimulate new ideas in dialogue with DIY culture and other musical instrument designers.

Workshops / Labels

As a curator, Jaspers has directed several festivals, such as the Eurovision Noise Festival for the Incubate Festival (Netherlands) or the annual Forthwith Festival in Winnipeg (Canada, 2017-2019). In the covid-summer of 2021 he curated the When I Sleep, The Trees Get Bigger Festival in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He gave artist workshops at STEIM, Institute for Electronic Music in Amsterdam, at Leiden University, the University of Tilburg, the multimedia center Worm in Rotterdam and at Native Instruments in Berlin. He has also been responsible for the labels Vatican Analog, Tilburg, Netherlands since 2006 and AMOK Tapes, Berlin, Germany from 2012 – 2020.

Research Interests

Wouter Jaspers was awarded the Arbeitsstipendium für Ernste Musik und Klangkunst 2021 by the Berlin Senat for his research project Artic Survey Music, which examines the ubiquitous transmission signals in the very low frequency range of the radio spectrum in order to address the contrast between urban environments and natural landscapes. This project culminated into his latest work for 32 radio frequencies “Antennenfeld”, which had its world premiere at (in)tangible transmissions at Floating University in Berlin at the end of July 2022.

In 2022 Wouter received funding through the German Musikfonds to work on his latest research project exploring Chess-based musical composition, formulating new compositional techniques based on John Cage’s Reunion concert, which he will debut together with Berliner composer/performer Hainbach in the end of 2023. 

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Memories from the road 2006 – 2023:

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