The distinction between composition and presentation matters. Lacanian Sieve is an acousmatic piece, composed exclusively in SuperCollider with nuPG by Bernd Schurer. There is no performance to anticipate, no performer whose interpretation might transform the work in real time. The work exists as a completed composition, yet its encounter with an audience remains unrealised.
Xenakis’s sieve theory structures the rhythms; Turing machines govern processes of locking and unlocking; FFT re-synthesis produces frozen timbres. These are not merely techniques for producing an atmosphere of absence. They constitute a system that encounters its own limits.
2. Desire, and the sieve
The title Lacanian Sieve is intriguing because a sieve ordinarily separates things. It permits some elements to pass through while retaining others. It establishes a relation between what passes, what remains, and what is lost. But desire complicates this operation.
In Lacanian terms, desire is not simply the wish to obtain an object that would finally satisfy us. It emerges through lack, through the impossibility of making the subject and the object of desire coincide completely. The “objet petit a” is not simply the object we want; it concerns what sets desire in motion.
A system can generate events, transform material, establish relations, and continue indefinitely without ever arriving at a final state that would settle everything. The process is productive, but its productivity does not guarantee resolution. Listening itself becomes entangled with desire: the desire for recurrence, for recognition, for a resolution that may never arrive.
3. Netochka Nezvanova, thirty years later
Netochka Nezvanova was never merely a pseudonym in the ordinary sense. The name carries the history of a particular relationship between identity, software, authorship, and the early networked art scene. It evokes a position from which the author could appear without becoming fully identifiable or available. But perhaps this is precisely the point.
The author returns, while the person behind the name remains at a certain distance. The music enters the world, while its composer is absent from the presentation. Tim Zulauf, the author of the accompanying text to the piece, will be there, carrying a different kind of authorship into the encounter.
There is no single, authoritative voice that necessarily unifies all these elements. The relationship may be more productive if it remains unresolved.
But we can allow the different histories to coexist.
I shall give up lines and give up counting syllables too. And I will seek refuge from the mob of infinite measured forms in the sensitive planes of expanse.
30 years domizil: evenings with friends in Berlin and Zurich
12 December 2026, 7 pm – silent green 4/5 December 2026, 8 pm, Kunstraum Walcheturm
In 1996, a cassette was released as part of a sound installation by the fictitious label “domicile edition”. Thirty years later, the artist label run by Marcus Maeder and Bernd Schurer looks back on a catalogue of more than fifty releases. domizil emerged from Zurich’s techno and experimental music scene of the 1990s, when the first affordable laptops made it possible to produce electronic music at home, in one’s own “domicile”. To this day, the label stands for a curious, non-academic computer music at the intersection of electronic music, field recording and the visual arts, and increasingly of environmental reflection, generative art, data sonification, ambient poetics, acoustic ecology and artistic research.
domizil celebrates its anniversary in Berlin at silent green, the former Wedding crematorium where domizil already celebrated its 20th anniversary. farmersmanual, Rashad Becker, Asmus Tietchens, Noémi Büchi, Normification (Florian Hecker/Marcin Pietruszewski). Benjamin Flesser and Jedan Nula (Bernd Schurer/Marcus Maeder, presenting their anniversary release – will perform on 12 December. The evening brings together long-standing companions and new voices from Zurich and Berlin, from the pioneers of glitch and computer music to a younger generation of Swiss composers. It‘s a celebration with friends and, at the same time, a look ahead: in the future, domizil will be equally active in both cities Zurich and Berlin.
Concerts at Kunstraum Walcheturm will be announced shortly.
Tickets for the Berlin evening are available through Eventbrite.
In artistic terms, process refers to the methods, materials, and steps an artist uses to create a work of art. It encompasses everything from the initial conception and research to the physical execution and evaluation, emphasizing the journey of creation rather than just the final product.
Glitch music and art are creative expressions that embrace technological malfunctions—such as corrupted files, skipping CDs, or system errors—as their primary medium. Instead of fixing errors, creators treat them as aesthetic material.
B1212 is an interactive, browser-based net art piece created in 2000 by the enigmatic artist and software designer Netochka Nezvanova , utilizing custom, machine-code-like programming to manipulate text, sound, and browser behavior in real-time. The project is highly abstract and subverts the traditional architecture of the web, generating chaotic, performative audio-visual experiences directly within the user’s browser environment. ____
equivalency of dissimilarity denotation (analog shift registers) 2026
EoDD/XVM, a collective of conceptual art works initiated by Bernd Schurer, emerged as a revolutionary force in the nascent days of the internet art world in the late 1990s. Their creations transcended traditional mediums, utilizing hypertext, the internet, and analog and digital sound computers. Unlike conventional art, XVM prioritized ideas, perception, and critical reflection over physical objects, spectacle, and performance. By challenging established art concepts and rejecting non-systematic approaches to philosophical debate, system theory, and cybernetics, they fundamentally redefined notions of authorship, (re-)presentation, and art-making. The group’s work centered around probing the systems that imbue art with meaning. Through their antiorp.net channel, XVM engaged in “Art as Philosophy,” presenting powerful sound pieces, obfuscated HTML code, and introspective musings and ramifications as schizo-personas.
Bernd Schurer (born, Zurich, 1970) is a sound artist, researcher, and composer of electronic music living in Berlin for the last 18 years.
Schurer is one the absolute pioneers of extreme computer music amongst other mischievous and radical online activities in the nascent days of the internet.
In a long running and somewhat confrontational practice Schurer has explored physical and psychological experiences through computational formalization processes.
Soliloquy Synthesis was created in anticipation of his father’s passing.
The composition was presented in front of an intimate audience at the NNOI festival in Zernikow, Brandenburg, Germany, July 2025. A week after the anticipated event transpired.
Under twinkling stars and flickering fires, what was it good for? A game.
Gratitude to all you beautiful beings: Maria, Josef, Sonja, Alberto, Marcus, Renate, Eliane, Jason B, Simon B., Simon G., Miriam, Bettina, Michael, Robert, Randy, Chris J, Sabine, Mark, Stephan W and Marina.
credits
released March 26, 2026
Music by Bernd Schurer. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Cover Painting by Mark Harwood.
JANUS is a concept introduced by the French philosopher Michel Serres in his book “The Parasite” (1980). In the book, Serres uses the figure of the two-faced Roman god Janus as a metaphor for the ambiguity and multiplicity that characterizes our experience of reality.
According to Serres, JANUS represents a way of thinking that embraces contradictions, uncertainties, and the coexistence of opposites. JANUS thinking is characterized by its ability to hold together contradictory ideas and perspectives, and to move beyond binary thinking in order to embrace the complexity of the world.
JANUS thinking has been influential in a number of different areas of contemporary philosophy, including postmodernism, deconstruction, and critical theory. It has also been used as a way of thinking about the challenges of globalization and cultural diversity, as well as the role of technology in shaping our understanding of reality.
Janus is the ancient Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions, doorways, and time, famously depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions—one to the past, one to the future. He oversees gates, passages, and the start of new cycles, making him crucial for new year celebrations (January is named after him) and rites of passage like weddings and births, symbolizing movement between states. Romans invoked him first in rituals, viewing him as a guardian of all transitions, from daily life to war and peace.
A Janus Bunch oscillator state comprises two distinct phases. The model can describe synchronisation between internal phases and external oscillators by coupling both internally and externally. This enables the phases to exhibit fascinating and intricate movements. Some of these compositions use networks of so-called Janus Oscillators as a reservoir of dynamic patterns. These patterns are audified by using auditory-display techniques coupled to dynamical FM/RM Synthesis algorithms organized in a 2-dimensional plane (each oscillator has several arbitrary XY coordinates).
Some experimental philosophical thoughts on “The Narrow.” started out as a conversation with ChatGPT about the Tritone Paradox in my computer music composition, Lacanian Sieve.
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1. Narrowness as a Constraint on the Symbolic
When a piece commits to one interval as its total structural horizon, the listener is placed in a space where symbolic differentiation is strictly limited. The Symbolic (in Lacanian terms) becomes a single axis—a filtration of all musical possibility through one cut, one relation, one “law.”
Psychologically, this produces:
A sense of cognitive claustrophobia: the mind searches for alternative relations, but the system refuses them.
A heightened awareness of micro-differences: the listener is forced into an obsessive, nearly analytic parsing of tiny variations.
A feeling of being “locked in”: as if the system only permits motion along a very tight corridor.
This can be described as epistemic narrowness: the world is small, but infinitely deep.
2. Tightness as Affective Constriction
The tritone carries centuries of ambiguity and tension, but without relying on tonal baggage you can emphasize its structural role: it is an interval that never fully relaxes. When it becomes the only possible gesture, a paradox emerges: the tension is constant, yet endlessly mutating.
This shapes the emotional field in the following ways:
Persistent non-resolution → a condition of suspended desire.
Pressure without release → an affective “tightness,” often experienced somatically (sternum, throat, solar plexus).
A narrowing of emotional bandwidth which paradoxically amplifies sensitivity—when all gestures compress around a single relation, small differences become emotionally charged.
You could describe this as affective torsion: the piece bends the listener inward rather than outward.
3. Narrowness as a Model of Psychic Repetition
A system rooted in a single interval, especially a dissonant and “unplaceable” one like the tritone, can be heard as a form of compulsion to repeat. Not repetition of identity, but repetition of difference within sameness—a hallmark of the unconscious.
This resonates with:
Obsessive thinking → circling around a single structuring absence.
Traumatic repetition → the return of something that cannot be metabolized.
The Real pressing through a closed Symbolic loop.
You can say: The music stages the psyche encountering an impossible limit, again and again, as if attempting to master it—but never doing so.
4. Narrowness as Spatial Metaphor: The Corridor, the Throat, the Aperture
Computer music often generates topologies rather than narratives. If the tritone is the only generative relation, the topology becomes narrow:
Like a long corridor that changes thickness, humidity, temperature, but never opens into a room.
A throat that constricts or dilates but never speaks.
A fissure or crack: the listener inhabits the inside of a fault line, not the outside.
Emotionally, this evokes:
Unheimlich tightness (the familiar inflected with the strange).
Anxiety without panic: the walls are close, but stable.
A beauty produced by proximity: microstructures become intimate, almost erotic.
You might call this spatialized affect: the emotional state is coextensive with the geometry of the interval.
5. Narrowness as Sonic Ethics: The Refusal of Abundance
By restricting the entire musical universe to tritone variations, the piece refuses abundance in favor of rigor, discipline, and radical minimality.
Psychologically, this can be interpreted as:
An ethics of renunciation: nothing is allowed except what the system permits.
A confrontation with lack rather than its concealment.
A purification of attention: the listener becomes aware not of what is present, but of what is missing.
This narrowness becomes ascetic, almost monastic—but with an underlying violence.
6. The Emotional Implication of Infinite Variation within Tight Bounds
Here the key is the infinite in tension with the narrow.
Because the tritone is the only interval, but it appears in limitless permutation:
The listener confronts infinity-in-a-sliver.
There is a vertigo of smallness: infinite depth but no lateral expansion.
This often produces a strange calm—resignation mixed with fascination.
Psychically, this mirrors:
The way obsession makes one detail inexhaustible.
The way desire attaches to a single object-cause (objet a) whose variations are limitless.
The way trauma lodges a world inside a single point.
The Quantussy is a five (5) petaled flower, each petal with oscirator, that creates a rhythm, that triggers quantizations of the movements of the other four oscirators. The Quantussy is thus both based on five (5), but four(4)… and its name also refers to Quantum Physics through its unique “double quantizing” of angular momentum.
Running at low frequencies, the Quantussy is intended to provide ample modulations for the various functions of the COCOs, through inputs “FLIP”, “SKIP”, and “SP.AF”, or “Speed Affect”. The Quantussy petals can also run at audio frequencies, as well as “Balcium” frequencies, depending on a toggle switch.
The center of the Quantussy merits some attention. There is a central indicator-lozenge of 15 Light Emitting Diodes, showing the “Spesal State” of the device. The Spesal State is controlled by touching the “Cercel Nodes”, thus preserving Ciat-Lonbarde’s motto of “touch-sensitive is best!”.
To preserve this precious jewel of silicon encased in finest woods, use patch cords to wire it up in its own self-reconfiguring spasms.
These vibrations, spasms, activities, all manifest in unique transpositions and flip-skips in your material, which is input via Mike, Synthin, or special High Impedance Piezoin. The COCO modules here have a generalized version of the DOLBY cargo-cult preamp, which includes a self-expander, and an other-puncher for maximum POP SENSATION MUSIC>
You see, on each COCO, there is a knob for INPUT as well as FEEDBA… These are the primary functions of the COCO, to take in sound and recirculate it through *8BIT* digital memory. These two functions INPUT and FEEDBA, depending on a toggle switch, can punch the others out to create monophonic articulations of time-layers in your material.
Blind Material Volume II is the companion album to Lacanian Sieve (domizil 52) by Bernd Schurer. The composition Vortexification, an unfinished “work of crisis”, is released on cassette tape solely to exist. The digital download includes additional sound materials generated similarly (Sieves in SC, see Xenakis, Roads et al) as those found on Lacanian Sieve.
What is it good for? A Game.
credits
released June 22, 2025
published by domizil 2025. all music by bernd schurer.
While doing some Media Archeology for the Coningentia book, I came across some odd recordings I made, mostly for radio diffusion, between 1993 and 2003. What would later be labeled as laptop music and glitches is indeed the technological dawn of an ongoing fascination with glitches, aesthetics of failures, broken music, and, of course, the occlusion of the heart in the rise of demonic cybernetic suns. It is sometimes wonderful to be in the bright position of life, where shadows cast light on the traveler´s path through obscurity.
There are pieces exploiting the sounds of a Lowrey Genie ´98 organ at my parent’s house while our cat Minou was sleeping in its Leslie cabinet, destroying microphones of my Papa´s dictaphone while attempting to record burning coal, damaging and glitching a minidisc recorder from water spill while capturing the sound of water dropping into the sink (sic!) or exploiting stuck MIDI notes on my Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer as a means of overcoming “the problem” of time and my personal inabilities to “compose correctly” and many more puerile adolescent philosophical tropes…
Thank you everyone at Editions Mego for reminding me how precious this all was, is, and will be.
Me for my part, do not, have not, and never will exist.
“If this music can be narrated, it resonates in the narrative. At least it has changed me physically, this narrated music. It modulates my waves, my relationship to the wind, to the medium of music. And if that is not proof for you, please. Then why should I help you any further? After all, I have other things to do. The wind has infected me. I have to devote myself to it.”
credits
released February 23, 2025
All music by Bernd Schurer. Published by domizil 2025. Text: Tim Zulauf
