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Below and above the invisible microscopic connections holding matter and soul together, a person is dragging files on a computer screen from A to B. And then back to A again.

A bit later, the person tries to make sense of cryptical codes displayed on tiny screens of machines built decades ago in backyards in Hamburg, at labs in Japan, or envisioned in student dorms somewhere in a big fallen country far away. The person stares at user manuals originally written with typewriters, carefully turns the precious pages, scratches their head and finally nods.

It is a meditative state, introverted, but not quiet, more the opposite.

The person sits still, listening, thinking, feeling: Is it where it is supposed to be? What will it become? What is it? Is it something at all? Or is it just more data landfill?

The tea gets cold. Time flows in irregular intervals. Suddenly there is movement.

The person reaches out to a shelf, locates a long obsolete storage medium, a black and wobbly sheet of plastic the size of a small book. The person carefully inserts it into a large black box, presses a red button and waits.

Nearby something else becomes alive. The person enters commands on a terminal and walks over to a beautiful wooden instrument.

Several hours later, the sun outside long gone, the city almost asleep, the person removes the disk, turns off the black box and notices for the first time that day how loud the fans inside have been. The person flips a switch and all the little lights go off.

Silence and darkness.

Robert Henke is a composer, visual artist and software developer.
His music oscillates between ambient, contemporary music and club. His project Monolake became one of the key icons of electronic club culture emerging in Berlin 1989. He is one of the main creators of Ableton Live, a software which became the standard for music production and completely redefined performance of electronic music.

1. roberthenke.com