Nerve Theory have reworked Electric Cars and Electric Guitars, which was originally created as an 8-channel sound installation for Tonspur and was presented from September until December 2019 at Museums Quartier in Vienna.
We expanded the original piece with 5 more sections to a total of 17 distict short sound/voice pieces. The single sections were compiled together with various field recordings of road and traffic sounds into a 53 minute listening experience.
The radio version was premiered on July 26th, 2020 on the Austrian Public Radio OE1 at Kunstradio-Radiokunst, a weekly radio show dedicated to radio art. Another broadcast took place at the Radiophrenia Festival in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2020.
The piece deals with the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles and how taking the act of driving away from people and turning control over to networked-artificially intelligent autonomous vehicles will completely transform the nature of transportation.
Amongst other ideas it picks up on how this will alter the soundscape of the city and how the psychological space will change with this transition.
The music seeks to set out a dynamically changing sonic environment for a spoken conceptual narrative, designed to put the listener in the headspace of the next chapter of human terrestrial transportation.
C.Hausch wrote about the piece:
As such “Electric Cars and Electric Guitars” feels like a road movie — both from its mood, as well as its narrative structure. Sonically it evokes images of a journey that starts off on the highway in some dusty nothingness, follows the road into the city, peaks in urban space, possibly somewhere in the future, only to end in a new kind of nothingness. As we follow down our path, our vessel develops, receiving tech-upgrades at full speed while our gaze gradually wanders from outside of the vehicle inwards, ultimately provoking change within ourselves. The world around us transforms with us, but since our gaze has shifted, our focus lies elsewhere.
You can read the full text about this piece here.
The full version of the piece is available here for download.