Carsten Nicolai

Carsten Nicolai (born 1965 in Karl Marx Stadt in GDR, now Chemnitz) is an artist using various media, such as sound, image, sculpture and computer, as hybrid tools in order to research the "codification of the world". Nicolai's work questions creativity, coincidence and artistic creative power. A lot of his works are directly linked with the natural sciences. The physics of oscillation in particular are a frequent means of his work and are not limited by audibility and visibility, but trying to make natural phenomena visible. Scientists like the Physicist Ukichiro Nakaya, who researched snow crystals in his studies, were an inspiration to Carsten Nicolai for his "snow noise" installation. The joint collaboration with scientists, search and research, will combine scientific experiment with artistic sculpture. In "snow noise", the laboratory becomes the exhibition space, the activity of the audience makes it a part of the sculpture itself. The complexity of his work becomes visible in projects such as "polar", together with Marko Peljhan, which was realized for the Canon Artlab no.10 in 2000 and which received the Golden Nica for interactive art at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2001. The preoccupation with physical phenomena finds it's way into Nicolai's sound work, which is released under the pseudonyms "noto" and "alva noto". In 1995, Nicolai founded the "noton.archiv für ton und nichtton" record label that merged with "raster music" to become "Raster-Noton" in 2000. The collective with Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider meanwhile put out more than 40 releases, among others the series "20 to 2000" that received the Golden Nica for Digital Music at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2000. In recent years, Carsten Nicolai has performed in major exhibition spaces, and has collaborated with Ryoji Ikeda, Mika Vainio and Thomas Knak (co-composer of Björk's "Vespertine"-album) and with [Invalid Artist].