Erste Übersetzung by Jacob Stoy & Johanna Strauss-Lemke

What is music without movement? What is dance without music? How does music get transformed into movement? How does movement get transformed into sound

The project Erste Übersetzung / First Translation takes a look at how music gets translated into movement and at the same time it asks how movement generates new sounds and rhythms. With the help of Johanna Lemke-Strauss, Jacob Stoy explores the sound of dance without visuality.

Johanna Strauss-Lemke is a dancer and choreographer from Berlin. She works with a variety of theatres and directors from all over the world. Jacob Stoy is a visual and audio artist from Berlin who works with different artists on concepts, books, websites, music and plays. In 2015, the two met at Dock 11 in Berlin, where they participated in a performance. Ever since they have been making music under the name Room Service and creating performances as Team Volume.

One side of the 7-inch record contains an improvised track by Jacob. He recorded the track, with the help of synthesizers, drum machines and a looper pedal, on a 4-track tape deck. Through his instruments Jacob searches for the soundtracks of spaces and moments in his imagination. The other side of the vinyl consists of a recording of Johanna dancing while she listens to Jacob's track with headphones. She transforms what she hears into images, and her movements transport these images into a three-dimensional room.

Dance actually is a visual discipline that cooperates with the human body as well as the environments of spaces, but sound also is a rather important aspect that goes hand in hand with the visual side of dance. This record thus explores how sound can create imagery without visuality.

Jacob Stoy is a German artist who works with sound and visual art. He is part of a handful of versatile projects that stand at the intersection between dance music and the art world. He creates a wide variety of formats such as performances, books, installations and websites. Aesthetically, he examines the textural nature of the respective conceptual content.

jacobstoy.de