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"ein wald ist mehr als drei bäume" - a sonic dialog between humans and plant. Video by Gobi Drab, featuring live-sonification of Beaucarnea recurvata. The sonification is realized using open software & hardware.

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pieces for peace(s) - or: hands are a meeting zone

This is an ongoing working collaboration between Eva Esmann Behrens (visuals, dance), Sophie Lenglachner (scenography, performance) and Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka (sound, performance, dramaturgy). Exploring peaceful interaction through movement, embodiment and artistic interaction. We are conducting a series of participatory, inclusive community workshops where people of different backgrounds and abilities can explore peace as embodied state, as interaction, as feeling, creating spaces and settings for personal peace-making. We use art, play and embodiment as tools for facilitation of peacemaking as embodied interpersonal negotation. The tools we use in the workshops are movement exercises, discussion and drawing, and interaction with an interactive textile object which invites for personal exploration.

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blind time drawing - performance with Consuelo Mendez

Consuelo Méndez, visual artist Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka, musician

Two artists meet for creation. Both are blindfolded, thus stepping outside the known terrain of familiar behaviour, meeting in the realm of sound and listening. The performance by the artists is an attempt to bring time, dialog and complicity, the act of doing and the loss of control while doing familiar actions into the foreground. The audience is put in an in-between state of being voyeur while becoming an intimate part of the whole process. A homage to Robert Morris’s “Blind Time Drawings”, created between 1973 and 2009.

First performance on 14.3.2024 as part of the exhibition Aufbruch³ at Volkshaus Graz / KiG

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"autonomous systems" - virtual exhibition room

This is a virtual environment filled with floating texts and sonic fragments, a living archive created as virtual exhibition of the group project "autonomous systems" carried out 2021 by Daniele Pozzi, Alyssa Aska, Alisa Kobzar, Pablo Marinas and Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka. Each room of the virtual exhibition was curated and designed by one artist. Autonomous systems surround us, they are present in "black box" devices or represented in processes of nature, or even in our own bodies. What does autonomy mean and how can we develop a playful approach to engage with it? The group project explored processes of "ecriture automatique" and co-creation in algorithmic art, digital art and music. The virtual exhibition was presented in the XCoAx conference 2021. The project was funded by mur.at - platform for net art Graz. A physical exhibition of the project, presenting other resulting works, was shown in REAGENZ art space Graz in Summer 2021.

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Nachtahn - sound installation (2022)

Nachtahn is an interactive sound installation created and published as part of the project Klangnetze. A group of artists got invited to create site-specific sound works exploring the idea of ecology. The installations are all running on self-build open hardware and software and were presented during summer 2022 in several villages across Styria. This is a recording from Gleisdorf where the installation was presented at the walls of the local church.

The Nachtahn is a female spirit that appears by night. Stories about her are told in folk tales of the Styrian regions. She is invisible but her presence is shown by noises. An invisible female figure that does care work for the community, the Nachtahn seems to be representing timeless issues about care work and female (non-)representation in society. The installation takes fragments of the story and interweaves them into an interactive soundscape, making passers-by listening into that which otherwise remains invisible and unheard.

The project was kindly supported by the BMKOES (Austrian Ministry of Culture and the Arts) as well as by the communities of Ligist, Spielberg, Gleisdorf, Leibnitz and Eisenerz*art. The online presentation is kindly supported by mur.at.

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Klangnetze is a collaborative sound art project that explores the idea of ecological sound art.

The project is created by a group of artists that build eco-sustainable, open source, autonomous hardware agents that are capable of recording, producing and exchanging sound and data. On five locations across Styria, these sound devices will be placed between July and August 2022, creating site-specific sound installations that live though the exchange with their acoustic environment. The sound installations can be listened on site and online (follow the link). Klangnetze is funded by a special grant for digital art in public space by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture. Project lead and creative team: David Pirrò, Daniele Pozzi, Luc Döbereiner, Ina Thomann, Veronika Mayer, Hanns-Holger Rutz, Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka

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“five stones” is a solo audiovisual performance for double bass, sound installation and embodied visuals. It is part of my ongoing project to transform the body and instrument into a visual space that plays with and reverts the projections and imaginations that are usually present in a musical concert setting.

The pictures were taken during setup of the performance. “five stones” is a piece reflecting on how everyday routines and objects define our identity and our life. It is a silent hommage to my grandma who died a year ago and who was always curious to reinvent herself and find joy in life - even through war and violence. May she rest in peace.

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CRATER is a short film by Adina Camhy, sound design & music: Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka

CRATER takes the image of a crater as a metaphor to reflect on human destruction, space travel and mining, political presence and historical disasters.

premiere: Diagonale22, distributed by sixpackfilm

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Basszikaden is a piece sonic art using fieldrecordings, sho, bass, voice and recorders, recorded live in 2021. The album was released as part of the collaboration project “fadenfluss” by Flora Könemann and Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka in which we explored poetic ways of relating to our everyday environment: https://wobbly.slackline.mur.at

Listen/purchase: Basszikaden by voices of no(i)sense

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selfies unselfed is a photographic feedback loop, a series of analog-to-digital-to-analog photographs. Over a period of several weeks I made analog-digital screenshots, photographing selfies of friends from the screen of my computer with a Polaroid camera, then recapturing the analog images digitally and vice versa.

The series originated as part of the group project “Autonomous Systems” (2021, together with Alisa Kobzar, Alyssa Aska, Pablo Abelardo and Daniele Pozzi, hosted by mur.at) and was originally shown in the exhibition “as if they were flowers” at Reagenz art space Graz. Taking screenshots from an off-screen-domain exposes the mechanics of a camera, the interplay of lens and light as much as it exposes the mechanics of the screen, its pixel grid and luminescence. It challenges ways of seeing and recognition. Like in a Rorschach test the selves of the original selfies get transformed through the process of taking another picture, they become a riddle to be guessed for.

selfies unselfed is an attempt to capture and expose ways of human vision as relation. The cloud of analog photos may appear like a screenshot of its own, capturing an instant of what could be a fraction of the latent space of a neuronal network in the process of generating ever more selfies. The paper frames of the Polaroids resemble small screens. The digital images start staring back at me from their tiny squared spaces, like an endless TV feedback loop which is eventually (possibly) part of a larger organism, showing a self as a systemic process of layering, creating and transforming meanings at the threshhold of the human and the mechanism: eyes and mind confused with paper, lens and screen.

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#homesounds is a continuous translocal, collaborative sound & radio art project reflecting on the meaning of (being / finding) home. People all over the world are asked to record and contribute sounds, memories and texts related to the topic that get collated into a changing sound installation which embeds itself subtly into the soundscape of public space.

The installation in its environment gets live-recorded and streamed at certain times, to be listened to remotely again via internet and/or radio.

This iteration was realised in July 2021 in Graz in my garden and was recorded live from the Locuscast Soundstream (locusonus.org/w/?page=Locuscast).

You can hear sonic contributions from: Bettina Landl, Michl Laab, Nicholas Maloney, Theresa Maierhofer-Lischka, Friederike Maierhofer-Lischka, Luisa Navarro, Nina Mediatrix, Helmut Kaplan

This is a continuing radio art project that can be listened to at certain times on locusonus.org/soundmap/051/ - streamname "Graz - all_ear"

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a text-sound performance project by stefan schmitzer (text), margarethe maierhofer-lischka (sound design, music) and jürgen gerger (performance, dramaturgy). texts are taken from schmitzer's book "liste künstlicher objekte auf dem mond" (ritter 2021), a long-form poem on the history of space travel and moon landings. an subtle sound installation enlarges the stage performance setting and creates an atmospheric stream of murmurs to dive into.

»Liste der künstlichen Objekte auf dem Mond« – ein Murmel-Strom mit STEFAN SCHMITZER, MARGARETHE MAIERHOFER-LISCHKA, JÜRGEN GERGER

eine performance aus text, elektronischen soundscapes und instrumentaler improvisation von und mit margarethe maierhofer-lischka, stefan schmitzer und jürgen gerger. wir benutzen o-töne aus dem nasa-archiv sowie einen auszug ausschmitzers buch (oktober 2021, ritter verlag). das setting einer musikalischen lesung wird erweitert zu einer improvisatorischen doppelconference mit jürgen gerger.

"Murmelstrom" ist das Setting einer installativen Text-Soundperformance, das Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka und Stefan Schmitzer gemeinsam entwickelt haben. Die Text- und Musikebene wird durch eine im Raum verteilte Lautsprecherinstallation, zum atmosphärischen Raum erweitert. Zum Hinhören, Eintauchen, Abheben.

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Sprechmaschine - a site-specific sound installation (Ynselzeit Festival, Saline Hallein 2021)

Sprechende Devices und künstliche Stimmen sind längst zu einem selbstverständlichen Teil unserer Lebenswelt geworden, und in der Diskussion um selbstlernende „künstliche Intelligenzen“ verschwimmen zusehends die Grenzen zwischen menschlichen Kompetenzen und den Fähigkeiten moderner Technologien. Im Projekt „Sprechmaschine“, entstanden während einer Residency beim Salzburger Medienkunstverein subnet 2021, sammelt Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka Samples historischer und moderner Sprechapparate, von Kempelens und Darwins Sprechmaschinen im 18. Jahrhundert bis hin zu heutigen neuronalen Netzen zur Stimmsynthese, sowie Ausschnitte aus Beschreibungen und Dokumentationen über solche Stimm-Apparaturen. In der Resynthese von Phonemen und Lauten ergeben sich Klangmuster die zwischen Mensch, Maschine und Tierlaut changieren.

Die gesammelten Sounds wurden zu einer Klanginstallation sowie einem Radiohörspiel verarbeitet. „Sprechmaschine“ spielt ironisch mit der Künstlichkeit von Sprache und macht aufmerksam auf das Wesen von Sprache und Stimme jenseits des Klanglichen. Inspiriert ist das Projekt durch Kurt Schwitters‘ „Ursonate“, ein Sprachexperiment das angeblich als Transkription von schwedischen Vogelstimmen entstand.

Aufnahmen vom 02.10.2021, Alte Saline Hallein

Hörspielversion: TBA, 2021

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SATYRICON - a free contemporary rendering of Gaius Petronius’ famous ancient roadmovie.

Video: Jürgen Gerger, texts: Stefan Schmitzer, sound: Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka.

Performances took place in summer 2021, Lesliehof Graz / Cafe Kork.

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a history of the world in six and a half cauliflowers

a foley-based radioplay by Arne Glöckner and Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka, commissioned by soundartadio UK // tomorrow’s transmissions, May 2021.

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a sound project on human & machine speech, natural and artificial (generation of) languages. some sounds generated by an AI, maybe...

realized during my residency at subnet Salzburg / Schmiede Hallein / HCI Salzburg, September 2021

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a history of characters - a micro music theatre

performance and concept: Jeffrey Young, Arne Glöckner, Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka

2019, performances at Forum Stadtpark Graz, echoraum Vienna