Kim Wermes is a designer/artist working in the fields of Research, Interaction design, Interface design, Graphic design, Web design and Sound design. He studied Media- and Interactiondesign @ University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück Germany ( Bachelor of Arts ) and Audiovisual Arts Computing @ OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts / Hochschule für Musik Detmold ( Master of Science ). His artistic works often come from a musical background and deal with political issues and internet culture. Some of his work includes:
Contact:
Kim Wermes,
Edisonstraße 4,
49716 Meppen,
hello@kimwermes.de,
+49 (0) 152 55 70 80 97, Impressum,
Reproduction, modification or retransmission in any form or by any means prohibited without prior permission. © 2020, Kim Wermes.
Musique Grotesque
My master thesis, titled 'Musique Grotesque', deals with music as a vessel of fear. For that, I examined music in two different ways: Music as an actual weapon that does harm to a physical body and music as a stylistic device in movies to create a sense of dread and fear. Both approaches were built on extensive research and resulted in a total of three different sound installations, all of which used technology from the days of early electronic music. Read the thesis here.
↑ ↓ Laser-cutted 'Exciter' for the Intonarumori.
↑ ↓ Modular synthesizer used for an ongoing sound installation.
↑ Akai tape machine used for a tape loop installation.
↑ ↓ Intonarumori build after Luigi Russolo's schematic.
Audio 1: Project 1; Audio 2: Project 2:Deus Ex Machina, Audio 3+4: Intonarumori used for cinematic soundscapes.
Nils Heck
With Darmstadt-based Photo-and Videographer Nils Heck I worked on a variety of projects. From building his website to designing his business cards and working on his last book 'With Love', which gives us an insight into the world of drag queens in germany.
Meta Ethics
For Bielefeld-based noise/electronic outfit 'Meta Ethics' (which I am also a part of) I designed a logo and two faux tape covers (including 3D renderings) for a digital release. The overall aesthetic of the project is heavily inspired by old underground techno and power electronics tape releases. You can listen to it here.
Selected Quarantine Works Vol.1
'Selected Quarantine Works Vol.1' (inspired by Aphex Twin's seminal record 'Selected Ambient Works') is a web-based project I realized during the high point of the COVID-19 pandemic due to my own boredom and that of other artists/friends. I asked them to each contribute a 30-60min long mixtape with music they listen to during the month-long lockdown and hosted them on a website I build. Many designers and musicians contributed to it.
In #C
'In #C' was a generative sound installation realized in collaboration with Jasper Kelm in the 'artistic project' class of Heinrich Unterhofer at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. The name is a direct reference on Terry Riley’s famous minimalist piece 'In C' from 1964. 'In #C' used tweets from the social network twitter to create ambient music by transforming the written tweet thrice: The tweets runs through a text-to-speech software which gets reduced to a simple pitch. The pitch is translated into MIDI data and then run through virtual instruments. This way, hate speech, and for that matter, every other sort of offensive or insulting tweeting, can be turned into forgettable elevator music. I came up with the idea, wrote the concept and took care of the sound design, while Jasper did most of the max/msp programming.
Film Encoding Initiative (FEI)
At the Center of Music and Film Informatics (Cemfi) in Detmold I was a founding member of FEI (Film Encoding Initiative), a project that emerged during the research semester and is supposed to be a cinematic counterpart to the MEI file format. The goal is to develop a file structure to make cinematic documents (aka movies) machine readable and therefore facilitate the gathering of quantitative data. In the course of our research I also gave a lecture on this topic at the 'Data Science und Film' Workshop at the UdK Berlin on the 6th of July 2018. In addition, I also designed the interface for a first software prototype using the FEI file format at the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, as well as the FEI logo.
Poster Work
I also love working on posters and flyers for bands and cultural events. Those are a few I am still very fond of.
Remix for Das Bisschen Totschlag
For the remix album 'I DON'T CARE + SOFTENER' of Hamburg/Berlin-based brunchpop band Das Bisschen Totschlag, I contributed a remix of their song 'Poached Eggs'.
