«Media Art»

I studied Media Art & Design at Bauhaus-University in Weimar and there I actually spend most of my time programming with my fellow wingman Ives – with a heavy emphasis on making music with it: generative music, computer music, random music, and so on. Of a particular interest for me in this instance was music that composes itself: With this goal in mind I could venture further and further towards the origin of music – intangible and free of logic or other in a way constraining variables like the subconscious, the meditative, intuition, improvisation, or the need for communication. Freedom emerges! Early in my journey I started to hold on to my approaches and compositional ideas in patches, a " modular musical vocabulary", if you will. But of course it always had its limits, and every limit I found in it adversely opened up a lot of potential for development and a step towards discovering the real human beneath all of it. Together with a beautiful crew of people we were invited to create an installation where a prototype of our envisioned "composition machine" was running: it feeds off of the noises and sounds around it, learns its own vocabulary, analyzes and processes it and turns it into its own composition while also interacting with the people around it.

KIUMAKO @ Burning Man Festival

In 2019 Kohlstedt composed an interactive sound installation titled "KIUMAKO" for the Burning Man Festival, Nevada, in collaboration with 'Kunst-Technik-Einheit'. Several algorithms work together and generate different dramaturgies, melodies, bars and instrumentation under the influence of the visitors and their behavior.

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Currents @ Reeperbahnfestival (Germany)

In 2017, Martin Kohlstedt created a visual-acoustic performance called "Currents" in collaboration with Reeperbahn Festival and the design groups 'Bloodbrothers' and 'Elektropastete'. In "Currents" generatively generated visualizations were projected in a specially built 360° dome. Kohlstedt played live in this dome, responding actively to the visuals.

Feria Nacional de la Pirotecnia' Fireworks Festival (Mexico),

Martin Kohlstedt composed the score for a 'fireworks musical' commissioned by the 'Feria Nacional de la Pirotecnia' fireworks festival in Tultepec, Mexico, the largest of its kind in Latin America

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