After studying dance, Kirikoo Des aka NSDOS, felt the need to create his own sound in order to explore movement. This is how he started imagining a whole new sonic order, an alternative approach to music – through abstraction. NSDOS can’t restrain himself to existing technological tools and softwares, he prefers creating his own mediums: futurist instruments made of old audio converters (carte son), Gameboy emulators, pieces of metal dismantled and welded together giving form to surreal machines. Surrounded by his hybrid tools, NSDOS unravels the rectilinear anatomy of techno music. Textures are exploded, sounds mutilated, and brought back to their essence. He’ll be playing at several SHAPE events this autumn.
Your background is in dance. How did you transplant the ways of expression from this field into music?
I use computers and different kinds of sensors but now I enjoy to play with video tracking.
You also talk about abstraction in connection with your work – can you elaborate?
I’m interested in everything science can’t explain. Abstraction is just a scientific avant-garde point of view were everything is possible, where you don’t have to prove or be approved about your vision. Because life is an abstract concept, I love the idea of implementing abstraction into my work.
Your way of creating music reminds that of a bricoleur – assembling and tweaking old instruments to your own needs.
I think it is what we call evolution or adaptation. I play only live and freestyle so I must always think about the best setup for my gig. When I say best, I mean it is more about the tools that will give me the freedom to let poetry come, so I have to always redefine my tools.
In your biography, it is written that you “don’t create, but regenerate and transmute” music. Can you explain?
I think everything is in the universe so it is difficult to say I create music, I only propose another way of listening to it. All we do is suggest formulas. When Newton discovered the gravitation law, he didn’t invent it.
Christian Marclay, Stelarc and Cyborg Manifesto author Donna Haraway. Can you specify what in particular inspired you about each of them?
Christian Marclay wanted to become a musician but he was a visual artist. He made hybridizations using a turntable and record hacking. I was a dancer and I wanted to become a composer. Marclay showed me the way how music is not just about knowing how to play an instrument but it is also about how to create your tools to express music. Stelarc is my Frank Zappa. Provocateur and poet. I like when the body becomes central in a technological concept. Donna Haraway showed me how the world can also be a hybrid, how it can be coded, how it can create limits and freedom.
Video seems to be one of your tools of expression, full of symbolism. Sometimes, as was in the case of the Intuition series, it shed light on your work. Can you talk about how you work with video?
It is an important layer because my music can’t express everything, so this is why music video, in my case, has to be involved in my creative process. I’ve collaborated with directors, explaining to them what I have in mind, but I want to direct myself in the future.
The idea of a “hybrid” seems to play an important role in your work. Can you talk about it?
I take the DNA from different mediums and mix them, but what is hybrid in my case is the way I create art. Where I come from, being a specialist is more secure, staying in one place. Hybrid is a soft way to make my work melt with everything that interests me.