Gijs Gieskes

Gijs Gieskes’ creations bridge the divide between innovative modules in Eurorack format and stand-alone art-gallery installations. Fuelled by barely tamed electricity and informed by a high-tech junk yard aesthetic, they seem to possess a life of their own, like a new breed of insect androids. Some of them are electro-mechanical-acoustic and some are purely electronic.

In action, they exude the kind of clumsy and lonely autonomous machine helplessness you get from a Survival Research Laboratories video (if less violent) or something like the film Der Lauf der Dinge by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Gieskes breaks down common household items or toys and interfaces them with the rest of your Eurorack modules: a toy speech-recorder; a clock (no, a real alarm-clock); hard-disk motors; an hourglass interacting with a laser beam.

His ‘VU-Perc(ussion)’ module is a good example of his aesthetic packed into a compact product: the needle of an old-fashioned VU-meter is triggered by external gates to jam into a copper strip welded on to a piezo-microphone element and amplified. Each one assembled by hand, they are all different, and plugged in and amped, they will make the acoustics of your entire Eurorack case come alive with a resounding thunk! Suffice it to say he has an instantly recognizable aesthetic that is all his own.