Winfried Ritsch

Woodscratcher (Scratching Wood) is a composition and sound generating machine from Austrian composer, media-artist, sound-sculptor and performer, Winfried Ritsch.Already known as collaborator in different projects with Bernhard Lang (pieces from his series Differenz/Wiederholung, Trike), Peter Ablinger (Klavierautomat), Ritsch created “my own dedication to noise pieces of experimental music from 70s onwards”. This machine cuts a 2-5cm thick disk of a wooden trunk in a circular line along the growth rings of the wood, which makes this nothing else then monumental turntable. At the same time, the wood is amplified with four pickups (sensors) and the signals picked from microphones are spatialized over four loudspeakers in the corners of the room which spans acoustically the slice of the wood. This scratching in the concert is done until the inner part of the disk falls to the ground and the piece ends.