"Kennzeichnung von Zusatzstoffen" was the first collaboration of Gerhard Zander and Gerald Fiebig. The piece was conceived specifically for the festival Experimentelle Musik in Munich, which back then was held annually in the refectory of the Technical University Munich.

The sound material of the piece consists exclusively of sound recordings made during the everyday business of the refectory. The sounds were collected using various recording devices (minidisc and MP3 recorder, analogue dictaphone). There was no processing of the sounds other than that effected by the technical properties of the respective recording media. The compositional principles of the piece are editing and montage.

For the performance, selected parts of the field recordings were distributed among several playback devices. These were assembled into a musical structure through the live interplay of the two performers. The construction of the piece arises from the specific qualities of the found sound materials.

"Kennzeichnung von Zusatzstoffen" makes use of the everyday sounds of the TU-Mensa, especially its characteristally reverberant spatial acoustics (including parts of the building not usually accessible to the public), and integrates these in a transformed, but still recognisable form into the special situation of a musical performance in the same place. The title, too, is a found object from an information placard in the foyer of the refectory.

The piece is based on an idea by "die grenzlandreiter" (Mathias Huber and Gerald Fiebig) and was realised with the kind support of Thomas Pliatsikas.

After the performance, Simone Rist - a soprano who had had pieces dedicated to her by John Cage and who during her formative years had worked as an assistant to Pierre Schaeffer at GRM in Paris - came up to us and said how much she had enjoyed the way it had reminded her of the 1960s musique concrète style. In 2007, the now-defunct Institut de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges gave the piece a honorary mention at their annual awards.

We had fallen in love with electroacoustic music, and with this piece, the world of electroacoustic music started loving us back. The confidence gained from this initial collaboration launched us on our way as a duo, which produced numerous live performances and a series of releases between 2007 and 2012. As you will note in the list below, the first release was called Modul 2, but - not unlike the Annual Reports of Throbbing Gristle :-) - the first module remained missing until today. Well, now, here goes.

Zander/Fiebig, September 2020

Further releases by Zander/Fiebig:
Modul 2 - brainhall.net/popups/zehn.htm
Modul 3 - emerge.bandcamp.com/album/modul-3
SoundCycle - emerge.bandcamp.com/album/soundcycle
Raumpunkte - emerge.bandcamp.com/album/raumpunkte
Elektroakustisches Picknick (Mischtechnik) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8VRjGPT7zs&t=17s