Expand and Collapse is a piece of music I composed, which began on June 6th at 6:00 pm and will play endlessly without repetition unless interrupted by external events.
The title refers both to a compositional technique and a broader concept. Starting from a single core, I generated 32 building blocks using expansion, inversion, and folding. These elements form a structure that can grow infinitely without repetition – until it eventually collapses, echoing the fragility of systems like the internet.
Metaphorically, the work reflects on unchecked growth: hypercapitalism, resource exploitation, and coming with that climate change.
The piece is realized as a website hosting the 32 blocks. Software accesses and sends them in a chain of chance operations – choosing which block to use, octave shifts, how many and which of the three voices to include. This process runs in two parallel streams and continuously restarts.
Programmed by Michael Stark, the website streams the same audio to all visitors, regardless of location.
The diverse musical work of Lukas Lauermann (*1985 in Vienna) is characterized by experimentation, openness and an ear for the essential. On the concert stage as well as in the studio, for theatre, performance and film, he is in demand as a composer, fellow musician and soloist, valued as a creative mind and cellist who knows how to expand the sound spectrum of his instrument with electronics.
Among the artists he has already worked with are Soap&Skin, Wanda, Andre Heller, Gelitin, Saint Genet, Mark Lanegan, Claudia Bauer, Robert Schabus and many others. In his works as a composer and solo artist, all these artistic and personal experiences and those from the classical education at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz flow together.
