Cashyou

Cashyou is an interactive sound installation that I developed as part of Museum of a Future Past in collaboration with Ensemble Recherche at Ensemblehaus Freiburg.

The work deals with money as a constructed system and asks how value, exchange and belief shape a modern society. It is based on the idea that money is something both abstract and material at the same time: a system that only exists because we collectively agree on it.

Visitors were invited to donate coins to the German Children’s Fund. The coins were dropped through a tube system into a prepared piano. Each coin triggered an unpredictable musical response, generating new harmonic and melodic material inside the instrument. In addition, each donation activated composed soundscapes that I created for the installation.

In “performance mode”, the installation also involved live musicians performing within the system. Klaus Steffes-Holländer (piano), Åsa Åkerberg (cello), and Sofia von Atzingen (viola) responded in real time to the incoming donations, creating a direct interaction between audience input and live performance.