Marking the 25th anniversary of the albums British-Canadian electronic musician and DJ Richie Hawtin released under his F.U.S.E. persona, the recent F.U.S.E Dimensions audiovisual exhibition at London’s The Store X, 180 The Strand. The exhibition presented them alongside the original artworks made by his brother, visual artist Matthew Hawtin. Key to the event’s audio playout were JoeCo’s Blackbox player and Funktion-One sound system.
In the early 1990s the Hawtin brothers were living at their parents’ house in Ontario, Canada, and shared an interest in electronic music and abstract minimalist art. The developing techno scene with its eclectic crowd, dark industrial venues, electrifying sound and energy would leave a deep impression on them both, fuelling their creativity.
Living and working under the same roof, they developed ideas and inspired each other through their works. Richie’s album titles Dimension Intrusion and the previously unreleased Computer Space were both derived from Matthew’s paintings, which would then go on to be used as cover artwork for the albums.
This shared creative period was all brought together into one exhibition to celebrate the launch of a limited-edition remastered anniversary vinyl box set from the Plus8 record label and The Vinyl Factory of the two F.U.S.E. albums, along with the previously unreleased Computer Space.
The aim of the exhibition was to create an immersive sound experience that would combine the audio and visual elements of the art. This was achieved with playback from a JoeCo Blackbox BBP1B player via four Funktion-One stacks placed one in each corner of the exhibition space.
‘The host venue 180 The Strand/Vinyl Factory provided the stacks, but we wanted to bring in the JoeCo player to complete the sound experience,’ explains Johannes Krämer, sound engineer for Richie Hawtin. ‘We own two JoeCo engines, a 24-channel analogue BBP1B, and a 64-channel BBP64Dante Dante player. They are called into action on tour, for recording or used in art projects like this. We use them because they are flexible and reliable. There is the flexibility to program the machine within the player software. Also, whenever we had any issues or questions, JoeCo responded straight away to help us.’
Once again, the Blackbox player proved its reliability to Hawtin and Krämer at the F.U.S.E Dimensions exhibition. ‘There were no playback problems during the whole exhibition time, even when there were power failures or unexpected interruptions,’ he reveals. ‘When we powered up again, we simply started the player software and the small playlist program that we’d created. We are very happy with how everything worked out and sounded.’
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