Carsten Nicolai


Carsten Nicolai is a German artist, musician and label owner. As a musician he is known under the pseudonym Alva Noto.
WWW Official Site𝕏 alvanotoFB alvanoto

Life and career

Carsten Nicolai was born in Karl-Marx-Stadt of Saxony, GDR in 1965. He studied architecture and landscape design before pursuing art. In 1994 he founded the label NOTON, following which a collaboration with RasterMusic began and by 1999 the two labels had merged into Raster-Noton, which operated until 2017.
Returning to the labels origin in 2017, Nicolai runs NOTON separately.
In 2009 Nicolai wrote the opera Sparkie: Cage and Beyond in collaboration with Michael Nyman.
Nicolai performed and created installations in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including the Guggenheim, New York, the SF MoMA, Modern Art Oxford, NTT Tokyo, Tate Modern and Venice Biennale, Italy. As a member of the Raster-Noton label he was responsible for the acclaimed CD series 20 to 2000 that went on to win the Golden Nica prize at Prix Ars Electronica, 2000.
Carsten Nicolai also works as a visual artist. In 2013, Nicolai participated as a visual artist in Biennale Documenta, an official collateral show of the 55th Venice Biennale of Art.
Nicolai started his professorship in art with focus on digital and time-based media with Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2015.
Nicolai co-scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto. The score was nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Grammy and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. In 2018 he created the sound design for Iñárritu’s groundbreaking VR project "Carne y Arena" Flesh and Sand.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Group exhibitions (selection)

Discography

Alva Noto solo studio albums

Prototypes — 2000 Transform — 2001 & re-released on Raster-Noton in 2008 Xerrox Vol.1 — 2007 Unitxt — 2008 Xerrox Vol.2 — 2009 Univrs — 2011 Xerrox Vol.3 — 2015 Unieqav — 2018 Xerrox Vol.4 — 2020 HYbr:ID I — 2021 HYbr:ID II — 2023 HYbr:ID III — 2024 Xerrox Vol.5 — 2024

Alva Noto as Aleph-1 solo studio album

Aleph-1 — 2007

Alva Noto extended plays (EP">Extended play">EP)

Transrapid — 2005 Raster-NotonTransvision — 2005 Raster-NotonTransspray — 2005 Raster-NotonUnieqav Remixes — featuring reworks by Fatima Al Qadiri, Ben Frost, JASSS, Florian Kupfer, Luis Da Silva — 2020

Alva Noto as noto solo studio albums

  • spin — 1996
  • infinity — 1997
  • infinity — 1997
  • kerne — 1998
  • polyfoto — 1998
  • time..dot — 1999
  • empty garden, inside out '— 1999
  • telefunken — 2000
  • endless loop — 2002
  • autorec — 2002
  • sonar endless edition — 2003

Compilation albums

  • For— 2006
  • For 2— 2010

Soundtrack albums

The Revenant — 2015 Milan Records

Collaborations

;With Ryuichi Sakamoto, as alva noto + ryuichi sakamotoVrioon — December 2002 Insen — March 2005 Revep — March 2006 Insen Live — October 2006. DVD releaseutp_ — September 2008 Summvs — May 2011 Live 2002 — 19 January 2018
;With Ryoji Ikeda, as "Cyclo."Cyclo. — 2001 Cyclo.id — 2011 Cyclo. — 2017 Cyclo.id — 2017
;With Mika Vainio, as "noto"Ø + noto - mikro makro - 1997 Ø + noto - wohltemperiert - 2001
;With Scanner Uniform: SF MoMA 2001. CD Contains 1 track, "Uniform," performed and recorded by Carsten Nicolai and Robin Rimbaud for the exhibition of ""010101: Art in Technological Times"" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on 3 March 2001.
;With Blixa Bargeld, as ANBBRet Marut Handshake — 2010 Mimikry — 2010
;With Opiate, as OptoOpto Files — 2001. Limited CD release. Number 6 in the raster.static series. CD Comes in a silver anti-static bag with green card insert.Opto: 2nd — June 2004. The CD contains ten tracks, all titled with times of the day. The collaboration was created in a 48-hour period and was inspired by the restored recording from a cassette found in a forest in Eastern Germany.
;With ZeitkratzerZeitkratzer & Carsten Nicolai: Electronics — 2008
;With Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor
  • Anne-James Chaton With Alva Noto And Andy Moor - Décade, Raster-Noton, R-N 135, 2012
;With Anne-James Chaton as Alphabet
  • Alva Noto & Anne-James Chaton - ALPHABET, Noton, 2019
;With Olaf Bender, as Diamond VersionEP1 — 2012 EP2 — 2012 EP3 — 2013 EP4 — 2013 EP5 — 2013 CI — 2 / 3 June 2014
;With Iggy Pop and TarwaterLeaves of Grass — February 2016. A seven-track EP on which Iggy Pop performs the poetry of Walt Whitman to music composed by Alva Noto and Tarwater.

Compilation appearances (exclusive/non-albums tracks)

  • "Monophaser 4" from "V.a. – :2"
  • "Garment" from "Sound Canvas | 1"
  • "Planet Rock" from "Recovery"
  • "Stalker" from "In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky"
  • "Haloid Xerrox Copy 3 " from "Mind The Gap Volume 70"
  • "06.1 Quanta Random" from "Tribute to Iannis Xenakis"
  • "Sonolumi " from "Camera Lucida"
  • "Odradek " from "It Just Is In Memoriam Jhonn Balance"
  • "Re10" from "Landscape 2"
  • "Post-Remo" from "Richard Chartier + Various – Re'Post'Postfabricated"
  • "Party Plasibenpuis " from "The Hidden City: Sound Portraits from Goteborg"
  • "Time...Dot " from "An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Third A-Chronology 1952-2004"
  • "m6re" from "SoundxVision 2004"
  • "Obi 2 Min." from "Frecuencies "
  • "60 sec" from "Soundcultures"
  • "Strategies Against War 1.0—Covering All Information with White Noise" from "60 Sound Artists Protest the War" as Carsten Nicolai
  • "MM", "Time Dot" from "Raster-Noton. Archiv 1" as Noto
  • "Obi_2.3" from "Electrograph 02 – Athens Sound Media Festival 02"
  • "Menschmaschine" from "Klangmaschine_Soundmachine"
  • "Crystal R" from "Various – Live Sets At Ego 1998-2000" as Noto
  • "M 06 Short" from "Electric Ladyland Clickhop Version 1.0"
  • "Neue Stadt " from "Clicks & Cuts, Vol. 2"
  • "Modul 4", "Impulse" from "Raster-Noton.acis Box" as Noto
  • "Neue Stadt Skizze 1" from "Between Two Points" as Noto
  • "Sound Mobile" from "Ringtones"
  • "Prototyp P" from "Raster-Noton. Oacis"
  • "Prototype n." from "Clicks & Cuts"
  • "Crystal s 10 60 sec." from "Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, vol. 24" as Noto
  • "Crystal.s2" from "Microscopic Sound" as Noto
  • "∞ " from "Various – Because Tomorrow Comes No. 2" as Carsten Nicolai
  • "Polyfoto 1a-1" from "Modulation & Transformation 4" as Noto
  • "Zeit T3" from "Effe 1999"
  • "POL.Motor", ".Test", ".Versuch", ".Anordnung", ".Variation", ".Modell" from "Just About Now" as Carsten Nicolai
  • "Chemnitz" from "Decay" as Noto

Remixes

Installations, etc.

Accolades

Source: