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Baldvin Ringsted (b. 1975, UK) is a human sample-based synthesizer. Within this technological music invention popular by the 1970’s contains the processing systems and structures at work in his artistic practice. Ringsted transforms and executes auditory and visual sources of information into alternative material forms, that when translated create new meaning of the original source material. Through installation, performance and sculpture, recent works have included Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech transcribed into a manuscript then performed by a solo cellist, and the land maps of Dresden, Munich and Berlin translated into piano-roll to automatically play the pianola, a type of mechanical piano. Here, the sampler is masterful, in control of the selection, translation, and the execution of the information. As what initially seems simplistic, and ultimately binary, becomes riddled with complexity and becomes powerfully emotive. Through this process of transformation, begins a transgression of the artist’s role where he slowly relinquishes his authorship through working with specialist manufacturers or skilled craftsman commissioning interpretations of his new order. As a result, Ringsted remains detached from the mechanics of the final presentation, yet solely implicit in its creation. It suggests that, by means of historical interpretation, we are distanced from the original source (the post event) and meaning, yet by process of synthesis and sampling, we arrive at a new way of understanding, albeit distorted. Yet through this distortion, we have the subjective arena of mythology, folklore, personal and unrecorded accounts, as if we need these new ways of relating to history, to know it is ours to make of what we will. As one considers the various stages of a single Ringsted artwork, a point of arrival marks a point of departure, where the possibilities of what could happen next, potentially starts the whole process of transformation again. Yet with every major philosophical movement or ideology, the cycle of this history is eternal, forever repeating itself, getting further from its origin, yet richer and deeper with intention.Yuen Fong Ling 2007