About Me
Helmut Schaefer was born in Graz / Austria 1969. Up from 1983 he got inspired by the use of electronic music tools like TB 303 and DR 606, Commodore and Atari computers, first 16 bit Sampler (Casio FZ 1), different sample players and various other midi tools.
So he started to study audio engineering and spend several years learning techniques to use electronic music tools and understand sound. Then he started working all over Austria as audio engineer.
1997 he had the first success as artist with realization of an earthquake simulation project " IP Zentrum" for Steweag Kunstpreis 1997. This project was afterwards also shown at ARS electronica festival 1997 and at Documenta in Kassel 1997.
In 1997 he created also a four weeks long studio/lab/workshop about the recent developments in the fields of electronic and computer music and it's
tools. This project was presented as a part of "Technoscope Endoscape" programmed during Steirischer Herbst Festival 97.
During this project he met for the first time with Zbigniew Karkowski and they started collaborating together. This collaboration resulted in two works the piece "don't touch me I am electric" released on compilation sampler 'End ID' by Digital Narcis label in Osaka, and cd "Disruptor" released by OR label in London.
After this Schaefer stopped with making audio engineering work for others and started to focus on his own music only. Since then - his sound work is characterized by the use of very intense and direct musical language which
powerfully describes his personal experiences and reflections on society structures, the blindness of modern and informed masses and everyday functionalism in between civilization. These are existential terms, which Schaefer likes to abstract, by processing them with his sound language in order to stimulate the sub consciousness. Sch..fer was the last 10 years collaborating on various projects with following artist:
Zbigniew Karkowski, Atau Tanaka, Kasper Toeplitz, Settel Zack, Edwin van der Heide, Laurent Dailleau, Randy Yau, Scott Arford, Bob Ostertag, Graham Haynes, Will Guthrie, Zvonka Simcic, Theatre Gromki, KDES, Zenial - Palsecam, Karl Jensac, Christian F. Schiller, Geever, Elisabeth Gmeiner, Walter Kratner, Carmel Zekri, Aly Keita, Yacouba Moumouni and others.
He has performed his music in Japan, America, Africa, Europe and China.
