1969 – I was 8 years old – a friend and classmate invited me to an unusual experiment in his room. Like many of us he had an old tube radio. Parents mostly went »transistor« which was on the way to conquer the world.
Back to the tube radio. Like most of them this one had an amplifier with output and input (meant for recording to and playing from a tapemachine). What my friend did was to connect the input and output through his toy train transformer (seriously!). I was scared like hell the whole thing might explode, but at the same time fascinated by the unusual sounds that came out of the speaker.
You could turn knobs like volume, »tone« or even the speed regulator on the toy train transformer and the sounds would change beautifully but totally unpredictable. Helicopters, Bees, Ufos and some sounds simply beyond description. I was hooked (and remained until now, 50 years later).
The same year saw the first moonlanding. Luckily my parents loosened their usual strictness on reduced tv time and the journey to the moon absorbed me into a seemingly endless fascination just like the journey into sound.
I guess the fact that I wish art to be a start into something new has its origin from the general feeling of that time. And yes, music and art were very much »into something new« then.