Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2008
For over twenty years, Swedish artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff (born 1956 in Linköping) has been giving shape to a range of works which push the boundaries of sound experimentation and reach out into installation art, photography, video, performance and curating projects. Stemming from his experiments with tape and investigations into EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and setting up a number of ongoing collaborations with artist Leif Elggren and with a wide range of experimental musicians in the collective, site-specific sound installation freq_out, von Hausswolff's work spans the undefined territory between sound and the visual arts – he has done so, also by organising exhibitions such as the 2nd Göteborg Biennial in 2003. His audio production, using devices such as oscillators, tone generators, microphones attached to electricity circuits, is inextricably linked to his visual and conceptual research, always addressing issues of borders, interior/exterior, liminal states and hidden fluxes of energies. At the forefront of international experimentation, his work has been featured in some of the most important exhibitions and museums in the world, and his audio pieces have been published by the most remarkable avant-garde labels.