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Carsten Nicolai | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Alva Noto |
| Born | 18 September 1965 Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), former GDR |
| Education | Technical University of Dresden |
| Genre | electronic music · glitch · microsound · minimal techno · ambient |
| Occupations | Musician and visual artist |
| Label | NOTON |
| Website | www.carstennicolai.de |
Carsten Nicolai (born 18 September 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz) is a German artist, musician and label owner. As a musician he is known under the pseudonym Alva Noto.
Carsten Nicolai was born in 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in Saxony in the former GDR. He studied landscape architecture at the Technical University of Dresden and graduated with a diploma in 1990.
While still a student, Nicolai began exhibiting as a self-taught visual artist in informal, artist-run contexts, at a time when private galleries were effectively not permitted in the GDR. These early presentations laid the groundwork for his first connection with Galerie Eigen + Art, which would later become one of his longstanding gallery relationships.
In the immediate post reunification years, Nicolai also became an active cultural organiser. Together with other cultural practitioners, he co-founded and for many years ran the Chemnitz art and culture centre VOXXX on the Kaßberg, widely regarded as one of the city's earliest independent cultural initiatives of the period.
In 1994, Nicolai founded the label noton.archiv für ton und nichtton, later known as NOTON. In 1999, NOTON merged with the Chemnitz label RasterMusic under the name Raster-Noton, operating until 2017. Within a few years, the label became internationally recognised and, alongside A Musik and Mille Plateaux, was regarded as a key German platform for experimental electronic music. As a member (and co-founder) of the Raster-Noton label he was responsible for the acclaimed CD series 20 to 2000 that went on to win the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in 2000. In 2017, Raster-Noton was announced to split back into its predecessor labels, and Nicolai has since again released his musical work and collaborations independently via NOTON.
Under the moniker Alva Noto, Nicolai is regarded as one of the best known figures in contemporary electronic music. His musical work reflects aspects of his broader artistic practice, particularly its reductive approach and its engagement with signs, acoustics, and visual structures. Nicolai has performed and created installations at many of the world's most prestigious spaces including the Guggenheim in New York, the SFMOMA in San Francisco, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Modern Art Oxford, the NTT in Tokyo, the Tate Modern in London and the Venice Biennale. His musical projects include collaborations with Ryōji Ikeda, Mika Vainio, Iggy Pop, Blixa Bargeld, Michael Nyman, and Ryūichi Sakamoto. In 2009, Nicolai wrote the opera Sparkie: Cage and Beyond in collaboration with Michael Nyman. In 2015, Nicolai co-scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant, together with Ryūichi 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). In 2022, he received the German Documentary Film Music Award at DOK.fest Munich.
Parallel to his formative work in experimental electronic music, Carsten Nicolai also established himself internationally as a visual artist. Drawing on scientific reference systems, Nicolai explores mathematical patterns such as grids and codes, error and random structures, as well as the phenomenon of self organization. His work spans visual art, sound, and installations based practices. Following his participation in documenta X (1997) and the 49th and 50th Venice Biennale (2001 and 2003), his works entered private and public collections and were presented in exhibitions at major museums and galleries worldwide. Notable solo exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (anti reflex, 2005), Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (syn chron, 2005), Berlinische Galerie (tele, 2018), Kunstsammlungen Nordrhein Westfalen (parallax symmetry, 2019), and Haus der Kunst Munich (transmitter / receiver – the machine and the gardener, 2022). In 2007, on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Zurich's Haus Konstruktiv, he received the Zurich Art Prize, and in the same year he was awarded a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. In 2013, Nicolai participated as a visual artist in Biennale Documenta, an official collateral show of the 55th Venice Biennale.
Nicolai has held a professorship in art with a focus on digital and time-based media at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2015. He lives and works in Berlin.
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