Elektronengehirn Piksel 25 concert video online

You can now watch online last weeks Elektronengehirn concert at Piksel 25 Bergen (NO). It was the maximalist version of the concert Hardware with pieces from the same named album: three independent videoprojections (like the 2024 concert in Aarhus (DK)) and quadrophonic sound. The main projection Malte Steiner programmed with the game engine Godot, the side projection comes each from a Raspberry Pi with a C program done with Raylib. Remotecontrol was done from the PureData patch on the main computer via OSC through ethernet cables. Additional sound source was a custom made modular synthesizer system Steiner developed in the past years. This audiovisual concert comes close to his vision of the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Piksel 25

Elektronengehirn is going to perform a concert at Piksel festival in Bergen, Norway on the 22. November at Østre. During Piksel Malte Steiner also shows the installation The Tradwives at the exhibition from 20.-23. November.

Elektronengehirn concert Aalborg 8. November 2025

Elektronengehirn concert 8. November 2025 19:00 at GALLERI NIEMI Østerbro 70 Aalborg (DK)

Malte Steiner is an Aalborg based German visual artist and musician. He began exhibiting and creating electronic music in the early 1980s. In 1996 he initiated the project Elektronengehirn as an experiment to create music exclusively using software-based sound synthesis. The name is an old German term from the 1960s for computers, which were then referred to as electronic brains. What sounds trivial today was, at the time, a rather radical idea - especially for those without access to the computational resources of institutions such as universities. Computer sound synthesis for the masses was in its infancy, and not much was possible in real-time. Initially, Steiner used Csound in non-real-time mode to create complex electroacoustic
soundscapes out of processed field recordings and synthetic sounds. Later, with more powerful computers, he also added Pure Data and Max/MSP to the toolbox and wrote custom software in C/C++.
The album Hardware from 2024 breaks with that concept and features tracks which are also done with Eurorack modular synthesizer and custom electronic instruments that Steiner has been developing since 2022. During the concert pieces from the album are performed live on computer and DIY modular synthesizer.

https://www.elektronengehirn.de/

demo of b4Modular synthesizer

Demonstration of the b4Modular synthesizer Series 7 by Malte Steiner. The system features 2 analog Oscillators / LFO, one digital oscillator with 6 different modes, oscillator bank with 6 square waves, triple clock module, 3 slew limiters, a lowpass filter, tone control filter, wave folder, one ring mod / wave folder thingy, 5 VCAs, crossfader, mixer, 2 pressure sensors, a trigger button, unity and gates mixer.

"My diy modular synthesizer in a suitcase which I developed between 2024 and 2025. The goal was to develop a cheap modular system mainly for live concerts which is repairable and can go into Checkin Luggage without much worries (I would never do that with my Eurorack). So far I used that system for several concerts of my projects Elektronengehirn and Notstandskomitee in Berlin and Helsinki, and local Jam sessions here in Aalborg. It is build in a Nanuk 923 case which can remove the lid, the rails are made of wood and wood screws, the front plates are 3D printed. Everything works fine and the concerts were great, but learnings so far:

- the frame is rigidly attached to the case so any shock impacts directly the system. So far one of my 3D printed brackets broke which didn't hinder a concert. I redesigned it to be more sturdy and it never happened since. But the rigid design is a bit questionable and I rethink the approach.

- the PCBs have been fixed to the frontplates with common metal screws and nuts. From the travel one nut unscrewed itself because of the vibration. I replaced it with nylon screws and nuts which have more grip. It remembers of a story from a Berlin company which created custom modular synths for Tangerine Dream back then. They tested the sturdiness against vibration by dragging those flight cases over a copplestone street at night until police stopped them asking what the hell they were doing.

- I hit a limit with my power supply design with a self made voltage splitter and an additional 7805 on the positive rail. It can't handle many microcontroller based modules before it collapses. In future systems I use another approach for the power supply which is much more stabile."

Pictures from Elektronengehirn Berlin concert

The Elektronengehirn concert 19. April 2025 at Noiseberg, Berlin (DE). Pictures by Orange 'Ear.

Equipment was Linux computer with custom Pure Data patch for sound, custom software created with the Godot game engine for visuals, a digital synthesizer Malte Steiner developed 2 years ago and the new modular synthesizer he developed in the last couple of months.

concerts spring 2025

The next live concerts of Malte Steiner's soloprojects:

Elektronengehirn will play 19. April at Noiseberg Berlin, Germany

Notstandskomitee will play 17. May Object Permanence Festival at Caisa Culture Centre Helsinki, Finland

The Tradwives

Last year Malte Steiner learned that there is an antifeminist movement. Female antifeminists. Further research lead to the art installation The Tradwives: Three color e-paper screens generate and show unsupervised and uncensored collages of material which was data-scraped from Tradwife influencer profiles on Instagram. The material was first decomposed with Machine Learning into smaller bits which within the installation are rearranged to ever changing collages.
First shown at Oksasenkatu 11 Helsinki (FI) last September. Part of Steiner's art project Absolute Power.