From 2010 onwards Mirjam Wiesemann photographed shop windows and their reflections on her travels, from Barcelona to Los Angeles and Zurich, and then asked people aged between 7 and 80 what they personally see in her pictures. Photographs and texts became the 164-page art book “Weht ein Stadtspaziergang durch den Traum”. For the audiobook of the book, Mirjam Wiesemann, Tara Wiesemann and Renate Wiesemann-Fuchs read a selection of these texts. The pictures from which they arose are replaced by the level of music; in this way, as Wiesemann writes in the booklet, an independent, new art form comes into being.
An announcement and a preface are followed by 25 sections, each named after a picture in the art book, such as “Zürich 1”, “Paris 17”, “Düsseldorf 19” or “Hollywood 5”. The three speakers tell one another daydreams and dreams of the night, comment, think aloud and ask themselves: “Wach’ ich oder träum’ ich?” (am I awake or dreaming?). Sometimes they see the same thing and exchange their impressions. For each section the booklet gives the pages of the corresponding picture in the art book, the first names of the authors and the music.
The music comes from the Cybele Records catalogue. Most of it consists of electroacoustic pieces from the ex machina and DEGEM series, among them “La cloche sans vallées” by Ludger Brümmer, “Die Landschaft von Vineta” by Georg Katzer, “nahe zu fern” by Dirk Reith and “Kontinuum mit Melodie” by Johannes Kreidler. From the Feedback edition come “Hochtöner” and the Concerto da camera for violin and 12 strings by Johannes Fritsch. They are joined by Juan Allende-Blin’s “Transformations II” for organ with Gerd Zacher, the Prelude in F sharp minor BWV 883 from Book II of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with Thomas Günther, and a song with improvisation on the toy piano, played by Mirjam Wiesemann.
Spoken word direction and dramaturgy were in the hands of Mirjam Wiesemann, author, actress and artistic director of the audiobook series Wort&Musik. Tara Wiesemann, born in Duisburg in 1998, had previously read in the audiobooks “Die Prinzessin” and “Auf Flügeln in die Tiefe”; Renate Wiesemann-Fuchs is a painter and graphic artist and also works as a storyteller of fairy tales. The spoken word was recorded on 5 and 6 August 2014 at the Cybele Studios with an artificial head by HEAD acoustics, and the music on 18 August 2014, likewise through the artificial head. The audiobook appeared ten years after the founding of the Wort&Musik series.