What is mockART?
mockART is a project founded by visual artist rabirius. The project experiments with music and sounds. As all music follows certain established patterns in terms of structure, composition and instrumentation, mockART tries to leave these established paths and find other ways.
Why mockART?
In the early 2000’s rabirius used to have a mobile phone with a bad photo camera that mostly produced abstract photos that looked very artistic. As he believes that a work of art has to be created by an artist and not by a machine or device he thought about calling these pictures mockART. When he formed a music project that deconstructs established patterns it was clear that mockART would be the perfect name.
The History of mockART
rabirius played electric and bass guitar in many bands, most of them never really made it out of the rehearsal room. Usually there were too many egos at work that interfered with the process of writing music and therefore most compositions were never really finished. When he finally found a band that managed to write many songs and also perform live, he noticed that most of the music was written by two other members and he felt that it was not really a part of him.
When rabirius left the band he thought why not make music all by myself. He installed a free digital audio workstation on his computer and began to experimented with electronic music, samples, noises and sounds: Then in 2005 mockART was born.
In 2006 he recorded fifteen tracks that were one minute long for a project by Zan Hoffman. As he wanted to include some vocals as well he already started to collaborate with other musicians and released the tracks as a very limited CD called 15 Partes del Mundo. All the copies were a gift to the vocalists and some friends.
One year later the first mockART album Reflux Ux Bisou was completed and published as a limited CD. In 2008 he recorded ION that was released on a split CD with Drén in Slovakia.
In 2009 mockART asked different musicians to record vocal samples and use them for their next project Country Songs. While working on the project, rabirius was asked to provide some of his pictures for an exhibition and started to focus on photography and digital art. Therefore mockART was put on the back burner.
mockART Today
In 2018 mockART finally became active again and the next album Living with Human Machines was recorded. The same year mockART remastered Reflux Ux Bisou and ION and re-released both albums as downloads and on CD. A year later Country Songs was finally completed and published.
In 2020 the classically trained avant-garde flutist Christoph Dorner became part of mockART’s core. Now a duo, Christoph and rabirius had to make use of the digital possibilities of contactless music-making due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They used these techniques to include further musicians in their first album together. Men Who Lost Their Heads was released in 2021 and thematically inspired by myths of conspiracies they read about in connection with the pandemic.
A year later they released their next album views | interrupted. The work was part of an art exhibition by rabirius, Sonja Ackermann and Christian Rocas. The music was written and recorded by Christoph and rabirius without any guest musicians. Therefore, the couple wanted to see how the music would have sounded with other artists involved and began working on a remix album. views | remixed is scheduled to be released in early spring 2023.