Boem BOem

‘Boem BOem a percussion instrument of monumental proportions that with its inhuman power makes your body tremble with fear.’ – Matteo Marangoni, Neural Magazine.

The name Boem BOem came from the sound poem “Boem Paukeslag” by Paul van Ostaijen. This installation is a visceral acoustic instrument constructed from two heavy duty accelerated baseball machines that fire balls 15 meters through the air with relentless rhythms at a speed of 150 km/h, propelling them to strike two wooden resonating boxes. The force of this hit ricochets the balls back another 15 meters through the air to land inside resonating catchers, which feed the balls back into the system.

Boem BOem shoots these streams of balls in different compositions, from funky rhythms composed by Vermeulen to less.defined algorithmic compositions by the machine itself. These violent yet playful compositions are fired audibly and visibly, each hit reflects and resonates the space around the bodies of the audience.

This work was created as part of the Summer Sessions network with V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, with the generous support of the Creative Industries Fund NL. The Physical Rhythm Machine / Boem BOem won the ArtScience department award at the Royal Art Academy (KABK) and was even nominated for the ‘PiketKunstprijzen’ painting prize in 2017. Since then, Boem BOem has been shown in various contexts, from white cubes to media festivals like Ars Electronica and clubs including Berlin’s Berghain.