Michael Vorfeld

Michael Vorfeld is a Berlin-based German musician and media artist who plays percussion and self-designed string instruments, and realizes electroacoustic and audio-visual installations. He is best known for Glühlampenmusik (Light Bulb Music), a project developed since the mid-1980s, in which incandescent light bulbs and switching elements generate sound through the relationship between current, filament vibration, and microphone pickup. The flickering and pulsation of the bulbs produces music in which light and sound become inseparable. Vorfeld has documented successive volumes on Karlrecords, marking the project's 20th anniversary with a 2025 release refining its vocabulary of flicker.