Monolake^DE

Composing music and crafting audiovisual art through his own technologies, Robert Henke expands on electronic music's legacy to reveal the soul hiding in the machine. Atmospheric and cinematic one moment, maniacal yet meticulously constructed the next, Monolake's creations immerse audiences in a complex, expressive, laser-lit world.

An inventor to the core, Henke is known for his range of emotionally evocative high tech music and ever-evolving audiovisual installations. After joining Basic Channel offshoot label Imbalance Computer Music, Henke co-founded Monolake in 1995 with Gerhard Behles (also his Ableton Live co-inventor). The duo immediately joined the legendary Chain Reaction minimal techno label, becoming one of the key icons of a new electronic club culture emerging in Berlin after the fall of the Wall. For more than a decade now, Monolake has been Henke’s solo concern—true to his nature as restless researcher and scientist, he's pushed the project into new territories, maintaining a signature balance of cerebral cool with dynamic club vibrations. Henke's cutting-edge and carefully designed laser and A/V shows, under his own name and as Monolake, render the mechanical invisible in pursuit of a truly human, coexistent experience. Henke's real-time laser performance series Lumière has seen three iterations since 2013, each building on a custom software framework. Among recent collaborations, Henke and artist-designer Christopher Bauder created 3D kinetic installation Deep Web, featuring 12 high precision lasers and a matrix of 175 moving balloons.

A consummate performer who delights in the immediacy of audience, Monolake performs two live surround shows at MUTEK, unleashing a sonic storm in Montréal's immersive PY1 pyramid space—augmented with visuals by Diagraf.