CONSTRUCTION AND MEANING
For me, construction is a prerequisite for developing pieces, developing them by transferring my ideas into specific forms, adequate to these things I'd like to express. The use of certain numerical orders or names of persons, being associated with a construction or a piece, is more of a private decision. It does not have to be perceived by the audience. The most important thing is that a composer constructs his works in a solid way and transports messages into content. 
[In: Hanns-Werner Heister: Namen und Zahlen (1991)]

In my sketches to the Music theatre Cassandra Complex (1993/94) I developed a long row of numbers, that constitutes the whole work with its retrogades, inversions and retrogade-inversions. I used this technique not to create psychological moments, but more to symbolize the different positions of the uncredible blind Cassandra. And I used the numbers to create Heterotopics, which build contexts even in contradicted acts of Cassandra Complex (1993/94). In all my compositions after this music theatre I used rows of numbers from one to nine and zero (sometimes I distilled them out of rudimentary, artificial texts) in a much more subcutaneous way. These rows represent energies, that shine in all directions. Mostly they are secret, because I think it is more a question of composing technique. I don't want the listener to divert from the emotional sense, from direct perception. In one of my recent compositions, the choir …for Kavafis… (2000) I used the years, works of Konstantinos Kavafis have been published, in order to create - following Walter Benjamin - a "musical physiognomy". These years, while being hummed, can also be interpreted in fragments, beginning and ending somewhere - like the time, we go through, like love, which eyes, full of moments of loving. Shining like a grey opal and - conserved in memory, later could spend power and imagination. 
[In: heterotopien zahlen (2001)]

CREATING MUSIC WHILE LISTENING
The situation in which an artist has complete command over all levels of human perception - hearing, seeing or feeling expressions. That would be the optimum: developing paintings directly without colors or canvas, creating music without mediums like paper, instruments, speakers etc. Although this situation is quite utopian, artists have always tried to realize these ideas. In the art of painting, we have the examples of Kazimir Malevich, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, Barnett Newman, Richard Serra, Lee Ufan…; in music we have Earle Brown's December 1952, John Cages famous 4'33", Dieter Schnebel's visible Music MO-NO, Kunsu Shim's series of (untitled) compositions. Or - as an attempt to summarize former experiences - my graphical score Red and black - consisting of digital price-codes to be interpreted musically. I try to embrace all of the musical know-how, from simple imitation in space or between the most complicated sound constellations in space or in between players. These examples represent imaginative music, which does not have to be performed. It is music that makes suggestions - also suggestions to realize an artistic, acoustic interpretation of inner feelings.
[In: Hörendes Denken - Denkendes Hören (1995)]

COMPOSING AS A METAPHOR FOR PERMANENT CHANGE
In order to realize (my) premises it is necessary to define musical methods in a new way. A fixed style, or even compositional dogmatism, is not something that is required. But this means intense work and in respect to our limited time we have as a composer, I try and I have tried to follow the maxim of working on things that are missing or that seem to miss. In doing so, I always have my own limits, especially limited knowledge in mind. And because composing also means dealing with perception, with cognitive and emotional experiences, it can be used as an educational means - not as dry theory but as a metaphor of permanent change…
[In: Polyphonie von Welten (1999)]

DEALING WITH TECHNIQUE
New techno-gags, up to date programs, the wildest battle of material. Should these aspects really be the standard for evaluating aesthetic phenomena? No, Adorno is wrong in demanding a steady progression of material. It's not possible to revolutionize musical material. The most important thing is the use of materials in respect to their contents, characters, histories... Not all of these aspects are always relevant. Sometimes it is necessary to refer to one aspect of material, sometimes to another. The most frequent problem of electronic or computer music is that the "producer" is too impressed by spontaneously developed sound constellations. He then uses them only after a first check. Listening to sounds is often replaced by an enthusiasm for new technical fashions. That is the reason we often have electronic music that sounds sterile or even lifeless after hearing it for the second or third time. It is not easy to discover consistent structures or a kind of intense density. I presume that it would only be possible, if we trusted our ways of hearing and then tried to integrate these experiences into electronic music. That means not to collect elements the machine suggests, but instead to try to transport emotional listening into the mechanisms of electronic sound production. Certainly this kind of creating electronic music affects ways of using the machine, its sounds and contexts of the works being composed. An interesting point in the process of composing with electronic media is to discover that active hearing can be used as a standard for a compositions, that has its foundation in all speculative and constructive methods. This does not mean the exclusion of chance operations. Electronic mediums enable new freedom of expression by linking composition and interpretation. And, these experiences are also relevant to composing without machines.
[In: Polyphonie von Welten (1999)]

METHOD AS A MEANS
"Dreaming about the future" starts in the present (with its past): in analyzing the present (and its past). There is something that has to do with new phenomena, with searching, with discovering, with a creative, innovative way of dealing with the present (and its past)… With using new compositional methods in a responsible way (or avoiding these! Helmut Lachenmann recently said, "Pulling strings to the end means they could snatch, they could become slack or even oneself could get pulled back…"). It has something to do with a responsible use of new compositorical methods. Not as an end in itself, but as a way to find new ways… doing things that haven't been answered yet, but are necessary. (Ernest Bloch) 
[In: Nicht Traum. Traum: (1999)]

TECHNIQUE AND FANTASY
Technical competence should be required on all levels of composition and interpretation. One does not have to emphasize that a composer creates quality as well as works founded upon a close relationship between its parts. Perfection, or the attempt to increase one's competence, can be expected. The composer's fantasy and experience is important. In this context, other qualities become important as well: the ability to communicate compositionally with partners of similar competence or even to discuss one's ideas in a musical way. 
[In: Über eine Komposition zu zwölft (1999)]

COLLAGE AND MONTAGE
In contrast to collage - of the dadaists for example - I mainly refer to a kind of montage in the tradition of Sergey Eisenstein, the surrealists or - in a more direct way - of montage-techniques in the works of the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, or the composers Hanns Eisler, Luigi Nono or Nicolaus Huber. I do not prefer the use of quotations or quoted structures, but subcutaneously connected structures that have been developed in order to express specific intentional contents.
[In: Nicht Traum. Traum: (1999)]

BRICOLAGE SONOR
Bricolage sonor means dealing with sounds not produced by conventional instruments but generated by raw materials - such as leather, wood, glass, or metal. This term could be used to inaugurate a new view on alternative composing techniques. In this perspective Bricolage sonor would influence the way of composing, as it would maybe help in dealing with new sounds in a more experimental and flexible way. Bricolage sonor would then mean to broaden compositorical possibilities by avoiding a concentration on traditional instruments. Apart from this point, bricolage sonor is a technique, which enables music to develop a closer relation to everyday life becoming more precise and contemporary (helping to overcome the view of "classical" music). On the other hand, there is the problem of overloading music with a direct semantics, which does not have too much in common with a pure musical organization of sounds. The danger of bungling will arise as soon as we begin to deal with new sounds without principles and start to explore new sound-generators in an overactive, careless manner in order to cover missing ideas. Bricolage sonor materials - being "good" or "bad", "worthless" or "noble" - should be controlled by compositional intentions and should be legitimated by specific contents the composer wants to express. Apart from the uniqueness of sounds not generated by traditional instruments, bricolage sonor can revitalize the spontaneous moment of happenings or the enthusiastic obsession of allegorical fluxus actions in the '60s if the materials are used in a responsible way. Bricolage sonor as compositorical method has also developed its power in putting things that normally exist in the periphery into the center of works. In this way, bricolage sonor is a relevant method for my œuvre in general. My open-form conceptions or compositions from 1968 to the mid-'70s often integrate ready-mades such as matches, balloons, and saws (e.g. in Dämpfe und drüber...for eight active screamers) or even a motorcycle in the organ work Mo-PED. From the early '80s on, I used so-called bricoles mal, self-constructed objects (e.g. in Wirbelsäulenflöte for conventional instruments and sound objects of the sculptor Thomas Rother), material out of radio news and film (e.g. in fallen, fallen... und liegen und fallen.), Walkman sounds (in Zeitsprünge), sounds of splintering wood (in Ungaretti-Lieder), drops of melting ice (in O MURO), computer and printer sounds (in TRAUM 1/9/92), or stinking dust bags and tropical smells (in Die Nacht sitzt am Tisch). In Co - wie Kobalt, the sound of the orchestra refers to the acoustic sounds of everyday life. Here it becomes obvious that bricolage sonor materials are used to broaden the horizons of producing traditional music. 
[In: Rückprall (1995)]