**100 copies** Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. He took up saxophone and started to compose music, at first mainly jazz pieces and music for experimental theatre. In reciting poetry, especially the works of Antonin Artaud, Lucebert and Kurt Schwitters, he discovered the directness and flexibility of vocal utterance, whether using meaningful words or not. At present, he has developed into a prolific writer / composer and a specialist in the performance of sound poetry, supported by a powerful stage presence and an almost childlike freedom at improvisation.
"Traces of Cookery started with seven pairings of cooking ingredients, mostly of somewhat unusual nature, that were mixed together. Of these I took photos with a microscope, and chose one photo of every pair. The first image of every series in the book is such an original photo, with no processing done afterwards. Then, the next six images are variations of the first one, created with a mixture of digital and manual procedures. On the CD every ingredient has its own piece. The short text captions in English and German that are heard in them, were simply taken from the Internet. The same texts are to be found in the third image of every series (scrambled into a jumble of letters), in every sixth image they are legible. For the pieces on the CD, next to my voice, I used kitchen sounds as the only sound source. Why blood is in there? I am somewhat clumsy with knives." - Jaap Blonk