The piece ‘artificial clichés’ was created in 1991 in the studios of the Institute for Computer Music and Electronic Media (ICEM) at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and was realised on multitrack tapes using the Synlab analogue synthesiser. The unity of composer, performer and listener in immediate temporal succession makes this form of electronic composition a medium for the most direct reflection of musical imagination and experience; it is thus closely related to the working methods of the visual arts. This proximity is also evident in the possibility of recreating and depicting concrete states. Artificial reproductions of natural sounds thus also constitute the first class of sounds within the piece. The second class of sounds consists of those which, due to their immense reproduction, represent the clichés of the commercial music industry. The convergence of these two categories gives rise to an acoustic image in which the nature depicted is not natural enough to be perceived as natural, whilst, on the other hand, the artificial is not artificial enough to be explicitly perceived as an artefact. A kind of artificial naturalness emerges, in which the most essential elements are manifested sonically, yet details remain omitted.