Jan Jelinek studied sociology and philosphy in Berlin, at the same time embarking on his experiments with a wide variety of digital audio processing media. In 1998, he began to release his works under the pseudonyms Farben and Gramm. In 2000, Jan Jelinek contributed audio collages to the Young Media Pavilion at the EXPO2000 in Hannover, Germany. In the years that followed, he worked with artists like Sarah Morris, Christopher Bauder, Dennis Busch and German author Thomas Meinecke, collaborated with vibraphone player Masayoshi Fujita, choreographer Sylvain Émard and improvisation ensembles such as the Japanese trio Computer Soup and the Australian jazz formation Triosk. Together with video artist Karl Kliem, Jelinek created a number of audio-visual performances that were presented at Centre Pompidou Paris. He wrote and produced several radio pieces for SWR2 Ars Acustica.

In 2007, Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler founded the trio Groupshow for music improvisations. In 2008, Jelinek started the label faitiche as a platform for his own sound experiments and collaborations. To date, the label has released twelve works, including the oeuvre of the fictional composer and artist Ursula Bogner whose scores, drawings and texts have been presented on exhibitions worldwide. Jelinek was awarded the Karl-Sczuka Advancement Award and a residency at Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto. In L.A. SCREEN MEMORIES, his project for Villa Aurora, he will record actual film locations and confront them with their cinematic history: Sound analysis programs convert film scenes into notes. These will then be played by field recordings from the original location, replacing the film’s original audio track. Cinematic fiction writes the score, which is interpreted by sounds from reality.