PARTICIPANTS AT EARZOOM 2011

30. September - 4. October 2011, Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

AKE PARMERUD - link

Performance: 30. 09. at 21.00 / ŠKUC

Åke Parmerud has been working full time with music and multimedia art since late –70. Being trained as a photographer between 1972-74, he studied music at the University and later at the Conservatory of Music in Göteborg, Sweden. His list of works includes instrumental music as well as electro acoustic compositions, multi-media and interactive art, video and music for theater, dance and film. He also works as stage performer, doing live electro acoustic music with different kinds of interactive instruments, solo or together with other artists. Since 10 years, Ake also worked as a sound and software designer for innovative interactive audio/visual installations and his own works.
He is the most rewarded composer of electro acoustic music since 1978 when his piece “Proximities” received a first prize in the international festival for music in Bourges, France. His music has been released on 2 LPs and 2 CDs and also appears on several compilations.

 

NICOLAS COLLINS - link

Workshop: 01.10. at 10.00–15.00 / Ljudmila
Lecture: 02.10. at 12.00 / Modern Gallery
Performance: 02.10. at 21.30 / Kinoteka

New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins studied composition with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, worked for many years with David Tudor, and has collaborated with numerous musicians around the world. He lived most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was Artistic Director of STEIM (Amsterdam) and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. Since 1999 he has been a Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. His book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge), has influenced emerging electronic music worldwide.

Performance:
In Salvage, seven performers attempt to re-animate deceased and discarded electronic circuitry: cell phones, computer motherboards, fax machines, sound mixers, musical keyboards, etc. Six of the players use test probes to make connections between a simple circuit of my design and the electronic corpse; feedback between my circuit and the components on the dead board produce complex patterns of oscillation, that are always changing in response to the slightest movement of the probes. The seventh performer “conducts” the performance by periodically signaling the players to try to freeze the current sound texture by holding their probes as still as possible.
A flickering candle controls the tuning of oscillators in In Memoriam Michel Waisvisz.

Workshop:
Assuming no technical background whatsoever, this workshop guides the participants through a series of sound-producing electronic construction projects, including:

There will be a charge of 10 euro per person for materials. In addition, participants must bring basic hand tools (wire cutters and strippers), a soldering iron, and some simple supplies.

 


TOMAŽ GROM - link

Performance/Instalation opening: 01.10 at 19.00 / Gregorčičeva 3, Galerija

Visiting hours: 02.-04.10. at 14.00–18.00

Tomaž Grom, based in Ljubljana (Slovenia), is a contrabass player and a composer. As an improviser he dedicates much time to exploring expanded techniques for playing the contrabass in combination with electronics. His creations make a determinate mark on his unfailing exploration of his own sonic potential. Whereby the principle of spontaneity guides him. Tomaž Grom has performed in a variety of musical roles. Recently he cooperated with: Seijiro Murayama, Jonas Kocher, Michel Doneda, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Pascal Battus, Zlatko Kaučič, Irena Tomažin, Samo Kutin, Vid Drašler, Neža Naglič, Andrej Fon… He has also toured and made appearances at several festivals throughout Europe and Canada. He has created music for numerous theatrical, dance, puppet performances. His performances Bruto in Ništrc are included in Artservis collection (projekt SCCA-Ljubljana). Since 2006 he's leading a music workshops in the framework of Maksimatika (electro-acustic improvisation) and since 2009 a workshop Search-Reflect (unidiomatic improvisation). He is also an artistic director of Sploh Institute for art production and publishing based in Ljubljana which engages in music and performing arts production, publishing and education.

Performance/ instalation: A Piece for Accordeon
Despite of control and restrictions, we are not aware of our being trapped we believe we are free. Creative freedom as an artistic privilege is a mistake. I am, when I am under controll.
Concept and composition: Tomaž Grom
Programming in: Arduino (microcontroller), Pure Data (sound), Processing (picture)
and realisation of sensoric system: Vasja Progar - link

Produced by Sploh institution.

 

PHILIPPE PASQUIER - link

Performance: 01.10. at 21.00 / Kino Šiška

Lecture: 03.10. at 17.15 / Modern Gallery

Philippe Pasquier is an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology of Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Communication, Arts and Technology since January 2008. There, he is conducting both a scientific and artistic research agenda. His research focuses on building deeper theories for endowing machines with autonomous behaviors, with a focus on creative and artistic applications. Since his arrival at SIAT, he has been conducting research along three directions which he believes to be in synergy.  1. Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Sciences; 2. Computational Creativity and Computer Entertainment; 3. Artistic Creation and Administration.

Performance:
Reliquary is a 45 minutes four to eight channels sonic excursion. Materials used during the performance are processed recordings of:
- Korean traditional shamanic instruments (taepyongso, jing and jong) and Korean shaman voices 
- Aboriginal Australian instruments (yidaki and bullroarer)
- Orthodox woman choir
- Sound scape recordings (thunderstorm, rain, wind and insects)
- Rich textures generated using a variety of analog effects and vintage synthesizers (Korg Ms-50, EMS Synthi A, ARP Odyssey, Melisson, Korg Mono/Poly, Serge, ...)
Part composition, part improvisation, the performance is conceived in the tradition of "cinema for the ears" and revolves around the concept of primal sacred music.

 

 

HANS TAMMEN - link

Performance: 01.10. at 21.00 / Kino Šiška

Lecture: 03.10. at 16.15 / Modern Gallery

Hans Tammen creates music that has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He produces rapid-fire juxtapositions of radically contrastive and fascinating sounds, with micropolyphonic timbres and textures, aggressive sonic eruptions, but also quiet pulses and barely audible noises - through means of his ENDANGERED GUITAR and interactive software programming, by working with the room itself, and, as a critic observed, with his "...fingers stuck in a high voltage outlet". Signal To Noise called his works "...a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage", All Music Guide recommended him: "...clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s."

Performance:
EPIGENESIS is a multichannel Endangered Guitar work funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center, and created during a residency at Diapason Gallery, Brooklyn. The work consists of two independent voices simultaneously drawn from my "Endnagered Guitar" - a hybrid interactive guitar/software instrument. One is a single voice located somewhere in the room, the other is a micropolyphonic pattern on the speakers that surround the audience.

 

ROGER DANNENBERG - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 11.00 / Modern Gallery

Performance: 03.10. at 19.00 / Aksioma

Roger B. Dannenberg is an Associate Research Professor in the Schools of Computer Science and Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Dannenberg is well known for his computer music research, especially in programming language design and real-time interactive systems.  His pioneering work in computer accompaniment led to three patents and the SmartMusic system now used by over one hundred thousand music students. He is the author of several innovations include the Piano Tutor, machine learning applications to music style classification and the automation of music structure analysis. As a composer, Dannenberg’s works have been performed by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and at many festivals. As a trumpet player, he has collaborated with musicians including Anthony Braxton, Eric Kloss, and Roger Humphries, and performed in concert halls ranging from the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem to the Espace de Projection at IRCAM. Dannenberg is active in performing jazz, classical, and new works.

Performance:
Patterns is a live-coding performance piece using an experimental visual language. The key idea is that objects generate streams of data and notes according to parameters that can be adjusted on-the-fly. Many objects take other objects or even lists of objects as inputs allowing complex patterns to be composed from simpler ones. The interconnections of objects are indicated graphically by nested circles. The composition is created by manipulating graphical structures in real-time to create a program that in turn generates the music. The audience sees the program while listening to the music it generates. The Patterns language used in the performance and its implementation were
created by the composer.

 


PIETRO POLOTTI - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 12.30 / Modern Gallery

Pietro Polotti studied piano, composition and electronic music, attaining the corresponding diplomas in the Conservatories of Trieste, Milan and Venice, respectively. He has a degree in physics from the University of Trieste. In 2002, he obtained a Ph.D. in Communication Systems from the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland) with a thesis on a new method for sound synthesis based on wavelet transforms, denominated Fractal Additive Synthesis.
Presently, he teaches Electronic Music at the Conservatory “G. Tartini” of Trieste, Italy. Since 2004, he has been collaborating with the University of Verona as sound designer within various European projects such as NIW (Natural Interactive Walking − www.niwproject.eu), CLOSED (Closing the Loop Of Sound Evaluation and Design − closed.ircam.fr) and others.
During the last years, his interests moved from digital sound processing towards sonic interaction design and interactive arts focused on sound. He is part of the Gamelunch group − www.soundobject.org/BasicSID/Gamelunch. In 2008, he started with Maurizio Goina the EGGS project (Elementary Gestalts for Gesture Sonification − www.visualsonic.eu).

Lecture: Artistic creativity rethinks science
The title of this lecture is partially borrowed from the last Sound and Music Computing conference that took place in Padova in July, 2011. Such theme is an extremely hot topic of speculation within the scientific community, at least for what concerns computer sciences. In this lecture, we propose some considerations about the role that artistic research could have within science, where science is meant in the wide sense of knowledge, including, thus, humanities as a one of the partners together with natural sciences. After a more general discussion, we will restrict the scope to the case of sound art involving new technologies and sound design for Human Computer Interaction (HCI), namely Sonic Interaction Design (SID). In our discussion, the concepts of design have a particular relevance, since they provide a connection between fields traditionally far away one from the other such as natural sciences, art, engineering and humanities. In the last part of the lecture, we provide some examples about what we mean by doing artistic research guided by a design practice.

 

 

MATTHEW BURTNER - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 16.00 / Modern Gallery

Performance: 04.10. at 20.00 / Kinoteka

Matthew Burtner is a composer, saxophonist, inventor and explorer specializing in concert music and interactive media. His music engages themes of ecoacoustics, (dis)embodiment, and extended polymetric and noise-based systems. A 2009 Howard Foundation Fellow of Brown University, and the 2010 Provost Fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies at UWM, Burtner has conducted long-term artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Phonos Foundation/UPF (Spain), Musikene (Spain), Cite des Arts (France), IRCAM/Centre Pompidou (France), and The University of Missouri Kansas City (USA). He teaches at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Professor of Music, Director of the Interactive Media Research Group (IMRG), and Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center. He studied at Tulane University in New Orleans, Xenakis’ UPIC Studios in Paris, Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Lecture/performance:
Interactive Ecoacoustic Control Interfaces for Musical Performance
Using specialized transducers and interactive software, the environment can become a dynamic instrument for musical performance. This talk will describe recent projects using ecoacoustic data mapping for interactive systems. Burtner’s work uses specially-designed hardware interfaces and interactive programming to create dramatic multimedia musical works. He will discuss recent ecoacoustic compositions using an erupting volcano, a sand dune, Arctic ice deformations, and wind turbulence as interactive interfaces. Composing outdoors in collaboration with nature, Burtner’s work attempts to define human-nature dialectics in musical form. He then attempts to bring aspects of these environmental systems into concert music performances in concert with human musicians. The performance set will feature the compositions "A'aa" for instrument and lava, "Windsketches" for metasax, "Mists" for stones and noise, "Sandprints" for sand and computer, and "Spectral Arctic Sub-Ice Triangulations" for sub-ice ecoacoustics.

Produced by Aksioma.

 

WILLIAM BRENT - link

Lecture/presentation: 02.10. at 16.30 / Modern Gallery

Workshop: 10.00–13.00 / Ljudmila

William Brent’s creative work is spread across the areas of experimental music performance, sound art, and sound design. These projects involve various combinations of human- robotic- and computer-realized sound, and are controlled by software written in the SuperCollider and Pd programming environments. In addition to concert-based projects, William is also active in the areas of remote network music performance and interactive sound installation. His current research areas are the relationship between gesture and sound in the performance of live computer-based music, and signal processing techniques for timbre identification. As a programmer, he has developed various tools for use in Pd, including timbreID: an open source library of objects for real-time timbre analysis and identification. William is currently an Assistant Professor of Audio Technology at American University in Washington DC.

Lecture/presentation:
This presentation will consider creative applications at the intersection of two libraries developed by the author for Pure Data: timbreID and DILib.  The timbreID library provides a convenient set of tools for real time and offline audio analysis, while DILib streamlines the acquisition and management of control data from widely available sensor hardware.  As one system is geared toward analysis/synthesis and the other toward the physical control of synthesis parameters, they can be used in tandem for the design of novel digital musical instruments. Features and general design characteristics of each system will be described, followed by demonstrations of specific instruments that make use of accelerometers, multitouch surfaces, infrared fingertip tracking, and full body tracking

Workshop:
The task of mapping relationships between sound synthesis parameters and a physical source of control has become very approachable in recent years.  As a result, artists with a wide range of technical experience can pursue the design of novel digital musical instruments.  This three hour workshop will focus on widely available options for achieving mappings between synthesized sound and physical performance gestures as captured by a variety of sensors.  Sources of control data to be covered include: built-in laptop hardware, multitouch surfaces, the Wii remote, the PS3eye camera, and the Kinect sensor.  If possible, participants should bring laptops installed with standard software development tools and Pure Data (Pd)—a programming environment for synthesis and multimedia.  Using DILib—a new Pd library for simplifying access to physical control streams—we will explore the workings behind instruments that make use of accelerometers, multitouch surfaces, infrared fingertip tracking, and full body tracking.

Produced by Aksioma.

 

PIERRE ALEXANDRE TREMBLAY - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 11.30 / Modern Gallery

Performance: 02.10. at 20.00 / Kinoteka

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay is a composer and a performer on bass guitar and sound processing devices, in solo and within the groups ars circa musicæ (Paris, France), de type inconnu (Montréal, Québec), and Splice (London, England, UK). His music is mainly released by Empreintes DIGITALes and Ora.
He is Reader in Composition and Improvisation at the University of Huddersfield (England, UK) where he also is Director of the Electronic Music Studios. He previously worked in popular music as producer and bassist, and is interested in videomusic and coding.
He likes oolong tea, reading, and walking. As a founding member of the no-tv collective, he does not own a working television set.

Produced by Aksioma.


TAE HONG PARK - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 17.00 / Modern Gallery

Performance: 03.10. at 21.00 / Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova hall

Tae Hong Park holds B.Eng., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Korea University, Dartmouth College, and Princeton University. He has worked in the area of digital communication systems and musical keyboards at the LG Central Research Laboratory in Seoul, Korea (1994~1998). His music has been heard in various locations in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, South Korea, Sweden, UK, and USA. His works have been played by groups and performers such as the Argento Ensemble, Brentano String Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit, Wayne Dumaine, Edward Carroll, Entropy, Zoe Martlew, Nash Ensemble of London, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Onix Ensemble, Ensemble Surplus, and the Tarab Cello Ensemble. He organized the 2006 ICMC conference, is currently President of ICMA, serves as Editor of Journal SEAMUS and Editorial Consultant for CMJ, and is Associate Professor at Georgia State University. He is author of “Introduction to DSP: Computer Musically Speaking” published in 2010.

Performance: t1 for trumpet and tape; on trumpet: Jure Gradišnik

 

JURE GRADIŠNIK - link

Performance: 03.10. at 21.00 / Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova hall

JURE GRADIŠNIK, born on 22.3. 1983 in Slovenj Gradec, began to learn playing trumpet in the music school with professor Janez Miklavžina when he was ten. After he finished music school in Prevalje, he entered Peter Jevšnikar class at the Ballet High School in Ljubljana and later in professor's Stanko Arnold class at Ljubljana Music Academy, which he finished with honors in 2006. In 2008 he successfully passed the exam and is now continuing with postgraduate studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in the class of prof. Hans Ganscha.In 2003 he received a YAMAHA fellowship. He won numerous awards at national competitions. In 2005 he received the first prize in a national competition of Slovenian musicians. Same year, he won the Prešeren Award of Ljubljana Music Academy. Regularly participates in seminars and international summer schools with recognized trumpet players, such as B. Nilson, J. Thompson, B. Shew ...Jure Gradišnik is a member of SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana Brass Quintet, as a soloist he has performed with Chamber String Orchestra of the Slovenian Philharmonic, with the Orchestra of National Opera and Ballet in Ljubljana and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. He is employed as the first trumpeter in National Opera and Ballet Ljubljana Orchestra and teaches trumpet at the Music School of St. Stanislav Institute in Ljubljana.

 

ALEXANDRE TORRES PORRES - link

Lecture: 02.10. at 17.00 / Modern Gallery Performance: 03.10. at 19.30 / Aksioma

born 1977 / dead (????)
Musician, Composer and Researcher. Porres has several different kinds of influences, with works that range from pop music, interactive installations, electroacoustics, live electronics, improvisation, noise, orchestral and chamber music.
Areas of Interests include: Music & Technology (Music Production, Computer Music & Electroacoustics) - Creation, Performance and improvisation in Contemporary Music and new media.
He has a masters in Composition. Currently, Porres is a PhD candidate in Computer Music at USP/Brasil, and was recently a research trainee at McGill/Canada in 2010. Porres also teaches computer music courses, workshops and has given a great number of Pure Data workshops, specially in Brazil.

Performance:
A noisy improvisation performance. Piezo microphones are stuck on the performer's throat. Wires coming out of it evoke an eerie bionic look. The feeling of having something stuck in your throat is that of not being able to express yourself properly, and the byproduct feelings of anguish, frustration and anger are depicted in the performance. The performer's mouth and eyes are also covered with duct tape. This increases the visual tension, and restricts the sounds to be solely produced by the throat.
This is all thought to be a development of the concept of having something stuck on your throat, the sensation of not being free, and struggling to do so. During the performance, we witness the
performer trying to make the most out of this limitation, trying to outcome the feeling of having something stuck on the throat, and bursting it out!

 

ATAU TANAKA - link

ADAM PARKINSON - link

Performance: 02.10. at 20.00 / Kinoteka

Lecture: 03.10. at 14.30 / Modern Gallery

Atau Tanaka bridges the fields of media art and experimental music. He creates music for sensor
instruments, wireless network infrastructures, and democratized digital forms. In the 90ʼs he formed Sensorband with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide. In Japan at the arrival of the laptop and noise scenes, he came in contact with and played with Merzbow, Otomo, KK Null and others. Atau has released solo, group, and compilation recordings on labels such as Sub Rosa, Bip- hop, Caipirinha Music, Touch/Ash, Sonoris, Sirr-ecords. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, STEIM, ZKM, Sonar Festival.

Adam Parkinson is an electronic musician based in Newcastle, England. He has worked alongside various improvisers such as Rhodri Davies, Klaus Filip, Robin Hayward and Dominic Lash. He has releases on Entrʼacte, Unique 3ʼs Mutate Records, Si Beggʼs Noodles and 16k records. He also dabbles in making dance music, and under various guises has remixed Maximo Park, Dextro and others. He has been involved in collaborations to create sound installations, most recently Middling English, with poet Caroline Bergvall.

Atau and Adam have been performing together for nearly 3 years: first as a laptop / biomuse duo,
before developing the iPhone as sensor instrument. This lead to the development of ʻ4-Hands
iPhoneʼ which has so far been performed across Europe and North America including the
FutureEverything Festival (Manchester, UK), Charm of Sound Festival (Helsinki, FL), Passos
Manuel (Porto, PT), Music With A View (New York, US) and Mois Multi (Quebec City, CA).

Performance: 4-hand iPhone
Adam & Atau exploit a commonly available consumer electronics device, the Apple iPhone, as an
expressive, gestural musical instrument. Adam & Atau reappropriate the iPhone and its advanced
technical capabilities to transform it into an expressive musical instrument for concert performance. In a duo, with one in each hand, they create a post - laptop chamber music, 4-hands iPhone. The accelerometers which typically serve as tilt sensors to rotate photos in fact allow high precision capture of the performer’s free space gestures. The multitouch screen, otherwise used for scrolling and pinch-zooming text, becomes a reconfigurable graphic user interface with programmable faders, buttons, and 2D controllers that control synthesis parameters in real time. All this drives open source Pure Data (PD) patches running out of the free RJDJ iPhone app. A single advanced granular synthesis patch becomes the process by which a battery of sounds from the natural world are stretched, frozen, scattered, and restitched. The fact that all system components - sensor input, signal processing, synthesis and audio output - are embodied in a single device make it very different than the typical controller + laptop model for digital music performance.

 

EDUARDO MIRANDA - link

Performance: 03.10. at 21.00 / Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova hall

Lecture:   03.10. at 15.00 / Modern Gallery

Eduardo Miranda is internationally noted for his work at the crossroads of music, science and technology. His music is informed and inspired by his research into Artificial Intelligence in significant ways. His music has been broadcast and performed worldwide by renowned performers and ensembles such as Ian Pace, Frances M. Lynch, Luciani Cardassi, Catarina Domenici, Ney Rosauro, Jérôme Vallet, Eade String Quartet, Chamber Group of Scotland, BBC Concert Orchestra, Heritage Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre and Ten Tors Orchestra, to cite but a few. Currently, he is Professor of Computer Music at the University of Plymouth in the UK, where he leads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR). His new book A-Life for Music: On Music and Computer Models of Living Systems (A-R Editions, USA) and a new CD with an accompanying annotated score of the piece Mozart Reloaded for piano and electronics (Sargasso, UK) are due to be published Autumn.

Lecture: A-Life for Music @ Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR)
Artificial Life, or A-life, is a field of scientific research aimed at the study, through computational modeling, wetware-hardware hybrids, and other artificial media, of all phenomena characteristic of natural living systems. Its scope ranges from the investigation of the emergence of intelligence and behavior in natural or artificial systems to the development of life or lifelike properties from inorganic components. A number of artists and musicians, in particular composers, have started to turn to A-life for inspiration and methodology. This lecture presents the pioneering work at the crossroads of A-life and music that is developed at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) at the University of Plymouth, which ranges from the development of biological sound computing and techniques to model the evolution of music, to techniques to synthesise sounds with in vitro neural networks and new approaches to musical composition informed by the neurosciences.
  
Performance: Igor Vicentič plays Eduardo Miranda
This is an unprecedented opportunity to hear pianist Igor Vicentič perform acclaimed pieces by Eduardo Miranda, with the composer himself on the electronics. Carnival for Piano (piano solo) combines computer-generated rhythms with rhythms of Brazilian carnival and Grain Streams (piano and electronics) was composed with materials generated with Artificial Life simulations. In Mozart Reloaded the composer chopped 9 Mozart piano sonatas into pieces and recombined them with samples from music by Bach, Beethoven, Gluck and Haydn, and hip-hop rhythms to create a re-mix of convincing sophistication. Robotapithecos (electroacoustic solo) is inspired by the paradox of the origins of music. Sound analysis and re-synthesis techniques create various hybrid voices imposing synthesised human-like formants onto the spectrum of chanting monkeys. The piece culminates with a choir of surreal singing creatures.

Produced by Aksioma.

 

IGOR VIĆENTIĆ - link

Performance: 03.10. at 21.00 / Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova hall

The pianist Igor Vićentić is contributing to a wider range of slovenian musical output. He  complements his formal education from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana (class of  prof. Aci Bertoncelj) and London's Trinity College of Music (MMus, PGADip) with various musical influences. He shares the stage with prominent slovenian performers as Mirjam Kalin, Marjana Lipovšek, Anja Bukovec as well as groups like Silence, Terrafolk and Laibach. Charmed by the world of electronica he produced some national and international releases. Nevertheless he remains true to piano and classical music which was brought to him at a very early age. As a pianist he performed in many venues across Great Britain, Spain, Bolgaria, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia and performed as a soloist with Contemporary Music Group ansamble, Orchestra Simfonica Adriatica and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. He recorded various soundtracks for film and theather.  He is also a teacher and accompanist at the Consevatory for Music and Ballet in Ljubljana.

 

CHRISS KIEFER - link

Performance: 02.10. at 20.00 / Kinoteka

Lecture:   03.10. at 15.30 / Modern Gallery

Chris Kiefer is a composer, performer and researcher in computer music and human-computer interaction.  He is currently completing his DPhil at the University of Sussex, where he has been creating new musical controllers and experimenting with new ways of interacting with digital music tools.  He is also a researcher in the Embodied Audio-Visual Interaction Group at Goldsmiths, University of London;  he works on the Sound, Image and Brain project, where he is developing signal processing techniques and applications for brain-computer interfaces, and creating audio-visual games for mobile platforms. 

Performance:
This is an audio/visual improvisation, experimenting with sound synthesis using Echo State Networks (ESNs).  ESNs, a form of recurrent neural network, can be trained to generate and process audio signals. This performance goes one step further and reaches into these networks to manipulate their internals in realtime, by injecting noise into the nodes, and varying the low level parameters. The many network parameters are controlled concurrently with an EchoFoam controller, a new type of multiparametric controller made from malleable foam that the player crushes, squeezes and deforms to mould the sound.

 

JAMIE BULLOCK - link

Workshop: 04.10. at 10.00–15.00 / Ljudmila

Jamie Bullock is senior researcher in interactive music technology at Birmingham Conservatoire and software development manager for the Integra project. He has over 15 years experience in live electronics research and artistic practice. His current research interests include musician-centred software for live electronics and the use of audio features as a medium for human-computer interaction.

Workshop:
In this workshop we will share with participants the techniques and practice of live electronic music using the Integra Live software (www.integralive.org). The workshop will be divided into 2 parts.
In part one we will introduce the software through a practical demo and guided tutorials. We will examine the software's 'arrange' and 'live' views, and learn how control modules in real-time through envelopes, scenes, on-screen controls and external controllers. Finally we will look at advanced features such as the software's Lua-based scripting functionality.
In part two we will look at the Integra Framework in general, and learn about the component-based architecture of the software. We will explore how to create Integra modules in the Pure Data environment, and attendees will have the opportunity to develop a module, which they can use in their own work with Integra Live.

 

MAURICIO VALDES

Lecture:   03.10. at 17.45 / Modern Gallery

Performance: 04.10. at 20.00 / Kinoteka

The vast majority of  his work includes technology  support and has a fundamental weight for the creative process.  His work as a composer is focused on finding new forms of interpretation, seeking a language of expressive improvisation in interaction with computers, without considering where electroacoustic music starts and where soundart ends nor with noise music or anyother art that involves sound. He has been much of his time designing and creating his instruments and their technological applications. He has extensive experience in the management, education and promotion of chamber music and music with technology, has worked for various institutions governmental and civil associations in his country. He currently heads the Centre for Intermedia, Research and Development Technology Applications. (ciidat.org)

SOUNDTRACK NOT SOUNDTRACK
This work shows a selection of projects completed in the last decade by the Mexican duo La Rana Sorda (Deaf Frog) conformed by Mauricio Valdés and Víctor Rivas. The duo's work has focused on the music of silent films in real time movies of the silent period. During these years the duo has tried to detach from working with the idea of the soundtrack, and address the concept of setting ambience for the film, and so to issue an acoustic personal perception of the image document. Despite being an ensemble dedicated to the music of silent films, the duo have created their own pieces of video art that explores in more comprehensive forms of expression designing audio and video in parallel. Today's presentation is a tribute to the proceedings, without projection image, keeping the idea of improvisation from the image, this time with guitar and electronic media.

 

KIM MYHR - link

04.10. at 22.00 / Menza pri Koritu

Kim Myhr (guitar, mechanical effects)  is an active voice on the Norwegian creative music scene, with regular performances across Europe, Australia, Asia and America.
Although composition is a valued activity for Myhr, his main focus remains improvisation and long-term collaborations. MURAL, a trio with Jim Denley and Ingar Zach, released Nectars of Emergence on SOFA in january 2010, and will release a concert from the Rothko Chapel done in march 2010, on Rothko Chapel Publications in august 2011. Other projects include Silencers (with Benoit Delbecq, Nils Ostendorf and Toma Gouband), Time Art Ensemble (with Michel Doneda, Matthias Muche and Sven Hahne), Murmur (with Klaus Holm, Martin Taxt and Tor Haugerud) and duos with Sebastien Roux, Nils Ostendorf and Jim Denley. Myhr's first solo recording will be out on SOFA at the beginning of 2012. In addition to making music, Kim Myhr is also the director of the Fri Resonans festival, which has been presenting cutting-edge and innovative music in Trondheim, Norway since 2005. He is also co-running the record label SOFA.
www.kimmyhr.com

Produced by Sploh institution.

 

MATHIAS FORGE - link

OLIVIER TOULEMONDE - link

04.10. at 22.00 / Menza pri Koritu

Mathias Forge started with jazz piano in several bands and likes playing Thelonious Monk's tunes and songs. He is a trombonist in several bands. In the last years, he works mostly as an improviser. He likes mixing his music with dancers, writters and painters.
He is a part of the MICRO association which organizes and promotes improvised music.
www.creativesourcesrec.com/artists/m_forge.html

Olivier Toulemonde plays improvised music with acoustic objects or amplified springs. He works on listening, sound research and relationship between sound and space. He wrote several radiophonic pieces, music for video art and released several records.
www.olivier-toulemonde.com
They released a record Pie 'n' Mash, on Another Timbre in 2010.

Produced by Sploh institution.

 

SOUNDS OF EUROPE - Disharmonious voices / exhibition

Opening: 30.09. at 19.00 / Aksioma

Visiting hours: 14.00–18.00, Sunday 10.00–15.30

 

AINO EMILIA KORVENSYRJÄ

JAN ANDERZEN

Lecture: 01.10. at 17.00 / Aksioma

Aino Korvensyrjä (1979)
Aino Korvensyrjä is a visual artist interested in economies and architectures of mediated recollection. Before venturing into arts she studied Contemporary History and Philosophy. She uses predominantly video, lecture, tour, installation and text. She is based in Cologne and Vienna.
Jan Anderzen (1978)
Jan Anderzén is a Tampere based visual artist and the captain of a long-running experimental sound team Kemialliset Ystävät. He has been actively performing in Finland and abroad at festivals, art centres, galleries, cellars, planetariums. Since mid-90s Kemialliset Ystävät and its branches have released dozens of albums around the world. Album as an art piece is where Anderzén can collage together different aspects of his work: music, images, text and more conceptual ideas. His work is deeply
rooted in underground DIY cultures and communal creativity.

The Museum of Undead Labour and Benin Phonogramm Archive jointly present: Biometric Primitivism
The Museum of Undead Labour (MUoL) has already established itself as an institution questioning the immateriality of current conditions of work. How is value extracted from flesh and blood? Appropriation, outsourcing and many other forms of unpaid and poorly visible labour have sofar been on the agenda of the museum. For Sounds of Europe MUoL joins forces with Benin Phonogramm Archive (BPA). BPA emerged recently from a confrontation with a problem: How can we deal with archives and databases in a situation in which some don’t have (access to) any archives at all while others keep on accumulating ever more megalomaniac parallel universes of data? The collaboration of the institutions has resulted in an archival tour that offers the visitor a glimpse into a biometric landscape of a near future. This audiovisual experience has been made possible through the special interest of BPA in sound and anthropometry (ancient and contemporary forms).

 

ANA HOFFNER

Ana Hoffner is a writer and performer working in the fields of queer and migratory/(post)colonial politics. S_he studied Fine Arts and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is performing internationally. In hir last research project „Queer perspectives in and on Europe“ s_he was working on homonormativity and queerness as sexual politics of european unity. Currently s_he is a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

I'M TOO SAD TO TELL YOU, BOSNIAN GIRL!, 20 min, 2010
The lecture performance investigates the practice of self-reflection, which, together with the practice of self-presentation, represents one condition for the contemporary constitution of the subject. The space of self-reflection is viewed as a space that eludes binary divisions, which refuses to draw a boundary between subject and object, and collapses the roles of director and actor into one another. The time of self-reflection is understood as a time of eternal present, which envisages an obsessive repetition of the same performative acts, in which the subject can fall into an ecstasy, an excess of presence. The concept of space and time defined as a result of this follows a model of civilization intended to produce security and control among equal citizens, but it simultaneously produces brutality and violence. The precondition for successful self-presentation is its failure at the point at which all human existence is defined: it is the nonhuman, which is blamed for transforming the civilizing model of space-time into a zone of barbarism, underdevelopment, and uncontrolled affect, and which should be kept at all times prisoner in its own retrograde past.

 

 

JOHANESS KREIDLER - link

Johannes Kreidler was born in 1980 in Esslingen / Germany. In 1989 he began composing, since 1990 he got lessons in composition and music theory at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. From 2000 to 2006 he had been studying composition and music theory at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, composition with Mathias Spahlinger and electronic music with Mesias Maiguashca and Orm Finnendahl. Additionally, he was doing philosophical studies at the Universität Freiburg. From 2004 to 2005, he had been studying electronic music at the institut for sonology of the Royal Conservatory The Hague. He visited courses with Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Richard Barrett and at IRCAM Paris. Since 2006 he teaches music theory and electronic music at the University of Music and Theater Rostock and the University of Music Detmold, since 2009 at the University of Music and Theater Hannover. In 2008, he was selected composer of the Ensemble Modern Akademy, in 2009 the winner of the music theatre prize "Fonds experimentelles Musiktheater NRW", in 2010 the winner of the German Author's Award, Category "Young Talent Prize". Essays and Interviews have been printed in KunstMusik, Musik & Ästhetik, Positionen, Neue Musikzeitung and the Search Journal. His book „Programming Electronic Music in Pure Data“ has been published in 2009 on Wolke Verlag.
www.kreidler-net.de

Product Placements (2008)
70,200 samples in 33 seconds: nightmare for GEMA
On 12 Sept 08, German Avantgarde musician Johannes Kreidler registered – as a live performance event – a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA using 70,200 forms. While it is a legal gray zone in some countries, apparently you are legally obliged to send GEMA a form for every copyrighted work you quoted from in your musical works. Kreidler filled out every single individual form required in the process. For the festival, he will present a video documentation of this action.

 

 

ELSKE ROSENFELD - link

Elske Rosenfeld explores different methodologies – installations and video, writing and talks, workshops and events – to refocus the diverse historical positions of criticality and dissidence within the different state socialisms of the former Eastern bloc and, in particular, the upheavals of 1989/ 1990.

Je ne rentrerais pas
2-channel video, 7',  2011

An investigation into the different temporal modalities at work during moments of revolution: intensity, repetition, acceleration, stalling for time and the passing of a threshold, after which no return to a prior status quo is possible. In watching, manipulating, and stepping into the frame of a short film depicting the refusal of a woman to re-enter the factory at the end of a workers’ strike in 1968, I try to access my own experience of the brief period of openness after the collapse of the old regime in East Germany in 89/90.
What might it mean to relate different historical instances of revolution through the fictitious persona of this Me/Her across time, and can this process open a political space beyond retrospection and nostalgia, in the present day?

 

NIKA AUTOR - link

Nika Autor  is engaged in the field of contemporary art. The focus of her work is the relation of the artist to his everyday environment.
For more see: www.autor.si

SOLIDARNOST, Experimental movie,  PAL DVD, 9', 2011
The film is a reshot of the Joyce Wieland movie Solidarity, made in 1973, and documents workers protests in Ljubljana.
It raises questions, such as: what is solidarity today, who is solidary, who with and when?
Idea for the reshot of the movie emerged during current horrifying exploitation of labour, mass unemployment, impossible work coditions, restructuration of labour market and, when question of solidarity is malipulated by power structures.