February 26, 2007
ICEBOX 02 Cape Town
Festival of Audio/Visual Art
ICEBOX 02 Cape Town :: February 28 – March 10, 2007 :: Liquid Fridge presents a festival of contemporary creativity in audio/visual art. With the focus on the electronic, open and South African, ICEBOX combines music, film, video and interactive media through a programme of screenings, performances, club nights, workshops and an exhibition.
ICEBOX 02 Cape Town features music-makers, free thinkers and electronic tinkerers Bernhard Loibner (Austria), Brendon Bussy, Com.it, CY Cowboys, Garth Erasmus, Heather Ford (Johannesburg), Dean Henning (Durban), Julian Jonker, Rebecca Kahn (Johannesburg), Microstripe, MTKidu (Johannesburg), Radioboy, Story Boy, and many other proponents of eclectic sounds and plush pixels.
Supported by the Austrian Consulate Cape Town, CAPE Africa Platform, iCommons and netbek. Press support by BRAND, Enjin and one small seed, and online by Kak Duidelik and Swikiri. With thanks to alt film, Bell-Roberts, INTERFACE, Magmart, MTKidu and rustpunk.
ICEBOX 02 Screening
Venue: Labia on Kloof, Lifestyle on Kloof, 50 Kloof Street, Cape Town
Date: Wednesday, February 28 at 8.30pm
Cost: R25
An evening of innovative short-form narratives, documentaries, music videos and animations by over 20 independent creators from South Africa and abroad.
Featuring both award-winning and rarely seen work, the line-up includes Ana Alvarez-Errecalde (ES), The Blackheart Gang (SA), Jaco Brouwer (SA), Tessa Comrie (SA), Fopspeen (SA), Goldfish/Iaminawe (SA), Kidult (SA), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Lark/Ontwerp (SA), Chris Moore (SA), Giorgio Partesana (IT), Andrew Schnetler (SA), Mike Scott (SA), Daniel van der Merwe (SA), Lisa Vinebaum (CA), Tina Willgren (SE) and Dale Yudelman (SA), as well as Microcinema International’s “Independent Exposure” series and the Magmart video art festival (IT).
ICEBOX 02 Exhibition
Venue: Bell-Roberts CUBE Gallery, 89 Bree Street, Cape Town
Date: Opens Thursday, March 1 at 6pm. Closes March 10
Eerie soundscapes and abstract electronica are entwined with computer-generated imagery and appropriated digital video in brief, meditative journeys and waltzes of fusion and fission. Sound painters, picture mixers and media hackers aim to challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions and question the status quo, yet at times to simply entertain the talented listener.
The line-up includes work from Kisito Assangni (TG), D-Fuse (UK), The Dualist (SA), Fabian Giles (MX), Josh Goldman (US), Henry Gwiazda (US), Corlia Harmsen (SA), Hanna Husberg (FR), Jose Insua (US), Jun'ichiro Ishii (FR), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Argyro Koutsibela (GR), Bernhard Loibner (AT), Jenni Meredith (UK), Vesna Milicevic (CS), Giorgio Partesana (IT), Carol Pereira (US), John Vega (US), Hagen Wiel (DE) and Dale Yudelman (SA).
The exhibition also features “A Light Distraction.” Sonic engineer Martin Sims and electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy have collaborated in creating a light centred installation. Technologies normally used to measure and show change in the level of sound energy have been re-wired. Now the viewer can control input - in fact create change, leaving as a measure of their interaction, light.
Gallery hours: Monday - Friday 8.30am - 5.30pm, Saturdays 10am - 2pm
ICEBOX 02 Workshop and Performance
Venue: CAPE Africa Platform, 71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 3 at 1pm
Cost: Donation
An afternoon of presentations on appropriation art, music mash-ups, circuit bending for sound, intellectual property rights and how digital artists can both protect and share their work for collaboration. The workshop also features a live audio/visual performance by MTKidu. Creative Commons-licensed videos will be available for free, legal download onto USB flash drive.
“How to stop worrying about the big C and learn to love CC: An Artists' Guide to IP” presented by Heather Ford (executive director) and Rebecca Kahn (writing and research fellow) from iCommons, Johannesburg.
What is copyright? How does it affect my art and creativity? Is there such a thing as “legal remixing” and how do artists still make a buck while giving their stuff away for free?
The Creative Commons South Africa team explain how copyright affects artists and creators, the common pitfalls, and the practical steps you can take to make sure you are in control of your creativity. They also introduce participants to Creative Commons raw materials that are freely available to legally remix and share, and show video work by artists from South Africa and abroad, who are using copyright to spur global collaborations, broaden their communities and kick-start their careers.
“Song of Solomon” presented by writer, sound artist and cultural producer Julian Jonker.
“Song of Solomon,” devised by Julian Jonker and technologist Ralph Borland, is an algorithmic audio collage using more than 70 performances and adaptations of Solomon Linda’s composition “Mbube,” also performed and adapted as “Wimoweh” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The installation intends to provoke questions about the archetypal models of creativity that inform Western intellectual property law; in its implementation at the Durban Art Gallery in September 2006, the installation arguably infringed South African copyright law in various ways.
He also discusses the interaction between other forms of appropriation art and intellectual property law, specifically mash-ups and DJ mixes.
“Basic Circuit Bending” presented by electro-acoustic artist Dean Henning from rustpunk, Durban.
Bleeps and sweeps aplenty as Dean Henning discusses and demonstrates how simple, low-cost technology (including toys) can be re-purposed for musical performance.
“Live beat construct and visual manipulation” performance by MTKidu from Johannesburg.
The dynamic design and electronic music duo perform live, and afterwards share experiences in live audio/visual experimentation.
ICEBOX 02 Screening
Venue: Zula Sound Bar, 194 Long Street, Cape Town
Date: Sunday, March 4 at 7pm
Cost: Free
An evening of innovative short-form narratives, documentaries and animations from Ciro Altabas (ES), Dany Campos (ES), Sally Giles (SA), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Frédérique Zepter (FR), Microcinema International’s “Independent Exposure” series, and the Magmart video art festival (IT).
The screening is presented in partnership with alt film, a group established to collect and screen film by creative South Africans, as well as work that most powerfully incorporates and describes the inevitable evolution of the medium.
ICEBOX 02 Workshop and Performances
Venue: CAPE Africa Platform, 71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 10 at 1pm
Cost: Donation
Musicians and media artists Bernhard Loibner (Austria), Brendon Bussy and Garth Erasmus perform live on electric bass guitar, mandolin and saxophone, with an array of electronics, custom software and deft improvisation. Afterwards, they offer a detailed insight into the dark art of experimental audio, discuss their crossover work in video and other media, and share techniques with participants. Brendon’s presentation includes a collaborative performance with multimedia artist Charles Maggs.
Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio. His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.
Electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy creates sound pieces combining the mandolin and Audiomulch, a realtime audio processing tool. In 2003, he released “Diesel Geiger” (Open Record) and in 2006, he created wind-activated sound elements for Ralph Borland’s Sharks in Jetty Square, Cape Town. A recent work that utilises contact microphones will be performed at the 2007 Vancouver Signal and Noise Festival of video and audio art. Currently he is writing mandolin compositions intended as components of video works.
Garth Erasmus is a full-time artist and musician passionate about his indigenous Khoi-San roots. As a member of the music and performance poetry group Khoi Khonnexion, he plays self-made instruments based on ethnic ancestry. He is also part of Riempie Vasmaak, where he plays saxophone in an ensemble whose work can best be described as chaotic spontaneous musical invention or free improvisation, for the academic snobs. His solo work on saxophone is a synthesis between these two groups’ approaches with its rhythmic harmonic underpinning and expressive freedom.
ICEBOX 02 Club Night
Venue: The Independent Armchair Theatre, 135 Lower Main Road, Observatory, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 10 at 9pm
Cost: R30
Liquid Fridge presents an eclectic selection of DJ’d and live retro-tech-future-funk, accompanied by a hearty serving of performing pixels.
Line-up:
Bernhard Loibner (Austria) - Electro-acoustic
Story Boy - Hip-hop / Jazz / Soul
CY Cowboys - Afrikaans Electro
Radioboy (‘ardkore / Liquid Fridge) - Techno
Microstripe (Big Love) - Breakbeat
Com.it (Big Love / Bush Radio) - Drum & Bass
Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio. His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.
Ongoing collaborations include the sound/video/voice duo Nerve Theory with US video artist Tom Sherman, and live concerts with musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, o.blaat, Bernhard Gal and Joao Castro Pinto. Commissioned work includes compositions for films by Austrian director Mara Mattuschka, the performance extravaganza of the French collective SUPERAMAS and the Austrian National Public Radio.
His music and video has been released on CD and DVD, and he has appeared at numerous festivals, including Ars Electronica Linz, Cybersonica London and Elektra Montreal.
After a 2-year hiatus, the CY Cowboys return with their original Afrikaans Electro sound. Unique and outspoken, these two cowboys deliver not only thought-provoking lyrics, but also tongue-in-cheek local humour and slamming beats to the Cape Town electronic scene. Join them for a DJ set of their most popular anthems, as well as audio gems from the new album.
Microstripe has been spinning her beats in some form or another since 2001. Moving between Hip-hop, Drum & Bass, Breaks and Electro, she has played at numerous gigs around Cape Town, as well as a few in Johannesburg and London. These include Big Love parties, Obs and Long Street Festivals, her own annual New Year’s Eve outdoor Electronica festival, and of course Liquid Fridge events. She recently played alongside UK Breaks producer General Midi on his SA tour.
Com.it is South Africa’s longest standing female Drum & Bass DJ. She has been involved in the D&B scene since 1994, and started playing out around 1997. She is a key member of the Momentum crew and has been a resident on the Sublime Drum & Bass show on Bush Radio 89.5FM since 2002. She is also a co-founder of the Big Love movement, which aims to further the South African electronic music scene.
Story Boy is one of Cape Town's top VJs and can be found projecting visual mixes alongside a variety of Cape Town's top DJs, bands and electronic acts. He is also a crate digger who occasionally unveils his eclectic record bag of b-boy Hip-hop nostalgia, dusty Jazz and electronic Soul goodness.
Artist / Speaker Information
Brendon Bussy
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop and installation at exhibition
Web: www.openrecord.co.za/bussy.html, http://ralphborland.net/jettysquare
Electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy creates sound pieces combining the mandolin and Audiomulch, a realtime audio processing tool.
Performance collaborations include Abel Steen with Tinus van Dyk, Corrective with Dean Henning, and Mike Whitehead (ex-Famous Curtain Trick). He has also performed with Dutch performance art group Dogtroep, and at the UNYAZI Symposium of Electronic Music. In 2006, he created wind-activated sound elements for Ralph Borland’s Sharks in Jetty Square, Cape Town. A recent work that utilises contact microphones will be performed at the 2007 Vancouver Signal and Noise Festival of video and audio art. Currently he is writing mandolin compositions intended as components of video works.
He has taught violin, viola, piano, music theory and short courses in digital audio, and has presented at Liquid Fridge’s UPLOAD workshops. His debut solo album “Diesel Geiger” (Open Record) is a “digital twisting” of acoustic material and field recordings.
Com.it (Lecia Nel)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night
Web: www.biglove.co.za
Com.it is South Africa’s longest standing female Drum & Bass DJ. She has been involved in the D&B scene since 1994, and started playing out around 1997. She is a key member of the Momentum crew and has been a resident on the Sublime Drum & Bass show on Bush Radio 89.5FM since 2002. She is also a co-founder of the Big Love movement, which aims to further the South African electronic music scene. When speaking on her plans for the future, she says that she “would like to bring the South African scene to a point where it catches up with the First World’s standards, as well as exposing our culture to their way of life.”
Garth Erasmus
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop
Web: www.asai.co.za
Garth Erasmus is a full-time artist and musician passionate about his indigenous Khoi-San roots. As a member of the music and performance poetry group Khoi Khonnexion, he plays self-made instruments based on ethnic ancestry. He is also part of Riempie Vasmaak, where he plays saxophone in an ensemble whose work can best be described as chaotic spontaneous musical invention or free improvisation, for the academic snobs. His solo work on saxophone is a synthesis between these two groups’ approaches with its rhythmic harmonic underpinning and expressive freedom.
Solo and group performances include the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees with Khoi Khonnexion, “Healing the Feeling” with Werne Feller and Christian "Guy" Tschannen (Switzerland), “Urban Voices” with Malika Ndlovu, and the Sara Baartman Memorial Concert.
He has both exhibited and taught art extensively in South Africa and abroad, and has also coordinated various cultural initiatives.
Dean Henning
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.thesoundofand.co.za, www.rustpunk.co.za
Dean Henning has been involved in the SA music scene for many years, starting at the tender age of 16 as a founding member and drummer in the seminal Fingerhead. In the following years, he has branched out into other artistic arenas, predominantly in digital media. He co-ordinated and remixed work for the rockabilly crossover “Ricky Gass Project”, remixed work for Benguela and Illuminating Shadows, and has appeared on various compilations under his “Captain Asthma” moniker.
Recently, together with partner and collaborator Rike Sitas, he has created music videos and video pieces for dance performances (such as Jay Pather’s Republic and The Beautiful Ones Must Be Born). Rike and Dean had their first solo exhibition as part of the NSA’s Young Artists Project. Entitled “a city”, described in Art South Africa as “easily the most ingenuous, ingenious, expressive and evocative installation [the reviewer has] yet encountered.” The work also received a special mention in ArtThrob’s local exhibition of the year.
Heather Ford
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.icommons.org
Heather Ford is the Executive Director of iCommons, an international subsidiary of Creative Commons. A South African who has worked in the fields of Internet policy, law and management in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, Heather graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and has a certificate in Telecommunications Policy, Law and Management from the University of the Witwatersrand Link Centre. After working in the United Kingdom for Greennet and Privacy International, she went on to Stanford University in 2003 where she worked as a fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship Program. Volunteering for Creative Commons while she was at Stanford, she decided to go back to South Africa at the end of her studies to start Creative Commons South Africa and a project entitled “Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons” at the Wits University Link Centre. Recently appointed Executive Director of iCommons, Heather is also helping to help establish an Intellectual Property Research Unit at the Link Centre and a new NGO called “The African Commons Project”.
Julian Jonker
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.liberationchabalala.net
Julian Jonker is a writer, sound artist and cultural producer living in Cape Town. His work explores the genealogies, promises and ethics of cultural memory. He has published in a variety of literary and academic forums. He has produced music and performance projects independently, as well as for the District Six Museum, the Cape Town Festival and the Western Cape Street Bands Association. His sound art has been exhibited at the Durban Art Gallery and performed as part of the Vox Novus new music festival. He performs as a DJ and mash-up artist, and is a member of the Fong Kong Bantu Sound System.
Rebecca Kahn
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.icommons.org
Rebecca Kahn is a writing and research fellow at iCommons, and has closely followed the growth of Creative Commons in South Africa since its launch. It took her a while to wrap her head around all this copyright stuff, but now she knows who the righteous ones are. She graduated with an Honours degree in English from Rhodes University and has worked as a freelance journalist for the last few years. She is currently completing an M.A. in Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, and likes her Bloody Marys spicy.
Bernhard Loibner (Austria)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop and club night
Web: www.loibner.cc
Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio.
His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.
Ongoing collaborations include the sound/video/voice duo Nerve Theory with US video artist Tom Sherman, and live concerts with musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, o.blaat, Bernhard Gal and Joao Castro Pinto. Commissioned work includes compositions for films by Austrian director Mara Mattuschka, the performance extravaganza of the French collective SUPERAMAS and the Austrian National Public Radio.
His music and video has been released on CD and DVD, and he has appeared at numerous festivals, including Ars Electronica Linz, Cybersonica London and Elektra Montreal.
Microstripe (Yalena Razis)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night
Web: www.soundsquad.co.za, www.biglove.co.za, www.myspace.com/yalena_
Microstripe has been spinning her beats in some form or another since 2001. Moving between Hip-hop, Drum & Bass, Breaks and Electro, she has played at numerous gigs around Cape Town, as well as a few in Johannesburg and London. These include Big Love parties, Obs and Long Street Festivals, her own annual New Year’s Eve outdoor Electronica festival, and of course Liquid Fridge events. She recently played alongside UK Breaks producer General Midi on his SA tour.
MTKidu (Murray Turpin and Nicholas Nesbitt)
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 at workshop
Web: www.mtkidu.com
On a path of shared creative consciousness, MTKidu is a beat construct and visual manipulation team formed in pursuit of an audiovisual language that is both experimental and dark.
As art galleries and clubs stagnate into white and grey cube commercialism, we will not forget the original purpose and potential of these spaces for invention and exploration. The time has come to break the conventional moulds.
MTKidu’s TFTD 0.5 (Tales from the Dark) multi-media album is available at The Bin in Cape Town and Canned Applause in Johannesburg.
Radioboy (Martin Sims)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night and installation at exhibition
Web: www.liquidfridge.co.za
Martin Sims tinkers with media. He is a broadcast engineer by day and a DJ god in his sleep. In 2003, he helped bring to life the short-lived Spectrum radio service. Before that he presented 'ardkore, an electronic music show on Bush Radio 89.5FM. He is a co-founder of Liquid Fridge and enjoys reading e-mail. Currently he passes the time building radio studios, teaching technology and being a Dad.
Story Boy (Anwar McWhite)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night
Story Boy is one of Cape Town's top VJs and can be found projecting visual mixes alongside a variety of Cape Town's top DJs, bands and electronic acts. He is also a crate digger who occasionally unveils his eclectic record bag of b-boy Hip-hop nostalgia, dusty Jazz and electronic Soul goodness.
Sponsors
Austrian Consulate Cape Town
CAPE Africa Platform is a section 21 company established to encourage and facilitate contemporary African creativity through innovative exhibitions, discussion sessions and education programmes.
Incubated by Creative Commons, iCommons is an organisation with a broad vision to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open content, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.
netbek is passionate about digital creation and specialises in development for the web and elsewhere.
About Liquid Fridge
Liquid Fridge is a non-profit organisation devoted to advancing contemporary South African creativity by encouraging interaction between those who explore the creative uses of technology, and debating the issues of art, media, culture and society.
Started in 2002, Liquid Fridge has provided coverage of and a discussion forum for local contemporary art, has hosted screenings, performances, club nights and workshops with leading South African and international artists and academics, and has contributed expertise to media initiatives such as Spectrum 91.3FM, radio station of the Red Bull Music Academy 2003.
Contact Information
Hein Bekker, director and media liaison
Mobile: +27 (0)82 508 2922
E-mail: hein[at]liquidfridge.co.za
Yalena Razis, co-ordinator
Mobile: +27 (0)83 611 6622
E-mail: yalena[at]gmail.com
Posted by jo at February 26, 2007 07:03 PM
