Switch - Creative Social Network in collaboration with Associazione Culturale Nub and Tempo Reale present Taming Technology, a two day program including performances, DJ sets, installations, lectures and workshops exploring the territory between music, art and new media. The focus will be on practices such as physical computing, interface and interaction design, hardware hacking and biological computation, framed as fields of research capable of providing new connections between the virtual domain and the physical world.

Taking part in the program will be: Giulio Ammendola, Lilian Beidler, Holo Unplugged Laptop Ensemble, Francesco Giomi, Ivan Henriques, Alessandro Ludovico, Matteo Marangoni, Damiano Meacci, Slugabed, Eddie Spanier, Transductors Connections, Quiet Ensemble and Tom Verbruggen.

The project has the support of the Comune di Firenze and of the Embassy of The Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome.

Using four speakers placed along the wall, the piece created an enveloping sound environment that varied as listeners walked from one end of the balcony to the other. In combining the unique sonic properties of the space with precisely tuned pitches, timbres, and rhythms, the installation made audible both the dramatic ricocheting echo and the effect of sound taking 135 milliseconds to travel from one end to the other–a perceptible and musically useful delay. The installation’s swells, drones, pops, pitches, and silences transformed the less-visited rear of the hall into a large immersive instrument.

See a slide show of Curve here.

Culturgest is pleased to announce Cornelius Cardew and the freedom of listening, an exhibition and program of events curated by Dean Inkster, Jean-Jacques Palix, Lore Gablier, and Pierre Bal-Blanc.

The English composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) is undoubtedly one of the major composers to have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. His radical approach to composition and his political reflection on the status of music making led him, in the late sixties, to instigate one of the most important attempts to establish the democratic claims of avant-garde culture. The Scratch Orchestra, which grew out of classes Cardew taught at Morley College (an adult education college in South London) in 1968, radically questioned the social limitations of art and music making as realms of specialized knowledge and experience. Combining both trained musicians and non-musicians, the Scratch Orchestra not only transgressed the traditional boundaries and hierarchy separating the composer, performer, and listener, but also the boundaries dividing the realm of art into separate fields.

Since 2006, the seventieth anniversary of his birth, interest in Cardew’s work as a composer and political figure has gained a new momentum. In light of this interest, and in a historical moment when it is all to easy to sentimentalize “over the good old days of experiment and action,” as one recent review of Cardew’s writings has suggested, the exhibition Cornelius Cardew and the freedom of listening not only attempts to retrace the history of one of the most influential post-war twentieth century composers and the important avant-garde group he inspired, but also show why Cardew’s example is needed “to shake us out of our current “complacency and despair.”

Initiated by the Centre d’art contemporain de Brétigny in Spring 2009, before traveling to the Künstlerhaus in Stuttgart (September-November 2009), the exhibition brings together archives, photographs, scores, films and sound recordings generously loaned by Horace Cardew, IRCAM (Paris), The Modern Institute (Glasgow), Keith Rowe, Victor Schonfield, Stefan Szczelkun, Samon Takahashi, and Ruth Hilton. Throughout the program of events, various internationally renowned artists and musicians will be present at Culturgest to interpret Cardew’s scores and respond to his work in a variety of forms, thus testifying to both the enduring vibrancy of Cardew’s work as a major contribution to the history of experimental music and art and his current influence on contemporary artistic and musical practice.

Program:

Saturday, 8 May, 4.30 p.m.: Cornelius Cardew, The Great Learning, paragraph 7 (1969), conducted by Jean-Jacques Palix
Saturday, 8 May, 10 p.m.: Tania Chen, piano recital
Friday, 14 May, 10 p.m. : Cornelius Cardew, Treatise (1963-1967), concert by Keith Rowe with Heitor Alves, Sei Miguel and Vitor Rua
Saturday, 15 May, 4 p.m. : Michael Parsons, Walk (1969), performance directed by Jean-Jacques Palix
Saturday, 15 May, 5 p.m. : Talk with Carole Finer, Keith Rowe and Stefan Szczelkun on the Scratch Orchestra
Saturday, 15 May, 6.30 p.m. :Screening of films by Stefan Szczelkun (ex-Scratch Orchestra member) and discussion with the artist
Saturday, 22 May, 5 p.m. : Performance by Loreto Martinez Troncoso and António Júlio, 1001 Scratch Activities
Saturday, 22 May, 10 p.m. : Cornelius Cardew, Treatise (1963-1967), concert by Michel Guillet, Jean-Jacques Palix, Markus Schmickler and Samon Takahashi — Lectures, concert by Piotr Kurek
Friday, 28 May, 10 p.m. : Christian Wolff, concert resulting from a workshop with volunteers, and piano recital
Saturday, 29 May, 5 p.m. : .Cornelius Cardew, The Great Learning, paragraph 5 (1970), directed by Lore Gablier, Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet
Saturday, 29 May, 10 p.m. : Walter Cardew Group (Horace Cardew, Walter Cardew, Androniki Liokoura), concert
Friday, 18 June, 10 p.m. : Cornelius Cardew, Volo Solo (1965), concert by Rhys Chatham
Cornelius Cardew, Tiger’s Mind (1967), concert by Nina Canal, Nadia Lichtig, and David Watson
Saturday, 19 June, 10 p.m. : John Tilbury, lecture and piano recital
Friday, 25th June, 10 p.m.: Terre Thaemlitz, Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album, piano recital

The prototype of the work (v1) was presented in the Microwave International New Media Art Festival 2009 in which a set of toy birds performed a sequence of calls and movement interfered by the passers-by at the lobby of Langham Hotel, while this time, Vasco has made the toy birds migrate to the raw space of Videotage where they would react to the motion and sound of a new player - a real mynah bird.

This autonomous species, with its amazing imitative abilities, will respond to the sounds and motion of the 120 plastic birds while the electronic songbirds inherit their own kind of copying ability and react to the environment accordingly. The duo combination is a blown-up orchestra inviting visitors to observe both the psychology and intelligence of the natural-born and the computational singers. Together they become a feedback loop system, a true cybernetic nature.

“Every toy bird is built with an audio sample and movements that resemble the real birds, a cheap attempt to emulate the real ones. The mechanical bird is therefore the perfect object to create an artificial output based on the natural conditions of the environment. The sound and motion of the mynah bird will be used as the value that calibrates the amount of voltage sent to control the movement of the bird toys and the playback of the samples. With amazing imitative abilities, the mynah bird will respond to the sounds and motion of the plastic birds. This process will create a feedback loop, the circuit direction will be from the reading of the mynah bird’s behavior to the interference of the work itself with the environment. The orchestra will be divided into several groups and each group will have its own interpretation of the given data. The overall musicality from the bird toys together with the myna bird will be the final product of the piece.” — Joao Vasco Paiva

Joao Vasco Paiva is a Portuguese artist currently living in Hong Kong. His work is based on the exploration of sound and visuals produced through the isolation of physical patterns. He uses digital and analog systems to depict scores in everyday life situations and rearrange them as sound and visual compositions. He presents his work as live performances, single channel videos and audio visual installations. He graduated from a Fine Arts Degree in Porto Art School. (E.S.A.P.) In 2006 he was awarded with a 2 years scholarship from Fundacao Oriente, a Portuguese Foundation that supports young artists in Asia. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Media in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where he currently teaches. His work has been showed in festivals such as FILE Hypersonica International Festival of Electronic Language, London Exploratory Music Festival, Athens Video Art Festival, CityTransit, 2pi Festival, Hong Kong and Shenzen Architecture and Urbanism Biennial and other venues and locations in Beijing Hong Kong, London, Porto, Hangzhou, Sao Paulo and Vienna.

The thirteenth Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam is entirely dedicated to the exploration of space in performative and audiovisual art, film, music and architecture. Sonic Acts XIII - The Poetics of Space examines the importance of physical space in times of far-reaching technological developments, and the physical and psychological impact of spatial designs.

Researching spatiality in the arts forms the core of the festival. How is space defined by a work of art? What does a viewer or listener experience? How do technological artworks deal with the visual, auditory and psychological aspects of spatiality? How has the relationship between technology, space and architecture developed over the past few centuries? How have technological developments influenced our perception and representation of space, and how do we relate to the space that surrounds us?

The programme comprises an overview of recent works and experiments - spatial audio compositions and audiovisual installations - and includes relevant historical examples and utopian ideals and dreams of the 20th century.

World-renowned sound artist Kaffe Matthews has made a new eight-channel audio work which will be an electronic symphony surrounding Gillett Square. The artwork invites audiences, and cycling participants, to reflect on her clean air paths playing through the polluted London air. This one-day installation on Gillett Square is also the inaugural event of the Invisible Dust enquiry by artists and scientists into air pollution, health and climate change which is led by the Hackney-based curator Alice Sharp.

In keeping with the environmental focus of the project, the power for the sound will be produced by bicycles. Cyclists are invited to take part for fifteen minute sessions to keep the sound levels live throughout the day, with over 200 participants needed in total.

Education Programme

The creation of the electronic symphony has involved two weeks of workshops led by Kaffe Matthews with young people at Colvestone and Shacklewell Primary schools. During the workshops young people aged 8-10 worked with the artist to gather air pollution-related sound recordings, invented carbon free transport solutions and logged air pollution statistics to filter and process the material of a new music composition. One of the project’s scientists, Atmospheric Chemist Professor Peter Brimblecombe also gave an assembly talk at each school to stimulate a wider discussion about air pollution amongst students and teachers.

Staged on the weekend before the UN Climate change conference in Copenhagen, in clean air we fly seeks to re-engage people in the issues around UK air pollution. Central to Matthews’s current work are her environmental concerns, and so the installation will only play if visitors to the event cycle its bicycle powered audio system which will be provided by the ecology collective Magnificent Revolution.

in clean air we fly is commissioned by Invisible Dust and produced by Hackney Co-operative Development’s Gillett Squared project.

Local partners: Colvestone Primary School, Jenny Staff, A Space/Shacklewell Primary School
Supported by the Wellcome Trust, the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Hackney Council.

More about the artist

Kaffe Matthews has been making and performing new music via all kinds of digital gadgetry internationally for fifteen years. She is now most known for her live sampling performances of events and places in real time and the collective project “music for bodies” which makes sonic furniture and music to feel rather than just listen to. Recent works include The Marvelo Project (2008, above, photo by Kaffe Matthews), a Folkestone Triennial commission, which enabled visitors to cycle their own path through the work from specially made GPS linked stereo bicycles, and Fathers (2009), an audiovisual opera with the Lappetites, just premiered HKW, Berlin. Currently she is working with the Gluts to make the musical performance Café Carbon for the Copenhagen climate summit, and Symphony Hammerhead, an ambitious collaboration with shark scientists to make an audio visual work for 2011, after a recent Gulbenkian Galapagos Islands residency. Her 2004 collaboration Weightless Animals was awarded a BAFTA, she received a NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship in 2005 and an Award of Distinction, Prix Ars Electronica 2006 for the work Sonic Bed London. In 2006 she was made an Honorary Professor of Music, Shanghai Music Conservatory and in 2009 a patron of the Galapagos Conservation Trust shark project. Her stereo solo works are available through: www.annetteworks.com

Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland, by Alunda Kyrkokör (Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke). In the performance the Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, played the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden). Harvest was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala in June. There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is a demanding piece and sound — well, take a listen:

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

The artist-duo also created the sound installation Bacterial Orchestra as well as an iPhone-generation of the same art piece, called Public Epidemic No 1. Olle Cornéer is also a electronic musician/producer/composer, while Martin Lübcke has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (superstring theory).

Stacking the boxes creates longer and more complex rhythm lines as the patterns tumble down the resulting pyramids. By tapping for longer than the delay period you play a duet with the box as it repeats your earlier rhythms. Audio delays are often only that, audible, tapTap renders them physical. The boxes themselves do not learn or loop, they only repeat. This keeps the system as simple as possible. There is no perpetual motion only tap, pause and tap. At 4 seconds the delay is just long enough to give the boxes a life of their own… just long enough to wonder if they have forgotten.

tapTap by Andy Huntington comes from an initial development with Louise W. Klinker.

LINES - an intermediary installation by Daan Brikmann (2008): An interactive work of art can not be autonomous, as it is shaped through a dialogue with its audience. This principle forms the explicit point of departure for this work, in which the physical relations between its participants form the parameters for a live audiovisual piece. — Daan Brinkmann