Concert series with Guy de Bievre / Sukandar Kartadinata / hans w. koch / Phill Niblock / Sabine Schäfer & Joachim Krebs / Stevie Wishart
Performance and concert program curated by Jens Brand
Stevie Wishart
The performance and concert program presents six artists with whom Jens Brand, who was a fellow at the Edith Russ House for Media Art in 2007, feels a close connection, both personally and in his work and thinking.
The invited artists Musicians view and create music using different methods: it is invented, dissected, microscoped, prevented, destroyed, bent or transformed and ultimately meets eyes and ears in order to be created.
The small festival, which takes place on two consecutive weekends, does not deal with a theme, but an attitude. There is no style and no target audience, but rather a shared interest in the acoustic moment.
Pictures of the event can be found here…
MUSIC: Part 1
February 15, 2008, 7:30 – 10:30 p.m.
Sabine Schäfer & Joachim Krebs
Sonic Lines n’Rooms (1999)
4-channel spatial sound composition with micro-acoustic animal voices (amphibians and birds) and sounds from everyday human life.
TopoSonic Tunnel (2005)
4-channel spatial sound composition with micro-acoustic animal sounds (insects, amphibians, mammals), natural sounds (water, air, etc.) and sounds from everyday human life.
Sukandar Kartadinata
Die By The Sword (2007)
Music for 2 computer systems, video game, forced feedback joystick and live electronics
Phill Niblock
Hurdy Hurry (1999)
hurdy gurdy, recorded samples by Jim O’Rourke
Harm (2003)
for cello, recorded samples by Arne Deforce
Zrost (2004)
soprano saxophone, recorded samples by Martin Zrost
Sethwork (2003)
acoustic guitars played with E-bow, recorded samples by Seth Josel
and films from the Movement of People Working series (Peru, Mexico, Hong Kong, Hungary, China, Japan)
Phil Niblock also uses the computer as a musical instrument in some pieces.
Sabine Schäfer and Joachim Krebs
The artist couple Sabine Schäfer and Joachim Krebs have been working together on projects in the field of spatial sound art since 1998. They place the audience in a microcopically defined and constructed sound space. The pieces presented are part of a series of concertante and walk-in Spatial sound bodies.
Sukandar Kartadinatas
Sukandar Kartadinata’s audiovisual work ranges from the fragmentation of two computer systems communicating via first-person shooter software to music played only on an electric bass. Die By The Sword is based on a computer game, with the music being created as a kind of waste product during the course of the game.
Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock is one of the most prominent representatives of minimal music. In his compositions combined with films, he confronts the listener with the physical reality of the concert hall. Without harmony, melody or rhythm and contrary to the laws of montage, he creates a new and unique acoustic situation with every performance.
MUSIC: Part 2
February 22, 2008, 7:30 – 10:30 p.m.
hans w. koch
circle_of_fifths (2007)
Installation
Guy De Bièvre
And Above All (2007)
for lap steel guitar and active electronics (developed at the STEIM Foundation in November 2007)
hans w. koch
computers as musical instruments I – IV (2007)
Please bring laptops!
Stevie Wishart
Solos for Hurdy Gurdy: Strings, Wheel, and Fingers (2007)
hans w. koch
hans w. koch deconstructs in a different, often material way. The audience can listen to what it sounds like when a computer is dismantled. In the search for hidden aspects of everyday devices (and traditional musical instruments), sounds and musical structures are created when they are “misused” – until the electricity stops flowing and sound no longer sounds.
Guy De Bièvre
Guy De Bièvre’s deconstructivist compositions are based on experiments that combine instruments, microprocessors, live electronics, acoustics and classical musical arrangements. The compositions are part of a metamorphosis, a fusion of the most diverse sound sources.
Stevie Wishart
Stevie Wishart moves between the extremes of “early music” and “contemporary electronic music”. In Solos for Hurdy Gurdy, the Australian-born composer, singer and performer (especially for old instruments) uses a hurdy-gurdy.
Biographies of the artists involved
Guy De Bièvre, born in Brussels in 1961, is a self-taught composer, arranger, musician, sound engineer and sound designer. In 1999, he decided to stop writing music of the late 20th century. He is currently active as a performer (guitar, microphone, computer) and collaborates with composers such as Phill Niblock, Tom Hamilton and Peter Zummo. As a composer he focuses on experiments that combine computers, live electronics, acoustic sounds and standard arrangements. He also works as a sound engineer and as curator of the audio art series “Earwitness” at CCNOA (Center for Contemporary Non Objective Art).
Sukandar Kartadinata (D, * 1968) sees himself as a modern instrument maker. He develops his instruments primarily for live electronic musicians, based on his knowledge of information technology and electronics. He acquired this knowledge during his computer science studies in Karlsruhe, which enabled him to spend practical semesters at the renowned ZKM (Center for Art and Media Technology, Karlsruhe) and STEIM in Amsterdam. He completed his diploma thesis in Berkeley, California. After working on spatial sound systems, he concentrated on live electronics and sensor electronics at STEIM. Since 1997, Sukandar Kartadinata has been developing instruments in Berlin with a focus on integrated systems. He has made it his particular goal to give electronic instruments a stronger identity.
hans w. koch was born in Heidenheim/Brenz in 1962. He studied music, history and physics at the University of Education in Weingarten and then composition at the University of Music in Cologne with Johannes Fritsch. In addition to his artistic work, which has already taken him to numerous countries in Europe, Japan and the USA, working with amateurs and teachers is an important field of activity, with whom numerous projects and workshops have been created as part of commissions (including on behalf of the Kölner Philharmonie, the Atlantik-Festival Rheinland-Pfalz, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Jeunesses Musicales and as a teaching assignment at the Musikhochschule Köln). Koch has received many scholarships and prizes, including the Bernd-Alois-Zimmermann scholarship from the City of Cologne in 1998, the working scholarship at the Lindabrunn International Sculpture Symposium in Austria in 2000, a scholarship from the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2002, a working scholarship in Tokyo as part of the German-Japanese exchange project “puddles” in 2003 and a scholarship from the Stiftung Kulturfonds/Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2004. He lives and works in Cologne.
Joachim Krebs (*1952, Germany) Composer, extensive oeuvre in instrumental music and electro-acoustic art. Since 1994 spatial sound compositions for walk-in Spatial sound bodies, concert installations and Spatial sound objects. Since 1998 productions by the artist duo <sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>. 1968-78 Band member and composer of the political rock group “Checkpoint Charlie”. Studied piano and composition at the Karlsruhe University of Music. Study visits to India and the USA. 1995-98 Development of the “Artificial Soundscapes” project for the spatial sound microscopy of natural sounds and noises (“EndoSonoScopy“). Performances at international festivals (e.g. Berliner Festwochen, Audio Art Festival Warsaw, Nuova Consonanza Rome, Donaueschinger Musiktage (1983/1999), Internationale Ferienkurse Darmstadt (1984/86/88), Limited Noise Festival London, Munich Biennale, CCMIX Festival Paris, Festival “Musica Viva 2007” Lisbon/Porto), permanent exhibitions at ZKM Karlsruhe (since 2001) and Science Center phaeno Wolfsburg (since 2005) as well as radio productions for France Musique (F.A.), among others.including for France Musique (F), NOS (NL), ORF (A), DLR Kultur, SWR, HR, SR, RBB. Scholarships (e.g. Villa Massimo Rome, German Marshal Fund of the United States, Heinrich Strobel Foundation Freiburg) and prizes (e.g. Beethoven Prize Bonn, International Gaudeamus Music Week/NL, International Viola Research Society Salzburg/A). Instrumental works published by Peermusic Hamburg/New York from 1978 to 1989. www.joachimkrebs.de
Phill Niblock was born in Indiana in 1933. He is a multimedia artist who works with music, film, photography, video and computers. Niblock composes bold, loud musical drones based on instrumental recordings, which in turn generate real resonances in the performance space. At the same time, he presents films about the movements of working people or computer-generated, abstract black and white images. Since the mid-sixties, he has presented his music and multimedia performances in numerous venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the ZKM in Karlsruhe. Since 1985 he has been director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York (www.experimentalintermedia.org). Phill Niblock’s music is available on the labels XI, Moikai and Touch; a DVD has been released by Extreme Lables. – “The music has a steady kinetic push that makes you feel like you’re riding on some slow vehicle taking you directly into the details of the picture.” Wendy Perron, New York Native.
Sabine Schäfer, (*1957 Germany), composer and media artist, has been realizing spatial sound compositions for walk-in RaumklangKörper, concert installations and RaumklangObjekte, since 1998 productions by the artist duo <sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>. Studied composition at the Karlsruhe University of Music with Wolfgang Rihm. 1982-91 Composer-performer of interdisciplinary performance art. 1990-92 Development of a 24-channel spatial sound control system at the ZKM with Sukandar Kartadinata / spatial sound art project “
Stevie Wishart developed her musical studies at the University of York where she specialized in composition, electronic music, ethnomusicology, and medieval music (B.A. Hons). She continued at postgraduate level at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Diploma in Advanced Performance). With a Vicente Canada Blanch Fellowship at the University of Oxford she researched representations of medieval music in the visual arts taking Spain and the Mozarabic world as the main focus. (M.Litt unfinished D.Phil, under the direction of Christopher Page). It is from this initial study of iconography that an involvement in multimedia contexts for her music performance developed. Formative hands-on time was also spent following contact with John Cage and David Tudor while playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and with traditional fiddle players in Istanbul and Rajasthan, as well as studying the hurdy-gurdy with Valentin Clastrier in central France. As a composer and performer on violin, hurdy-gurdy, voice and electronics, Wishart’s music explores medieval and contemporary extremes. Moving between Australia and Europe, her work also draws on these contrasting landscapes and histories (bush/urban). With a keen involvement in improvised and electronic music, Stevie Wishart has formed a compositional style which frequently combines various forms of musical notation and recorded sound. Collaborations and commissions include projects for dance, theater, film, and radio, as well as her relationship with Celestial Harmonies in the United States.