Vandmand

Mariska de Groot is a Dutch interdisciplinary artist who has been making and performing comprehensive analog light-to-sound instruments and installations for the last few years.

Just like Dewi de Vree, who we’ve featured before on this blog, she is a part of iii, an artist-run platform supporting radical interdisciplinary practices engaging with image, sound and the body in the Hague.

While having seen her performances and installations a few times, the thing that always amazes me is how the changes in the light caused by the spinning patterns are something that one can not really see with the naked eye, although they are very audible. A clear case of a situation where the ear manages to keep up in a better way than the eye does.

The way she explores the phenomenon is very interesting: in both a performative setting as well as installation settings, and everything in between. Sometimes the audience is allowed to interfere with the light patterns, sometimes it’s only Mariska playing the sounds.

For one of her latest projects called Vandmand, she collaborated with sound artist Lars Kynde (whose Tasteful Turntable we’ve featured before). Together, they researched notation and composed a piece for the Elsinore Girls Marching Band in Copenhagen. A sound/light composition for a big group of performers. A true spectacle in which the precision of a marching band definitely comes in handy.

She’ll be presenting a new version of her installation at the Birmingham Flatpack Festival next month!

Ground

Jeroen Uyttendaele & Dewi de Vree are two artists from the iii initiative, an artist-run platform supporting radical interdisciplinary practices engaging with image, sound and the body. We’ve featured work by iii-artists before. “Ground” is a performance that Uyttendaele and de Vree have been doing for years, but when I saw it in Berlin a few weeks back, it still seemed novel to me.

In Ground, graphite drawings are used as a control interface for several electronic instruments. By drawing, erasing and touching, they’re able to control pitch, amplitude and sound colour. Graphite is conductive, so conducts electricity. In Ground, it is used as a variable resistor, instead of using a standard knob. Basically, they’re drawing an integral part of an electronic circuit.

In a way, de Vree and Uyttendaele “draw” their own controller, live. Because of this, it allows for a great field of experimentation possibilities in which auditive and visual elements are interconnected. Drawing, touching, slowly or rapidly repositioning instruments: the sound is modulated immediatly, creating a performance that blends senses together. A very tangible way of making live electronic music. If they’re ever playing near you, I suggest you go see the performance!

-shikaku-

Most composers have composed their music based on the assumption that the audience will experience the works facing a stage with musicians. Most classical works aren’t made to be listened to from behind the stage. On the other hand, composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis have been working with the location of their audiences in mind, spatializing the music.

Young composer Chatori Shimizu (1990) wants to do this differently with -shikaku-, which is derived from the Japanese homophones “四角 (square)”, “視覚 (visual)”, and “死角 (blind spot)”, all pronounced “Shikaku”.

The setting of this work is designed so that the music is delivered to audience members surrounding the chamber orchestra, with deliberate blind spots.

 All audience members have a different “blind spot”, none of them will experience the work in the same way. This reflects the story of “Blind Men and An Elephant”, where a group of blind men touch an elephant, each feeling a different part of the animal, and discussing it. Argument breaks down when the men starts to claim that an elephant was a thin, floppy, fan-like creature, as another states that it was a smooth, solid being. Not one man’s statement is untrue, as those are the precise features of an elephant.

4DSOUND

Last week, during Amsterdam Dance Event, 4DSOUND presented their system with artists like Vladislav Delay, Max Cooper, an evening with artists from the Raster Noton label, and various talks and workshops. 

Looking like something which could’ve been next to the Philips Pavilion at the World’s Fair back in ‘58, the structure alone is already quite amazing, even before any sounds are heard. It is said it was inspired by Tesla, and it shows.

(photo by Georg Schroll)

The way the audience listened, with such pure focus, is rarely seen these days and got me thinking about what 4DSOUND does to the listening experience. The freedom to walk around, feel the resonating pillars, sit on the ground, etc. doesn’t distracts one from the listening experience, but rather keeps the audience focused in some way. The design is simple and transparent enough to not “dictate” a certain style.

I’ve visited the room for four different sets, all with very different feelings and ways the space was used. Furthermore the fact the pillars vibrate makes it wildly different than a wavefield-synthesis system, for example. More physical.

Could this be the future of active listening in a concert setting?

Ryoji Ikeda's Superposition

We’ve seen the works of Paris-based artist Ryoji Ikeda before. They are often raw, glitchy works exploring data sonifications and, more recently, the combination with visuals.

Ryoji’s latest work, or rather update of the work superposition is described as follows:

A multimedia music, visual, and theater work at the intersection of art and science, superposition, inspired by the subatomic world, mines the notion that it is not possible to fully describe the behavior of a single particle except in terms of probabilities. The work is an immersive experience, an orchestrated journey through sound, language, physical phenomena, mathematical concepts, human behavior, and randomness, all simultaneously arranged and rearranged in a theatrical arc that obliterates the boundaries between music, visual arts, and performance.

To achieve this, Ryoji has two performers generate the materials live; videos, point clouds, text, sounds, and superimposes these over 21 screens. Premiering in the US this month on October 17th and 18th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Trinity

An audiovisual interactive dance piece from Electronic Perfomers. We’ve seen some of their work before, and Trinity explores the sonification and visualization of movement further, in a refined, beautiful way. 

What I love most about this is the way dance, sound and visuals come together and interact, with the dancer’s body as leading force. And while we know a lot of technology is needed to accomplish this, the result is clean, alive and organic, as you can see in this short video of the piece: 

Stadsmuziek

If you can’t play the piano, you can build a machine that will play it for you. Maybe that’s what Akko Goldenbeld was thinking when he created Stadsmuziek. The installation resembles the system of an old hand-operated street organ, but now the resulting music is certainly a bit more ‘experimental’. 

I like the idea, and the fact that the system isn’t perfect. The screeching sound of the turning wheels complements the sound of the piano nicely. If only it could be played with a bit more expression..

Les Souliers

It’s a weird sight, thirty pairs of shoes, stamping and scraping the floor, without anyone attached to them. I’ve seen a similar ‘shoe stamping machine’ used in a musical way when I watched BOT perform live last year in Amsterdam, but not in such a clean setting as with Les Souliers, created by Arno Fabre.

Stop/Run

Stop/Run by Ed Devane is a collection of nine strange, hand-made instruments. He asked seven composers to create a piece for this ensemble, to be performed at the opening of a week long installation in Severed Head gallery, Dublin, Ireland.

The combination of acoustic and electronic means give the composers a wide range of sonic possibilities. Listen to the pieces recorded on during the opening event:

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Urban Resonances

The beautiful snowy Macedonian landscape

I am currently visiting Macedonia for the Urban Resonances project. With a group of artists and teachers from the Utrecht School of Music and Technology we travel from our home base Skopje through the country for concerts and master classes at schools and faculties of music. 

The project is an initiative of the Zoey foundation for arts and culture in the Netherlands and Public Room in Macedonia. You can read more about the project at their websites: ZOEY / Public Room. 

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