Tuned City interview for Digicult.it
Category: Music

So, next week more than a year of planning finally come together in the Tuned City event, which runs from 1-5 July in Berlin. I helped organize a large chunk of the performance program, along with Carsten Stabenow and Gesine Pagels from the Garage Festival and Carsten Seiffarth, of Tesla Berlin and the Singuhr sound art gallery. Also on board are Anne Kockelkorn of Achplus Magazine and Anke Eckardt as our tireless production director.

The program is simply massive, and covers all sorts of ground between the fields of sound art, acoustics, urban planning and architecture. To see more, please visit the website:

http://www.tunedcity.de

Digicult.it magazine will send Bertram Niessen to cover the event, and he sent a few questions ahead of his visit to help set the stage for his writing.

Bertram Niessen: Can you tell us more about the artists that you have invited? How have you selected the artists that will take part in the events?

Derek Holzer: There are more than 50 artists involved in the Tuned City program, either in creating installations or giving performances, presentations or workshops. It would be very difficult to describe each one, and the process by which we arrived at the decision to invite them! But since I'm responsible for most of the performance program, I can speak about that area the best.

When we started considering works being made relating sound and architecture together, and especially once we started to receive submissions of works from artists, we started to notice that many fit together into certain groups--certain approaches towards sound and space which were common to many of them. You have the artists that want to play tones or noise into a space and play with the acoustic reflections or reverb of the space. Then you have the ones who want to activate objects or structures in the space to produce sound. The field recording approach is also quite common: to make recordings of one space and play it back in another. And finally you have works in the public sphere... provocations, interventions or subliminal messages placed in city streets, squares or tunnels. So based on our own experiences with the artists whose work we know and those we have worked with personally, as well as some of those who sent proposals to the open call, we started to select outstanding examples from each of these categories.


Infrasound - Scott Arford and Randy Yau

The opening night features Scott Arford and Randy Yau, two Americans who have been working in the field of sound art, performance and noise for a long time. I'm quite excited to have the chance to invite them, since I've been hearing about them in certain circles for many years now. Their "Infrasound" work is perhaps one of the most powerful examples of the idea of filling a space with pure sound and making a intense physical effect. I'm personally very interested in sound works which affect the body, and that focus on this physicality, rather than being merely cerebral or "clever". The Dutch duo BMB con. (Roelf Toxopeus and Justin Bennett) will also stage an improvised action that evening. Their work is consistently unpredictable, and they approach each location and setting they perform in with the same energy and humor.


Antoine Chessex

Thomas Ankersmit and Antoine Chessex are two of my personal favorite artists working currently in Berlin. Both play saxophone in very similar and quite different ways, often using circular breathing techniques which extend their playing into almost endless tones. Often, their live solo performances rely on powerful amplification and electronics, however for Tuned City we asked them to present their recently-formed acoustic duo. This performance will take place at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, the old East German radio recording studios, and they will acoustically examine various rooms in the hall, from the small instrumental recording rooms to the massive orchestra hall, and use their saxophone drones to map out the resonances and reflections of the building.


Bucky Media - Farmers Manual

We strongly felt that works which operate in the public sphere were very important, and the day we have scheduled for Alexanderplatz (the central square of old East Berlin) gave an excellent opportunity to explore different ways of working this way. We approached German software musician Antye Greie (better known as AGF) with the idea of performing over the public address system of the new Alexa shopping mall, and she was delighted with the idea! Her electronic music has always been filled with spoken texts, many of which relate to the experience of growing up in the East Germany and the shock of the arrival of Western capitalism. So we couldn't imagine a more ideal setting. Also on this day, the art-hacker group Farmers Manual will present their "Bucky Media" project: two 8 meter high metal-frame spheres, which respond to the audience's moving them around. Architects love (or hate!) Buckminster Fuller, and the sight of these massive metal balls getting rolled around a public square and emitting these insane noises should really make a big impression on them! Also on that day, UK "electromystic" Martin Howse will conduct an electronic seance near the former site of the Palais der Republik, a Communist-era building for culture which was recently demolished. He will drill through the pavement and pound long rods into the earth, tapping them with an amplifier and a speaker in an attempt to hear what the architectural ghosts of the Palais might have to say.


BUG - Mark Bain

Another artist with a history of powerful, physical works with sound and space is Mark Bain. We invited him already for the preview event last February at Club Transmediale, and during that week he negotiated with architect Arno Brandlhuber and the firm b&k architects to make a permanent installation in a new building of theirs. This project, BUG, references the old East German Stasi surveillance techniques on an architectural scale. Bain will place geological sensors in the foundations of the building, and provide headphone jacks in each room so that occupants can listen in to the sounds of the building, whether that be footsteps, mechanical noise or the sound of cars passing in the street or the UBahn which runs directly underneath the building. And on a smaller scale, Will Schrimshaw will use his "Little Helpers", small microprocessor-controlled motors, to resonate objects and structures in the various event locations, acting like a kind of sonic signpost guiding the way to the performances and symposiums taking place.


Storm - Chris Watson & BJ Nilsen

Naturally, the area of field recording is well-represented. We asked Rinus van Alebeek if he would like to organize an edition of his Berlin institution Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival, which he has been running almost monthly with no budget to speak of for three years now. This will take place outdoors, at a disused train station which is being renovated from urban wasteland into a park. And for the closing night, legendary field-recordist, BBC soundman and former Cabaret Voltaire member Chris Watson will give a live performance with BJ Nilsen of their "Storm" project, which takes field recordings of powerful storms from Britain and Sweden and spatializes them through the big concert hall of the Nalepastrasse. We also invited Chris Watson to give a workshop, where the participants will explore the day and night time sounds of the city of Berlin with him, and present a multichannel installation of their work at the end. And finally, Estonian-based American sound artist John Grzinich will screen his "Sound Films" as a running installation. Grzinich has recorded countless hours of sound explorations in Estonia, Latvia and Portugal to a video camera, and the often static visual settings where the sounds take place are often contrasted by a very active sonic environment picked up by sensitive microphones, hopefully encouraging people to listen more closely to their own environments.


Jacob Kirkegaard

Perhaps the artist whose work for Tuned City least fits into our preconceived categories is Jacob Kirkegaard. His "Labyrinthitis" piece works with tones generated by his own ears during a medical examination, and which can produce a sympathetic resonance in the ears of the audience. I've always been interested in the architecture of the body as well, and this piece highlights the role of the listener in the production of sound, taking them from a passive position into a very active state where the sound they hear is in fact coming from themselves.

Of course there are many more artists, performances and installations in the program, as a quick glance at the program on the website or in the catalog shows!

Bertram Niessen: In the festival, several different spaces are involved. How and why have you made this selection?

Derek Holzer: This is really my own take on it, but it's all too common for academic conferences to discuss things without having any genuine connection to the things they are discussing. Perhaps it's in the name of "scientific objectivity", but Brazilian rainforests get discussed in London or New York, punk or noise music gets discussed by elbow-patched professors who have never been to an underground concert in their life, open source software gets discussed in Microsoft Word and Powerpoint files, and architecture gets discussed in boring little white classrooms with ugly fluorescent lights and bad acoustics. So we really wanted to "break down the conventional conference format" by staging the lectures and performances in the kinds of spaces that architects really work in and on: construction sites, renovated buildings, urban wastelands, public squares and buildings which were designed for specific acoustic features and purposes.

Some of the locations suggested themselves out of certain needs, such as the anechoic and echo chambers at the Technical University, or out of specific organizations interested in hosting specific works, such as the installation at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum garden, the works commissioned by the Singuhr soundart gallery for the Prenzlauerberg Wasserspeicher or the building which Mark Bain will wire up with sensors and microphones.


Fehrnseturm - Alexanderplatz

But the decision to use several of the locations was quite deliberate, based on what we wanted to discuss during each day. So the topics of discussion on the day we occupy Alexanderplatz will center around questions of working in public space, urban space and sonic experience and sound as a system of social communication. Likewise, the next day in the disused Wriezener Bahnhof train station, where tx architects are working with local residents to design a city park which responds to their needs and interests, will focus on the design of acoustic environments.


Main concert hall, Funkhaus Nalepastrasse

Perhaps the most astonishing architectural work featured in the event is the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse. This building was designed and built in the 1960's as home for the East German radio, and two full concert halls (one small, one massive) form the core of this building. The rest of the structure was engineered around these halls as a kind of acoustic buffer, to prevent outside noise from trains or airplanes, for example, from getting in, and every aspect of the interior design, right down to the decorations on the wall panels, was calculated for its effect to absorb, reflect or diffuse sound.

One of the things we encountered quite often when speaking with architects about this project, was that architects are highly visually-oriented, and not very well educated about sound and acoustics, preferring to leave this particular "pain in the ass" to the acousticians, who come to clean up the mess with panels and such, later on. So to situate our final day in a building whose entire purpose was to sound good and to produce good sound, is a powerful statement that acoustic design should not be relegated to a secondary role, but rather should be an integral part of the architectural process from the beginning.

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TONEWHEELS workshop in Dortmund
Category: Music

Yesterday I flew back from Riga, where I spent a fantastic weekend exploring old Soviet bunkers and foggy beaches, playing drones with some "forest folk" Latvian hippy friends on the student radio, checking out the Skaņu mežs festival and ruminating on the time-bending properties of Rigas Black Balzams. Expect a festival review in the near future right here.

Next mountain on the horizon is a DIY electronics workshop I'm running for the exhibition "Waves -The Art of the Electromagnetic Society", put together by Inke Arns, Armin Medosch and the HMKV art center in Dortmund. The exhibition opened last weekend and my workshop will take place at the end of this month. There's probably still space, so my German or would-be German friends are welcome to jump on board. Details below...



TONEWHEELS
Workshop with Derek Holzer (USA)

HMKV in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
May 29 - June 1, 2008 (Thu - Sun)
Max. 15 participants, in English
Registration until May 22, 2008 at info@hmkv.de or Tel +49 - 231 - 823 106

In the framework of "Waves -The Art of the Electromagnetic Society", HMKV in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, May 10 - June 29, 2008, opening: Friday, May 9, 2008, 19:00, www.hmkv.de

PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
Hochofenstr. / Ecke Rombergstr.
Dortmund-Hoerde

Tonewheels is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering twentieth-century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures, while projected graphical loops and textures add richness to the visual environment. This all-analogue set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface, and audience display. In this way, Tonewheels aims to open up the 'black box' of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

The Tonewheels workshop will provide an introduction to simple techniques of optical synthesis using overhead projectors, transparencies, motors, lasers, LEDs, simple integrated circuit chips, photoresistors, phototransistors, and photodiodes. It will require no previous knowledge of electronics to take part. Participants will make simple circuits to turn light directly into sound and drive motors which can spin or move transparencies over these circuits. They will also have an opportunity to design sound-producing transparencies, either on the computer using Inkscape or similar drawing software, or by hand using ink pens.

http://umatic.nl/tonewheels.html

Enquiries about the workshop, registration until May 22, 2008:
Hartware MedienKunstVerein, info@hmkv.de or Tel +49 - 231 - 823 106

Schedule:
Thu 11:00-19:00 Workshop
Fri 11:00-18:00 Workshop (from 18:00 video program "Abstracts of Syn" by Medienturm Graz)
Sat 11:00-19:00 Workshop
Sat 20:00 final presentation and performance by Derek Holzer
Sun 11:00 brunch

Regulations:
- the participants will pay the costs for travel, food and accomodation
- free admission
- HMKV recommends the City Hotel Dortmund (http://www.cityhotel-dortmund.de/) or Ruhgebiet (http://www.ruhgebiet.de)



Now Playing

ASVA - What You Don't Know is Frontier [Southern]
Kinit Her - Bone Marrow Artifacts [Archive.org]
Geronimo - Geronimo [31g]
Robedoor - Rancor Keeper [Release the Bats]
Salome - Salome [Vendetta]

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Black Trashhhhh! DJ set + PD workshop this weekend
Category: Music

Black Trashhhhh! DJ set 28.04.08

Next Monday I'm DJing some FUCKING METAL for a noise show organized by my favorite Attention Deficit Disorder victim in Berlin, Pato.


[click pic for big]

28/04/08 Black Trashhhhhh!

* xxxxx/mh/others
* Stupidity
* Penelopex
* Ent
* Macumbista DJ

+ guests

Madame Claude
Lubbener Str. 19
Kreuzberg Berlin
UBahn Schlesiches Tor
19:00

PD Sensor Workshop 26.04.08




April 26th 2PM: AVR/HID Sensor Input into Pure Data with Derek Holzer & Martin Howse

We will continue last month's investigation of quick and cheap ways of getting sensor input into the Pure Data programming environment, using either USB game controllers or ATmega8 microcontrollers and the HID (Human Interface Device) protocol. Participants should bring the AVR/HID boards and/or hacked joysticks from the previous workshop. Those who did not attend the previous workshop are welcome, and ready made sensor boards can be purchased as part of the participation fee. Please RSVP to m@1010.co.uk if you plan to attend, and indicate whether you will need a sensor input board for Saturday.

A few (!) sample sensors will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring their own sensors (light, pressure, motion, etc...) for experimentation. The Pure Data programming environment will be used to get the sensor information into the computer and map it to different parameters, ranging from MIDI to direct control of audio or video.

Windows users should be aware that the possibilities for input on their systems may be more restricted. GNU/Linux and Mac OS X users should not expect any problems.

Some links for those interested:

http://1010.co.uk/avrhid.html (AVR/HID board documentation)
http://puredata.info/downloads (install PD-Extended 0.39 from here!)
http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page (comprehensive list of
sensors for musical use)

---What to bring:

Essential:

1) Laptop running Linux, OS X or Windows (be advised that Windows users may have fewer possibilities)
2) Pure Data Extended 0.39 installed from: http://puredata.info/downloads (please mind that it is Extended and 0.39!!!!)
3) Soundcard (internal or external, quality a non-issue)
4) Headphones
5) EUR 10 participation fee (+ 8 euros if you need a sensor board)

Recommended/Suggested:

1) Sensors of any kind
2) USB game controller of any kind
3) Microphones or other sound inputs
4) Your own project ideas for discussion

xxxxx_workshops

A (more-or-less) weekly series of constructivist workshops emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops led by field-expert practitioners extend over realms of code and embedded code, environmental code, noise, transmission and reception, and electromysticism. Workshops solely utilise free software and GNU toolbase.

xxxxx, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119

U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl.
U8, Rosenthaler Pl.

Telephone: 3050187482.

http://pickledfeet.com

Other News: blackdronoisemetalove in Copenhagen

This past month I've been on the road quite a bit. First I went to Copenhagen to play a couple sets for the very cool folks at the Co-Lab Gallery with my friend Morten Skrøder. For the curious, I've posted some rough MP3s here, and I'll be meeting Morten again in CPH on 5 May to do some more jamming and recording! Each recording is approx 25 min long...

Macumbista & Skroeder, blackdronoisemetalove I, Co-Lab Gallery Copenhagen, 22.03.08 (33 Mb)
Macumbista & Skroeder, blackdronoisemetalove II, Co-Lab Gallery Copenhagen, 22.03.08 (41 Mb)

Sorry, still waiting for photos... Listen for the part in the first set where the irate upstairs neighbor came down to bitch us out! The mics were next to the drinks, so you might also hear the occasional Kroner getting tossed in the box...

Other News: Pure Data in Croatia

Then I spent a crazy week on the Croatian island of Korcula to work on a beginner's manual for the Pure Data software with Luka Princic and Adam Hyde (remotely). Results to be published soon at FLOSS Manuals. Here's me, hard at work on my sunburn during one of the days we managed to escape the laptops...



Other News: Tuned City Performances

And for the next couple months I'll be super-busy organizing the performance program for an event about sound and architecture called Tuned City, which will take place in Berlin from 1-5 July 2008. So far, we are very happy to be able to invite Randy H.Y. Yau & Scott Arford, Thomas Ankersmit & Antoine Chessex, BJ Nilsen & Chris Watson, Mark Bain, Staalplaat Sound System, Martin Howse, Jacob Kirkegaard, Leif E. Boman, Harold Schellinx, Lasse Marc Riek and many others... you can subscribe to the Tuned City news list via the website and get updates. Hope to see some of y'all there!


Now Reading

J.G. Ballard - War Fever
Phillip K. Dick - The Eye of the Sibyl: The Collected Stories of Phillip K. Dick Volume 5
Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Now Playing

Daniel Menche - Glass Forest CD [Important Records]
Daniel Menche - Bodymelt LP [Important Records]
BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa - Passing Out CD [Helen Scarsdale]
Dead Black Arms - Like the Night of Thunder and Rain MP3 [Archive.org]

16:42 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

blackdronoisemetalove kobenhavn
Category: Music

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Sound Constructions
Category: Music

image: Sophie Erlund and Jodi Rose listening in to the Palast der Republik, Berlin, 2008

My dear friend Jodi Rose has put together Sound Constructions, a weekend on the topic of sound and architecture this Saturday and Sunday at the Program initiative for art + architectural collaborations in Berlin. This quite strangely coincides with the topic of the Tuned City event which I am co-curating next 1-6 July, and which Carsten Stabenow and I will speak about at this event.

Saturday is a panel discussion + performance, and Sunday is an edition of Das Kleine Field Recording Festival, put together by my one and only homie Rinus van Alebeek. Be there!

Now Playing

Johnny Lee - The Urban Cowboy
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Henry's Dream
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Unknown Artists - Music of Iran (some truly haunting vocals, lute, percussion pieces...copied from the IPod of Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand in Amsterdam...titles in Japanese so who knows WTF this comes from...)

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Proposal for an Action...Monday 3 March
Current mood: adventurous
Category: Music

In honor of Linda Montano's works with Tom Marioni (Handcuff, 1973) and Tehching Hsieh (pictured above, 1984)...and perhaps to enliven what might be an otherwise perfectly average evening, I'd like to invite someone, stranger or friend, to be handcuffed to me for the entire evening at the Black Dice concert (Festsaal Kreuzberg, Monday 3 March 22:00). Particulars such as gender or age unimportant. Serious inquiries only. Deadline 16:00 tomorrow for replies.


Some background reading:
The Year of the Rope: An Interview with Linda Montano & Tehching Hsieh

best!
d.

06:12 - 7 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

TONEWHEELS in the Netherlands
Category: Music

I'm off to Amsterdam tomorrow for a two week residency at STEIM to work on the TONEWHEELS project. On Monday 18 Feb Sara Kolster and I will do an informal, "performative installation" version of the project at DNK, and on Wednesday 20 Feb you can catch the full performance plus maybe a little lecture at STEIM. See you there!

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ABOMINATIONS live at CTM [photos, video]
Category: Music

ABOMINATIONS played as part of the Dark Alloy evening at Club Transmediale in Berlin on 30 January 2008, along with Utarm, Ives no. 1, Shit and Shine and Wolves in the Throne Room.

From the CTM catalog text:

This program draws parallels between various approaches to playing Noise and Metal. Although distorted riffs and guitar feedback play a major role in Metal, it is not generally in search of the chaotic sound signatures of Noise. The latter tend only to provide background in Metal, against which compositional rigor and the players' precision can stand out all the more dramatically. This is quite different from Noise where the chaotic overlaying of the greatest possible amount of interference, feedback, distortion, buzzing, crackle, drone and their often unpredictable permutations is the actual material of the music. Despite this, since the advent of Black Metal's preference for rich overtones in the high-frequencies, noise has become increasingly important in Metal – doubtless the fundamental reason why the marriage of Noise and Metal is currently producing so many exciting projects. Yet other influences are also helping catalyze new developments: the tendency to abstraction for example, or the transmutability of Jazz, or narrative elements taken from Folk and Gothic.

Differences notwithstanding, Noise and Metal are driven by many similarities: the physical sensation of sound intensity taken to the highest extreme, complete immersion in sound, aggressively confronting the audience with a massive wall of sound. The extreme tension between amorphous chaos and rigorous control, between eruptive noise and precise composition, between devotion and control fantasies, creates the special experience of both genres, in terms the sound and the absorbing dramaturgy. Above all, Metal and Noise musicians love to stage themselves as tamers of the destructive, dark forces embodied in sound.

If sound is conceived as fluid and malleable, Noise musicians embrace it unconditionally, wrestling to give it form, never resting and yet never quite able to – and not willing to – completely win the upper hand. The struggle is everything. In contrast, the Metal musician, draws slightly more authority by maintaining a degree of distance. As in a necromantic legend, the fluid forms into matter before him, writhing, spitting and spraying while he plunges violently into its innards.

Metal and Noise: each is in search of an ecstatic catharsis, of purification by sound.

¡Muchos gracias a Pablo Sanz por las fotografías y video!

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Tuned City/XXXXX/Club Transmediale
Category: Music

Somehow, I seem to have stumbled into three different projects in the upcoming Club Transmediale festival, and I'd like to invite those of you coming to Berlin this weekend or next week to check them out.

The first is a preview weekend for an event on sound and architecture planned for July 2008 called Tuned City. For the first Club Transmediale weekend, we have a mini-conference at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse on SAT 26/01, featuring artists, academics and urban scientists reflecting on the topic, as well as a "keynote" Q&A between Brandon LaBelle and Max Neuhaus. This event is meant as both a kickoff and a call for interested persons. Drop by if you'd like to talk with us!

* TUNED CITY CONFERENCE @ CTM *
* TUNED CITY WEBSITE *

On SUN 27/01 there will be a performance evening on the same theme at the Maria club that I co-curated, called Tuned Space, featuring Dallas Simpson, BJNilssen & Hildur Gudnadottir, Mattin, Daniel Menche and Mark Bain. The night should go from quiet minimal world of found objects and sounds through to the body- and building-crushing power of subsonic rumblings.

* TUNED SPACE @ CTM *

Then my "electroacoustic death metal" duo ABOMINATIONS (with Argentinian drummer Marcelo Aguirre) plays on the Dark Alloy night WEDS 30/01 alongside Wolves in the Throne Room, Utarm, Shit & Shine and Ives no. 1. Esoteric drones and non-linear distortion meet animalistic vocals and percussive brutality!

* DARK ALLOY @ CTM *
* ABOMINATIONS WEBSITE *

And during that whole week, I an co-coordinating the xxxxx-Workshops: [in]tolerance series at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. This series focuses on noise electronics and free software, emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshop leaders include Jessica Rylan, Alejandra Perez Nuñez, Frederik Olofsson, Martin Howse, Martin Kuentz and Andrei Smirnov, with whom I will conduct the Digital Theremin workshop. The workshops are long since full, but you can drop by the public presentations each night of the week at 18:00 from TUE 29/01 to SAT 02/02, with the final workshop performance taking place at 20:00 on SAT 02/02.

* XXXXX-WORKSHOPS: [IN] TOLERANCE *
* XXXXX/PICKLED FEET WEBSITE *

Hope to see you all in the coming weeks!

Now Playing

Bolz'n - Riemen (unreleased)
Destructo Swarmbots - Clear Light (Public Guilt)
Iannis Xenakis - Iannis Xenakis (Edition RZ)
Magicicada - Everyone is Everyone (Public Guilt)
Various Artists- Untitled 3xCD (Underadar, Public Guilt, Epicene)
Zaïmph - Emblem (W.M.O./R)
Skullflower - Abyssic Lowland Hiss (Heavy Blossom)
Tim Hecker - Atlas 10" (Audraglint)
Wolf Eyes - Dog Jaw (Heresee)

Thanks to Pure for letting me plunder his CD collection over the holidays for many of these!

17:44 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

TONEWHEELS interview for Digicult.it
Category: Music

TONEWHEELS Digicult.it Interview

I'll be playing at the NETMAGE Festival in Bologna next Thursday (24 Jan 2008) with Sara Kolster, presenting our audiovisual project TONEWHEELS. Digicult.it magazine did an interview for the occasion, which should turn up in Italian and English on their site this week. Enjoy!



Warsaw 2007, photo by ch0hlik/Rafal Jozwiak

DIGICULT: Would you like to tell me something about your different artistic backgrounds? When did your collaboration start?

DEREK HOLZER: My background originally was in radio and media-arts, including college, community, pirate and internet radio. This kind of work led very quickly into field recordings and from there to the other aspects of sound art which I am still busy with to this day. I spent quite a bit of time between making environmental recordings as well as media-arts projects surrounding them (such as Soundtransit.nl) and making and programming digital sound through free and open source applications such as Pure Data.

I don't think that artists operate in a vacuum--think of the mythical modernist painter, alone in his studio, inventing painting all over again from scratch--so I've always been very active in the different communities around the media I work in. Education and collaboration have always been a very integral part of my process. It's how I learn and how I get better, by doing it with other people.

Sara and I have been working together since 2001, when we went together to the Acoustic.Space.Lab symposium, at the site of a 32m dish antenna used by the KGB as a spy station during the Soviet era in Latvia. Since then, we have collaborated on videos, installations, websites, workshops and live audiovisual performances. Each one of us is totally dedicated, perhaps even immersed, in our own chosen media, which is what makes our collaborations so strong.

SARA KOLSTER: Although my background is design, I never really felt myself a designer. The focus of my work soon shifted towards still and moving image, resulting in collaborations with media- and sound artists and documentary makers. I have a very research-based approach, ranging from a more formalist approach in the use of image and sound (like the Tonewheels project), to a more content based perspective used in disciplines such as journalism, documentary and archeology (like the projects Ossea and Living Spaces). The last few years this resulted in a wide variety of projects involving installations, webbased projects such as SoundTransit, single channel video work, live performances and animation. Besides my artistic work, I really enjoyed giving lectures and workshops in art centers or Universities in various countries.

As Derek, I don't really believe in working alone and prefer to collaborate with other artists - each with their own talent - coming from different backgrounds. For me, this process of collaboration is an essential aspect of my work. It pushes me and my work into areas I didn't think of before.

DC: When did your interest in optical sound technology start? And when did you decide to rescue also historical experimental a/v instruments, used for instance in Toneweels?

SK: In 2003 we started the project Visible Sound/Audible Image which involved a series of live av-performances, workshops and screenings in the Baltic States with a central focus on the direct interrelation of image and sound. The live-performance resonanCITY was part of this project and showed already our interest in using analogue material, such as found objects, medium format slides and film footage to create sound and images from. You can see it as a preliminary state of tonewheels, especially the visual part of it, since I used a small lightbox and a camera to create a live projection. The overhead projector I use in Tonewheels is nothing more than an enlarged lightbox; with the only difference that the projection directly shows what my hands are doing without any digital interference of a video camera or a beamer. There's no delay or buffer between the "real" image and the projected image which makes the performance extremely "live".

DH: I've always been fascinated by the ANS synthesizer, which was conceived by Russian inventor Evgeny Murzin in 1938 as a way of creating music from a score without an orchestra. It's a bit like what we expect from music software nowadays, actually! The "score" of the ANS is a glass plate covered in a black wax. You scratch through the wax, and this lets light into the synthesizer. Where the light shines in determines the pitches that the synthesizer plays, and because you roll the glass plate through the synthesizer (a bit like a printing press, actually), the pitches can change depending on how your scratched and how fast you move the plate. The pure analog simplicity of this instrument is quite striking!

So with this idea in mind, I went together with Sara last summer to the "Workshop for Art and Music with the Overhead Projector", organized by Ralf Schreiber, Christian Faubel and Tina Tongerel at the Moltkerei in Cologne. I originally thought to make an ANS wall-installation, which could be played by scores drawn for the overhead projector. But then I became more interested in actually drawing the waveforms of the sound, which is exactly what the tonewheels we use are doing. I was also impressed by the work of New York's Loud Objects group, who were at the workshop as well. They solder together simple one-bit microcontroller-based synthesizers live on the overhead projector, and this approach of making the technology more transparent in some way is very important in an era of laptops and black boxes, where the audience has no idea how the sounds they hear are being produced.

Because of my interest in the ANS, which is housed at the Moscow State Conservatory, as well as in other pioneering electronic music instruments such as the Theremin, I have been in touch with Andrei Smirnov from the Theremin Center for quite some time. His knowledge and resources in the area of direct optical synthesis are unparalleled, and the historical information he has given me was extremely useful in conceiving what kind of project this could turn out to be. Andrei was more than happy to look over the research I did, and to offer suggestions and (sometimes blunt) criticisms.



Warsaw 2007, photo by Patrycja Stefanek

DC: Would you like to describe me the Toneweels set? How does your live set work and how do you both generate sound and visuals?

DH: Tonewheels is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures, while projected graphical loops and textures add richness to the visual environment. This all-analog set is performed entirely live, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, Tonewheels aims to open up the "black box" of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

SK: The projection I create is not static, but exists of graphical film "loops". Besides this constant movement, I manually move translucent material in another layer. In the future i would like to work with more than one overhead projector. This would give me more freedom to experiment with more complex patterns and light-layers, switching from one to the other projector. You could see it as an extreme low-tech video mixing system!

DH: Currently, the audio comes from my side alone, and we both contribute to the visual elements. The audience can see the spinning tonewheels and circuits of the interface on my overhead projector, and on Sara's projector there are running patterns and colors which overlap on the screen with the image of my interface. Perhaps later on, we will add some circuitry which allows Sara's graphical patterns to influence the sound as well. The whole project is quite new, and is very intensive to develop, so additions come one at a time for every performance.

DC: How do you design and choose different graphical patterns for your live shows? I know, for instance, that you use also traditional and folk decorations. What will you do for Netmage?

SK: For our set in Poland, I created graphics based on folk patterns used in traditional Polish clothing. When we visited Warsaw the first time in order to investigate the performance setting and to do research in order to develop our tonewheels-set, we found a book about traditional Polish folk-art and the idea arose to use it as a starting point of our set. From the book I manually reproduced these graphics on the computer, resulting in 15 different tonewheels and film-strips which we used during our set in September of this year. Besides these folk-patterns - which were quite complex - I designed several other black & white graphics - more quiet ones - which would make the projection more interesting. Besides the b&w-graphics, I use translucent material such as color light-filters and masks. For Netmage I will use a combination of the Polish patterns and newly created ones.

DH: The Polish folk patterns looked quite beautiful, but acoustically they were usually quite similar...they all had the kind of buzzing sound of a square or sawtooth waveform. I had been looking for a while at Edwin Emil Welte's Light-Tone organ, which used spinning glass discs with various harmonic waveshapes painted on them to create sound. So I asked Sara to imitate one of these discs from a photograph. While it wasn't harmonically perfect, it did have a very different sound from the others, and it became one of my favorite tonewheels to play because of its unique timbre.

What's interesting is that this discussion of designing the tonewheels from the graphical point of view versus designing from the sonic point of view is an exact reproduction of the debates which took place at the dawn of this technology in the 1930's. Animator Oskar Fischinger was working on painting or photographing graphical shapes and patterns directly into the soundtrack strip of motion picture film, to see how certain shapes sounded. On the other hand, the technician Rudolf Pfenninger was interested in creating a "vocabulary" of waveshapes which corresponded to different instrument or voice sounds, so that he could compose film music graphically without the need of performers (again, the main idea behind most computer audio software).

The Netmage performance will most likely use all the different tonewheels we have developed so far. Each has its own special characteristic and sound.



Warsaw 2007, photo by ch0hlik/Rafal Jozwiak

DC: About the audio: which is the sound are you looking for? I mean, are you able to control and write a partiture with this kind of material approach to sound?

DH: Pre-programmed, scored, scripted or sequenced music doesn't interest me at all. My performance strategy has always been to create a situation with a number of possibilities (instruments, objects, timbres, etc) and explore those through improvisation. Live performance for me has always been something like a struggle to gain control of what is often a very chaotic system. The sound which happens in the Tonewheels performance is primarily the sound of modulated electricity, sent directly to the mixer. But as it is direct current voltage, I can also send it to the analog modular synthesizer and create new sounds with it there, and this is where it becomes exceptionally chaotic! Beyond that, I like to see what happens in the live scenario, rather than try to predetermine what I or the audience will hear.

DC: How do your way to handle, touch and dismantle the sound/image source influence the live experience? Is there a different feeling for you as performers, instead of using softwares and laptops? I think it is a more deep sensor experience…

DH: In the beginning of 2007, I made a small promise to myself to slowly get rid of the laptop from my live performances. Not all at once, but in stages. I started to realize that laptop performance, outside of a few people who really critique it like Mattin, is an absolute dead end. I'm not saying that computer music is a dead end, or that music should not be created or composed on the computer. But I question projects like all the laptop quartets and orchestras which have popped up lately. It's the visual equivalent of watching the window of an internet cafe! There is simply nothing performative in it, so why expect a paying audience to sit and watch it? Gadgets and Wii-motes and sensors and these kind of things people have been working with the last 10 years or so add some performativity back in, but in the end the big challenge is to involve the audience's attention in a meaningful way. The computer allows for so much complexity, and for so much pre-planning, that very little is actually spontaneous. And even less of it has a sense of danger to it.

So I started acquiring the various parts of an analog modular synthesizer, and I picked up my old hobby of DIY electronics in order to build the parts which I could not afford or find in any other way. The synthesizer works in a very physical and direct way, outside of this imaginary dataspace of the computer. It's mechanics and electrons moving in absolute real time, and it's full of risks for the live situation, and that's what convinced me it was the way forward.

SK: In our previous performance resonanCITY I already experimented with the use of analogue material such as medium-format slides and 16mm film. But I never was very satisfied by the quality of the projection; it never was as crisp as it would have been when it would be a direct light-projection, using a slide-projector for instance. For quite some time I was looking for a more direct way of projecting and creating moving image. When this workshop came across last summer, I decided to experiment with the overhead projector, resulting in the tonewheels set.


Warsaw 2007, photo by Patrycja Stefanek

DC: Behind Toneweels there is both a deep technical research and a long study on cinema-history and last century avant-garde. In the same time you both use open source softwares like PD and join workshops about it, so it seems you have a "do it yourself" approach to technology. Which is your relationship with the instruments do you work with?

DH: I've always believed that the first step in any kind of technological art is the creation of one's own tools, rather then buying or downloading some ready-made solution based on someone else's idea of how art should be made. So PD appealed to this side of me very much, and I created almost every instrument I used with it over the years. Now that I'm working with analog electronics more and more, I find that there is a similar community of people who are constantly inventing new sonic machines, and they have inspired me greatly. From musicians like Jessica Rylan, who built her own performance instruments from the circuit-boards up, and instrument builders like Tom Bugs, who cranks out a new quirky noise-box design every month or so, to true electro-mystics like Martin Howse, who concerns himself in an almost alchemical way with the materials and hidden potentials of electrical circuitry as it interacts with physical matter and bodies--all these people and more have shown me new ideas and directions over the last year.

DC: Do you consider your "material" approach to Audio-Video like a sort of archaeological rescue operation or do you think that Electronic Arts are now pushing to new paths more focused on a physical contact (less digital) with Audiovisual materials?

SK: Walking around on many media-art festivals, I was always surprised by the hype around new gadgets. A lot of times it felt like a sort of fair for tech-fetishists - whether it was GPS or motion controlled surveillance cams - only used to mystify the audience. Most of these - especially digital - techniques create a distance between the audience and the work which is shown, since the way it functions is completely hidden. When you think for example of av-laptop performances, the audience has no clue what is happening, where the sound and images are coming from. Above it all, the static behavior of the performer behind his/her laptop does not reveal any empathy for the audience.

I think a lot of artists come back from the use of digital media, or at least become more critical and aware about the fact why they use a laptop or other new technology. I do believe that the era of a computer-as-end-interface is over. Instead, its role becomes more complex; as a link in a chain of analogue devices (whether mechanical or electronic) it opens many interesting artistic possibilities to discover and explore.

DH: It wouldn't be difficult to characterize much media art of the last ten years or so as having a euphoric--no, actually more than euphoric, even beyond utopian--vision of the possibilities of disembodied data. The media activist can suddenly make a radio show or magazine without the traditional media infrastructure. The digital sculptor can fashion 3D models of impossible objects existing in worlds with invented laws of physics. The laptop composer has an endlessly recursive strange attractor of fantastic instruments and orchestras to do their bidding. Or one can even sample their favorite performers and play along with that. But all this work exists only in the imaginary dataspace, to be played out in the dark corners of the internet, via solitary explorations with the home computer. When you bring a group of people together (in a real room, often with ugly carpet or perhaps the smell of unwashed feet) around computer art, what you often get is a situation where one person is "inside" the work, either as artist or audience, and the rest are watching someone else be "inside" something without knowing exactly what it is they are experiencing. Even this "locative media" craze, which was supposed to be about giving physical location to this disembodied data, actually required that all of us walk around staring at screens or plugged into headphones the whole time. Alone, waiting for a message, like a participant at the hacker conferences where they still prefer to use IRC even when they are in the same room (purple carpet, stinky feet..). I, for one, decided that I'd had enough of that. And I sincerely hope there are others who are willing to join me.



Warsaw 2007, photo by ch0hlik/Rafal Jozwiak

Now Playing

Aaron Dilloway & C. Spencer Yeh - The Squid (Hanson)
Black Sun - Hour of the Wolf (Distortion Project)
Boris w/ Merzbow - Rock Dream (Southern Lord)
Coffins & Otesanek - Split LP (Parasitic)
C. Spencer Yeh - Solo Violin 1-10 (Tone Filth)
Daniel Menche - Legions in the Walls (original master, web release)
Gnaw Their Tongues - ...Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladder Emptying, Vomiting Helplessly... (web release)
Leviathan - Verräter (tUMULt)
Marblebog - Forestheart (Autopsy Kitchen)
Njiqahdda - Njimajikal Arts (E.E.E.)
Skullflower - IIIrd Gatekeeper (reissue) (Crucial Blast)
Two Dead Sluts, One Good Fuck - Two Dead Sluts, One Good Fuck (Fan Disc)
Vargr - Black Northern Supremacy (20 Buck Spin)
Witchcraft - The Alchemist (Rise Above)
Wrath of the Weak - Wrath of the Weak (Bastardized)

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2007 playlists wrapped up
Category: Music

Dale Lloyd from and/OAR records wrote to me this week, asking again for a best-of list for 2007. Long lists of records tend to be long and boring (and mine is very, very long!), satisfaction only for the completists looking to tick off the little boxes. In 2007 I found that my unique, real-life experiences were far more interesting than disposable plastic discs or bits passed down a wire. To me at least.

Personal Best 2007

1) Kevin Drumm: live @ Maria, Berlin
2) Birchville Cat Motel, Antoine Chessex, Jazkammer & Burial Chamber Trio: live @ Club Transmediale, Berlin
3) Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival: multiple editions, multiple locations, Berlin
4) Finally seeing the documentary on Swiss "actionist" Roman Signer ("Signers Koffer-Unterwegs mit Roman Signer")
5) Vowing to get rid of the laptop in my live sets this past year (almost there!)
6) Opening for KTL in Paris, and Paris in general which wasn't nearly as snobby as I was led to believe...
7) Pickled Feet DIY electronics workshops, Berlin
8) Self-made analog synth modules, hell yeah!
9) The Buchla synthesizer at EMS, Stockholm
10) "Art & Music with the Overhead Projector" festival/workshop, Cologne
11) Daniel Higgs: live @ Maria, Berlin
12) Keiji Haino murdering PanSonic: live @ Volksbuhne, Berlin
13) Stephan Mathieu's collection of 78 rpm records
14) Abominations: tour through the Northern Darkness of Sweden and home again to Berlin

And now the records, in no particular order save alphabetical. Long time friends here will see that it is a summary of my "Now Playing" reports of the last 12 months. Release dates remain unimportant to me, only that I (re)experienced these little packets of sound sometime during 2007, and they left an impression on me.

Now Playing 2007

1349 - Hellfire (Candlelight)
A.M. - Orla (Ikuisuus)
Alhaji K Frimpong - Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu (cassette rip via Awesome Tapes from Africa)
Antoine Chessex - Silences (Tanzprocess CDR)
Assück - Anticapital/Blindspot (Sound Pollution)
Birchville Cat Motel - Birds Call Home Their Dead (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
Birchville Cat Motel - Seventh Ruined Hex (Important Records)
Birchville Cat Motel with Anla Courtis - Three Sparkling Echos (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
BJNilsen - The Short Night (Touch)
BJNilsen & Stilluppsteypa - Drykkjuvísur Ohljódanna (Helen Scarsdale Agency)
BJNilsen, Stiluppsteypa & Hildur Gudnadottir - Second Childhood (Quecksilber)
Black Flag - Who's Got the 10 1/2? (SST)
Bolz'n - Spalt>Funktion 12" (React with Protest)
Burial Chamber Trio - Burial Chamber Trio (Southern Lord)
Burning Star Core - Blood Lightning (No Fun Productions)
Burning Star Core - Operator Dead... Post Abandoned (No Quarter)
Circle - Katapult (No Quarter)
Circle - Tyrant (Latitudes)
Coffins - The Other Side of Blasphemy (20 Buck Spin)
Corrupted - Vasana 7" (HG Fact Japan)
Courtis - Los Alamos (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
Crossed Out - 1990-1994 (Slap a Ham)
Daniel Higgs - Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrilljockey)
Daniel Menche - Beast Resonator (Roggbif)
Daniel Menche - Bleeding Heavens (Blossoming Noise)
Daniel Menche - Furnace Fucker (cassette via Daniel Menche blog)
Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum (Ajna Offensive)
Dropdead - Discography 1991-1993 (Selfless)
Earth - Hibernaculum (Southern Lord)
Elaine Radigue - Jetsun Mila (Lovely Music)
Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today (Candlelight Records)
G.I. Gurdjieff - Harmonic Development - the complete harmonium recordings (Basta Music)
Glory Fckn Sun - Vision Scorched (PseudoArcana)
Grails - Burning Off the Impurities(Temporary Residence)
Greg Malcolm & Tetuzi Akiyama - Six Strings (Brombron)
Grey Daturas & Yellow Swans - Copper/Silver (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Hawkwind - Space Ritual (Caroline)
Jazkamer - Balls the Size of Texas Liver the Size of Brazil (Purplesoil)
Jesu- Conqueror (Hydrahead)
jgrzinich - rudiment of two (Editions Sonore)
Joe Colley, Jessica Rylan and Kevin Drumm - Pure (Musica Excentrica)
John Fahey - Sea Changes and Coelacanths-A Young Person's Guide to John Fahey (Table of Elements)
Keiji Hanio & KK Null - Mamono (Blossoming Noise)
Lasse Marhaug - Pandemonium (Touch Radio)
Logical Nonsense - Soul Pollution (Alternative Tentacles)
Man is the Bastard - D.I.Y.C.D. (Slap a Ham)
Man is the Bastard - Sum of the Men (Vermiform)
Marcelo Aguirre - Repugnant Beast Recalcitrate (Desetxea)
Mark Wastell - Vibra 1, Vibra 2 (w.m.o/r/Longbox)
Minsk - The Ritual Fires of Abandonment (Relapse)
Misfits - Misfits/Collection I (Caroline Records)
Mrtyu! - Blood Tantra - Rituels de song du culte de Tantra (20 Buck Spin)
Neurosis - Given to the Rising (Neurot)
Om - Pilgrimage (Southern Lord)
Oren Ambarchi - In the Pendulum's Embrace (Touch)
Orthodox - Gran Poder (Alone)
Osso Exotico & Verres Enharmoniques - Folk Cycles (Phonomena Audio Arts)
Pharaoh Overlord - Live in Suomi Finland (Vivo)
The Goslings & Yellow Swans - Bored Fortress 7" (Not Not Fun)
Thee, Stranded Horse - Churning Strides (Blank Tapes)
Thilges - La Double Absence (Staubgold)
Ulver - Shadows of the Sun (Jester)
Unwound - discography (various labels)
Venetian Snares - Black Sabbath Dubs (Kriss Records)
Weakling - Dead as Dreams (tUMULt)
White/Lichens - White/Lichens (Holy Mountain)
White/Light - White/Light (Rebis Records)
Wolves in the Throne Room - A Diadem of 12 Stars (Vendlus)
Wolves in the Throne Room - Demo 1, Demo 2
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters (Southern Lord)
Yoro Diallo - Dit Tiekro Bani Vol 1 (cassette rip via Awesome Tapes from Africa)

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Macumbista runs the Voodoo down: Berlin venues
Category: Music

Image from Phantom Clubs of Berlin/Liverpool (1998-1999), by Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani. This photo series, of illegal clubs shot at midday when there's simply no real sign of their existence, reminds me of my first few visits to Berlin, wandering around Mitte and Friedrichshain until all hours with a Brazilian architect friend looking for that totally happening club we'd read about in a magazine somewhere. Seeing this photo exhibit a year later in Prague, suddenly it all made sense!

Tonight, I just finished making a fairly long--but not exhaustive by any means--list of Berlin venues for a few people I know who are shipwrecked by the holidays here. Since so few people who live in Berlin (and almost none of the people in the art & music scene) actually come from Berlin, it's a pretty quiet place between Christmas and New Years, as those of you who live here probably already figured out. You can even find a parking space these days! I moved here myself at exactly this time of the year a while back, and it took me more than a week (of empty clubs and bars) to finally figure out what all the fuss about Berlin was for. Don't worry, it picks back up after New Years.

But if you were looking for things to do most of the year, you might want to get on the Echtzeit mailing list for "serious" improv/experimental concerts.

Also watch the calender of Ausland (or subscribe to their mailing list) for more minimal improv and assorted other flavors.

For more noisy stuff, check the Le Petit Mignon/Staalplaat list.

Club Transmediale/DISK/General Public has lots of events and a mailing list, as well as a huge week long festival at the end of January that's worth a look.

NBI has IDM (if you can stand that kind of shit).

And M12 has lots of electronic music (and Mika Vaino's dubious DJ sets) on the weekends

Lots of things are happening at the Festsaal Kreuzberg (Skalitzer Strasse 133, Kotbusser Tor) and also in their basement, but since different people run these events it's hard to get info from one source.... Le Petit Mignon list is probably best source, although bigger events (recently Circle, Ghost, Crippled Black Phoenix, The Ex...) get postered around town.

Rinus van Alebeek runs Das Kleine Field Recording Festival as well as things in spaces I've usually never heard of before or again.

OHMNoise/Dienstbar does lo-fi noise in out-of-the-way places like Wedding.

Wendel (Schlesische Str.) has a weekly jazzy improv session with Andre Vida/The Instrument.

Hair Entertainment seems to favor booking the kind of North American "freak folk" that The Wire were falling all over themselves writing about a couple years back.

Battiston82 book stuff that sounds like Lightning Bolt or Ariel Pink in different places around town.

Jason Forrest/Donna Summer and some other kooky French expats runs the ultra-trashy Birthday Party series. Their New Year Party might be on my list this year for lack of anyplace better to go...

West Germany (Skalitzer Strasse, Kotbusser Tor, Kreuzberg) book things as well, but have no real website nor proper mailing list to speak of. Mostly, you're left looking for photocopied posters, or if you're lucky then one of the more outgoing promoters I've mentioned here might send you an email about it. In the same building (an old doctor's office complex) are two of Berlin's trendier/trashier lounge/bars: Monarch and Paloma. The gay/lesbian version of these places is across the road in the Moebel Olfe building.

This week only! Get your Geek on! The Chaos Computer Club has it's 24th annual meeting at C-Base.

And lastly there's the Salon Bruit sessions, for electronics, noise and improv. (Probably one of the easiest places to get a gig in Berlin, for those who might be looking...)

In fact, it just strikes me that this is a pretty good list for people trying to get booked in Berlin as well. Just be prepared for the Berlin performer's cut of the Berlin door money. Is it enough for a taxi home? Another drink? Döner-kebap and the greasy fist? Hmmm.....

On the other hand, a few very good venues have shut their doors forever here in Berlin in the last year: the Zentrale Randlage, Tesla, Scherer8 and Stralau68 all called it quits. RIP. The Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and the Volksbühne will soon change their artistic leadership and/or profiles as well, quite possibly getting rid of the kind of concerts people like us dig in the process, and the Bastard will also close in 2008. Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

17:01 - 8 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

xxxxx-Workshops: [in]tolerance @ Club Transmediale
Category: Music

Registration is now open for the xxxxx-Workshops I co-curated with Martin Howse. Some interesting local Berliner artists combined with special guests from Russia, the USA and Chile!

Check the website here for full details.

*****

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance
29 Janaury - 2 February 2008
Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance presents a series of constructivist workshops specially programmed for the ClubTransmediale 2008 festival, emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops are led by international, field-expert practitioners, extending over realms of environmental code, noise, signal transmission, reception, and electromysticism. The workshops will utilise household materials and chemistry, readily-available electronics components, free software and the GNU toolbase.

Over the course of five days, participants will have the opportunity to construct a set of various electronic audiovisual artifacts (being either code or hardware) with which a final presentation/performance will be made. In learning how to create complex sound and image generators from the most basic elements, the participants will explore liminal electronic experiences and intriguing phenomena where carefully-engineered borders and parameters are twisted and transgressed, producing unexpected results in performance.

Workshops:
29.1. NOISE_PRODUCE by Martin Howse (UK) & Martin Kunetz (DE)
30.1. ONE BIT MUSIC by Frederik Olofsson (SE)
31.1. DIGITAL THEREMIN WORKSHOP by Andrei Smirnov (RU) & Derek Holzer (US/NL)
01.2. CHAOS IN NODES AND NETWORKS by Jessica Rylan (US)
02.2. BASTARD NATURES by Alejandra Perez Nuñez (CL)

The series takes inspiration from and continues the development of the (semi)weekly xxxxx workshops held at the Pickled Feet space in Berlin over the last year. It is supported by Arduino.

Theme:
"...in the good old days of Shannon's mathematical theory of information, the maximum of information coincided strangely with maximal unpredictability or noise..." [Friedrich Kittler: There is no software]

Engineers and scientists are concerned with prediction and thus predictability. Inside black-boxed apparatus the faint markings of tolerance, deviations from a predictable scenario towards the encryption of noise, can well be observed by the wily artist. Technology is thus exposed as a material expressing a certain chaos, pure noise of all voices. In return, materiality and an artistic concern with the matter of technology allows for the entry of the unpredictable, environmental noise within an otherwise closed circuit or economy.

Registration:
xxxxx-workshops is open to anyone, from novice to experienced electronic artist. The workshops will be held in English. You can register for single workshops or for the whole series. In addition to the actual daily workshops, a free open work-area gives everyone opportunity to pursue projects begun in one of the workshops over the course of five days. The registration fee for a single workshop is 10.- EUR, the fee for the series of all five workshops is 30.- EUR.

For descriptions of the workshops and workshop leaders go to:
http://www.clubtransmediale.de/club-transmediale/xxxxx-workshops.html

You can register till January 14, 2008, by sending an email to: xxxxx@clubtransmediale.de

Please don't forget to indicate which of the workshops you wish to attend.

xxxxx-workshops: [in]tolerance is curated by Martin Howse and Derek Holzer, and produced by Jan Rolf and Anke Eckardt for Club Transmediale.

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A Man Out of Time and a Track Out of Season
Category: Music

A Man Out of Time...

Just back from Amsterdam, where I did a Pure Data workshop at Montevideo (discovering in the process that they accepted some Australian woman as artist in residence to do the exact same project idea--Pure Data + GPS running on a palmtop computer--that they rejected from me in 2004... I guess I'm just a man out of time!) I also had a chance to stay up late drinking sake and discussing alchemy with Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, two amazing visual artists from Belarus/Russia/USA. They work with physics and chemistry primarily, manifesting such supernatural actions as making ultrasonic waves visible through an acid solution and levitating small objects purely with sound. Plenty of wonders hidden in their website, Portable Palace, as well as a DVD out on 12K records. Also in the house (his own house, actually!) was Tez, director of the Optofonica project, who took a healthy interest in the TONEWHEELS project I do together with Sara Kolster.

...and a Track Out of Season

Waiting in my Inbox up on my return was the following announcement from Manrico Montero from the Mandorla netlabel in Mexico. Manrico asked me for a track several months ago, which was meant for an Autumn-themed release. Well, it's mid-December now, but aside from the snowdrifts of Northern Sweden it still feels a bit autumnal so far...



Not to Mention, Some Photos Out of Place!

Last week I found some photos of the Warsaw TONEWHEELS performance at the Passengers Festival, taken by ch0hlik/Rafal Jozwiak. Thx Rafal, and enjoy!






Now Playing

Birchville Cat Motel - Seventh Ruined Hex [Important Records]
Daniel Higgs - Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot [Thrilljockey]
Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today [Candlelight Records]
Hawkwind - Space Ritual [Caroline]
Joe Colley, Jessica Rylan and Kevin Drumm - Pure [Musica Excentrica][download]

16:42 - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

TONEWHEELS presentation tonight @ Tesla, Berlin
Category: Music

Thursday, 6 December 2007, 20:30

tesla
medien > kunst < labor
klosterstraße 68
10179 berlin
tesla-berlin.de

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. This all-analog set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, TONEWHEELS aims to open up the "black box" of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

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