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Since arriving here in Stockton my time has been spent exploring not just the local landscape but also my current limits of my practice. I came here looking to examine how I install current workings of sonic works and how I can develop or bridge the gap that I find between what I am making and what I am trying to offer.

The first few weeks were spent contemplating speaker architecture and how installing speaker drivers within a form that dissolved or collapsed whilst it functioned worked.  Drawing on the inspiration of the local area and its regeneration hopes/plans.  I have been thinking heavily about addition and reduction as methods of creation both in sound and process works.  Glitch process that I have been known to use is a perfect example of how regeneration seems to operate, existing ideology is rehashed the result is urban planning that though clearly considered it is not until it is implemented you realise the functional errors of such planning.

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The focus on heritage and community, the life and death of generations that have called a place home.  The time that passes by and the marks those leave on a place last longer than structures in many cases.  Replacing old is not something that should be done without consideration and awareness for those that live within it.  The Auxiliary residency is based within a community that is exposed to many different social factors.  It is an opportunity to live within a place that is struggling to come to terms with how it should function.  The oddity is that with all the trials and time that it takes to rejuvenate a place it somehow still continues, functions without much thought.  Time will change the nature of a community however daily this is not something that is really brought to your attention as each day was like the last.

Mid way through this residency my father has a stroke which alongside my research here at the Auxiliary has given me a new perspective.  Seeing a parent go through a life changing moment in their existence brings reality home.  I have recently been back and forth between the residency and my parents to see how my father has progressed with his recovery.  Even though I have not been making as much as I would of hoped it has provided much needed reflection, thinking more about the sound works that have been started yet not finished.  The last few weeks here in Stockton I hope to realise some new works with little or no focus on completion yet more or presenting something that is mobile/fluid and evolving.  15107435_10157615606300018_3800575047413753897_n.jpg

 

 

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PNEM Sound Art Festival – Interactive Visual Art

On Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November 2015, the platform new experimental music the fifth international Pnem Sound Art Festival 2015 with live, video and audio performances by artists from home and abroad. The Pnem Sound Art Festival offers a stage for musicians and artists that are located on the cutting edge of sound, music and new media. The organisers hope through the festival an international platform for the development and implementation of new experimental music and graphic art.

To the public is also an active and participatory role. How’s your food? Take a walk in the woods with as a guide by yourself a soundscape selected or listen to the music via the app. In the context of 10 years klankenbos (be) and 5 YEARS PNEM FESTIVAL (NL) created a soundartist Bart Van Dongen in cooperation with app-Developer Yvan van der sanden an interactive GPS composition for two locations, the looppiste in Lubbock and The old velodrome of Belgian refugees in uden. The listen app gets a permanent nature, in Belgium as part of the world war I and in the Netherlands klankroute a luisterwandeling by the maashorst.

PNEM Sound Art Festival
14.11.15 | 19:30 h till 23:00 H | € 15, buy tickets
15.11.15 | 12:00 h till 17.00 h | FREE
Theater to peak
Pnemstraat 1
5406 xa uden

http://www.besteburen.eu/…/interactieve-klankkunst-op-pnem-…

PNEM Program

Saturday 14 Nov. LIVE
20:00 Official opening of the PNEM Sound Art Festival
20:15 PushPull (DE) – Balgerei 
20:30 Ken Byers (UK) – Movement-Interactive
21:00 The Feedback Gents (DE) – Out Of The Wilds
21:30 Pause
22:00 Renzo Spiteri (MT) – Quintessence
22:30 PushPull (DE) – Balgerei
22:45 End

Sunday 15 Nov. LIVE
12:00 Official opening of PNEM Sound Art Maashorst
13:00 Stichting COM (NL) – Bezette Stad Revisited – theater
13:30 Bart van Dongen (NL) – Workshop – studio
14:00 PushPull (DE) – Balgerei – theater
14:30 Bart van Dongen (NL) – Live performance – studio
15:00 Renzo Spiteri (MT) – Quintessence – theater
15:30 Radio Approxim (NL) – Mother Flockers – studio
16:00 Studium:Stadt (DE) – To see with your ears and… – theater
16:30 End

Interactive installation
12:00-16:00 Lex Raijmakers (NL) – Roots – near the studio
12:00-16:00 Alan Dormer (IE) – Thishearbeast – outdoor theater

VideoWall
• La Cosa Preziosa (IE) – The edge of the world 1’44
• Julian Scordato (IT) – Vision II 7’00
• Dickie Webb (UK) – U DYS HET 7’19
• Matthew Schoen (CA) – Vehicles CA 9″30
• Osvaldo Cibils (IT) – N°1-5 installation on monitor 2’31

PNEM Sound Art Maashorst – WoodWalk Experience 2.0
• Alan Dunn (UK) – The Black Forest 2’30
• Barry O’Halloran (IE) – Triptych 6’22
• Bart van Dongen (NL) – Gelukzoekers, zo noemen ze ons
• David Prescott-Steed (AU) – Miscommunication Solo 9’05
• David Rogers (UK) – Dungeness Tower 3’32
• Katherine Trimble (USA) – We’re Not Gonna Make It 9’03
• Osvaldo Cibils (IT) – Soundart 29 april 2015h 3’30
• Sam Marshall (UK) – Caught In Transmission 6’53
• Sandrine Deumier + Alx P.op (FR) – Mdr_test508 2’38
•Simón Pérez (AR) – Las Cifras y Las Palabras 8’00

Nog enkele kaartjes voor zaterdagavond beschikbaar: https://soundartfestival.wordpress.com/…/…/kaartjes-tickets/

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THE SCHOOL OF SOUND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM 2015

Programme of the SOS 2015

A unique series of masterclasses exploring the art of sound in film, the arts and media


Wednesday – Saturday
8-11 April 2015
Purcell Room, Southbank Centre
London

What is the School of Sound?

The School of Sound is a symposium created to encourage a cross-disciplinary approach to using sound in the arts and media. We explore what sound does, how audiences listen.
It is a place where for 4 days you can raise your awareness of how audio production works, how it conveys information and emotion, how you can work with it.
But how do you think about something so ephemeral? And how do you teach it? Sound always seems to be occupying areas of ambiguity – the emotional, the subtext, the intuitive, the borders between reality and fantasy, the conscious and the subconscious. And by their very nature, academia and professional practice  shy away from ambiguity and cross-fertilisation, staying within their own boundaries. But interesting things happen when you start mixing them up!
For four days, out of your usual routine, you’ll be immersed in a world of imagination, invention and innovation. Listening to presentations from a diversity of incredible talents, you will be able to disconnect from your day-to-day work, taken out of your comfort zone, to reflect on sound as something that is profoundly complex, entertaining and important.

Why attend the School of Sound?
It is not an academic conference it is not about getting a job and it is not about hardware or software. The SOS provides a rare opportunity to hear and meet 20 creatives working at the highest levels of the arts and media speaking in detail about how they think and work.
And the SOS is not about just one area of sound production. It covers film, theatre, dance, games, installation, music and radio that will expand your thinking and increase your ability to work in diverse areas of media and the arts.
At the SOS you will mix with hundreds of like-minded people – professional practitioners, educators, artists and students – with whom you can network, exchange ideas and create collaborations.

The SOS is delighted to announce the first details of the 2015 programme. Speakers include

Choreographer SIOBHAN DAVIES in conversation with composer/performer MATTEO FARGION 
Opera and theatre director PETER SELLARS
Sound artist and Foley specialist NICOLAS BECKER
Artist, filmmaker and writer JOHN AKOMFRAH 
Installation artist IMOGEN STIDWORTHY 
Radio producer PIERS PLOWRIGHT
Performance artist DICKIE BEAU 
Sound/music composer GERHARD ECKEL
Filmmaker and composer NADIM MISHLAWI 
Sound designer RANA EID
Interactive games sound designers MARTIN STIG ANDERSENJOANNA ORLAND with composer, audio director and consultant JOHN BROOMHALL
and yoiker ÁNDE SOMBY …
with more participants to be announced in the coming weeks.


NICOLAS BECKER
The renowned Foley artist (GravityWuthering Heights) who has now turned to more abstract, space-based sound work, describes his techniques and methods.


SIOBHAN DAVIES and MATTEO FARGION
Hearing Movement
The relationship between sound, movement and performance is the focus of this conversation between Davies, one of Europe’s leading choreographers, and collaborator Fargion, a composer and performer whose works have been performed around the world. Looking and listening to excerpts of their own work, they examine the process by which movement comes out of audio and, specifically, the differences between working with music and soundscapes. And following from that, they will question the varying effects of recorded or live music, analogue or synthesised, acoustics and the influence of an audience’s proximity to the performance.


JOHN AKOMFRAH
Director, writer and theorist, Akomfrah’s body of work embraces documentaries, feature films and exhibitions that have garnered international critical acclaim. In this presentation he explores how sound adapts to the requirements of different media and content.


JOHN BROOMHALL, composer and sound creative (Forza Motorsport 5X-ComTransport Tycoon) and founder of the Games Music Connect conference, brings together two leading sound designers in  this session exploring the ways sound is evolving across the range of interactive entertainment. WithMARTIN STIG ANDERSEN
Sound designer for the acclaimed Limbo, by Playdead, Andersen analyses his techniques for creating soundtracks in the indie-game environment, looking forward to his next release, Inside.

JOANNA ORLAND
Having worked at EA Criterion (BlackBurnout) and currently Senior Sound Designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe with credits that include WonderbookDiggs Nightcrawler and Project Morpheus, Joanna describes the level of research and conceptualising required for AAA games.


PIERS PLOWRIGHT
The Tallatchie Bridge and Other Mysteries
Broadcaster and writer Piers Plowright explores the pictures that sound creates and considers the silence that surrounds the best music and words. His starting point is Bobby Gentry’s 1967 hit, Ode to Billie Joe.


GERHARD ECKEL
The Choreography of Sound
Eckel presents his work, Zeitraum (German for ‘timespan’, literally ‘time space’), a sound environment exposing the interrelation of time and space in acoustic communication. “A central finding of the project was, that sound can also be understood as a choreographic device. The project started out with the idea that sound would be the object of choreography, composers would move ‘bodies of sound’ around in space. Towards the end I discovered this other reading, where sound choreographs the audience, especially in installation situations.”


DICKIE BEAU
Memory and Lip-sync
Dickie has gained notoriety as a pioneer of “playback” performance: the uncanny embodiment (or “re-memberment”) of found sound – a style of performance that emerges from the drag tradition of lip synching. He positions the body as an archive, especially of the “missing” – re-visioning and playing back voices from the margins: voices of figures we might not normally hear in the mainstream, in ways that we might not be accustomed to hearing them.


RANA EID and NADIM MISHLAWI
The Soundscape of Conflict
Images of car bombs, assassinations, armed conflict, protests and fiery politicians are the world’s postcards from Beirut. And over time, these images have come to trigger hatred, superiority, racism and, most importantly – fear. It is through listening to Beirut, or any city for that matter, that one can overcome the prejudice of these images and create a subjective affinity. And it is through sounds that we can identify and empathize with events that at first seem strangely alien to us.


IMOGEN STIDWORTHY
Stidworthy will be discussing the voice at the borders of language through her most recent project, Balayer – A Map of Sweeping (2014) – a three-screen installation with ambisonic sound (see Speakers’ Biographies for more details), and a number of related works.


PETER SELLARS
Opera, theater, and festival director Peter Sellars has gained renown worldwide for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists across three decades. Whether it is Bach, Mozart, Handel, Shakespeare, Sophocles, or the 16th century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu, Peter Sellars strikes a universal chord with audiences, engaging and illuminating contemporary social and political issues.


ÁNDE SONBY
The animals inside the man and the man outside the animals
Are we simply humans? Or are there animals inside of us? Plants? Landscapes?
This is the underlying question in Ánde Sombys preformance. During the performance there will be given “yoik-impersonations” of birds, insects and animals.
This is influenced by the idea of transformation in the pre-Christian Sámi religion – that a human could transform into an animal and back to a human again. And the inspiration is that in our modern day many birds and animals are threatened. How would they feel about pollution, for example?


The SOS 2015 programme is subject to change. The School of Sound reserves the right to make changes to the content, schedule, list of speakers, topics or venue. All updates will be listed on this website.

Beyond Tinted Press

Beyond Tinted – Մգեցված ապակիներից այն կողմ

Beyond Tinted
Dickie Webb

A new body of work by artist Dickie Webb brings together intermedia works that investigate our current connection to the Yerevan landscape and beyond. These experimental works draw from liminal sites and objects that are used to manage space. Webbs’ process abstracts and subverts these findings, utilizing photography, sculptural elements and new media technologies; it is the anthropomorphic qualities that underscore the works. Just like liminal space these works exist in an unknown state, straddling both real and virtual, Webb does not imply directly what they mean rather he suggest they are a means to reflect on the potential of what could be. These works challenge especially that part of local people that have to reconsider their present landscape and gain some form of clarity out from behind their tinted view (tinted glasses of the big cars of nоuveau riche). The final works vary in fabrication and are part of a wide palette that enables Webb to present intimate moments, to view our present existence from an altered perspective and reflect on our own being.

Artist Statement:

Dickie Webb operates his art practice from the position of a wanderer, moving consistently over the years, dislocating himself from societal norms. With few constants Webb’s peripatetic lifestyle means he has had to adapt and rethink our connection to landscape, altering his comprehension of what is considered home and the role of society’s expectations.
Examining our existence Webb questions that which is real and what is otherwise virtual within our landscape, utilising Marc Auges’ “non-places” and Michel Foucaults’ “heterotopias” as initial starting points. Webb uses these imaginary and transient sites as a means to reveal anomalies, inaccuracies similar to those displayed within human personalities.
This connection to space through its anthropomorphic qualities prompts Webb to consider space as representational of current issues experienced within both the individual and collective. Using space as a metaphor and as a medium Webb looks past the architectural structure and explores the liminal qualities, discovering this blurred arena from an outsider’s perspective.

Processes:
Interactive installations, Arduino, photography, site-specific installation, sculpture, print, sensory based media light, sound and scents, interventions, casting, drawing, constructive and destructive processes.
Materials:
Paint, plaster, bronze, aluminium, soap, salt, concrete, sugar, ice, glass, steel, wood, resin, ink, milk and wax.
Objects:
Cardboard boxes, furniture, envelopes and car windscreens.

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Born in 1979, in Oxford, United Kingdom. Dickie Webb currently divides his time between New Zealand, USA and the UK. Webb studied for a BA Honours in Intermedia at Edinburgh College of Art; part of his degree was spent at the State University of New York, Purchase College. Prior to his degree Webb studied at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Since graduating Webb has continued travelling working in Japan, New Zealand and Chile whilst also undertaking artist residencies in Athens, Greece (SNEHTA) and currently here in Yerevan (ACSL). He has exhibited works in the UK, USA and Greece.

Recent Exhibitions:
2014 THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW – Art Athina, Athens, Greece
2014 Boundaries – Artscapes, Athens, Greece
2013 Unsettled Certainties – Aghias Zonis 1 Space, Athens, Greece.
2013 One Action, Ones Actions – Cultybraggan POW Camp, Perthshire, UK
2013 Newhaven Station – Edinburgh, UK

The exhibition is organized by the Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory (ACSL). This project is realized at the [Art Commune] International Artist-in-Residence Program (ACSL)

This project is funded by European Cultural Foundation

Special thanks to the Yerevan Modern Art Museum, director of the Museum Nune Avetisyan and its staff.

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Մգեցված ապակիներից այն կողմ
Դիքի Վեբբ (Անգլիա)

Արվեստագետ Դիքի Վեբբի Հայաստանում իրականցված այս նոր նախագիծը քննության է առնում Երեւանի շրջակա միջավայրի, դրանում առկա այլ քաղաքատեղերի հետ հընթացս կապերը: Բազմամեդիական եւ փորձարարական ոգով տոգորված աշխատանքները մտորումներ են քաղաքի կազմավորման շուրջ, սակայն իրերն ու դեպքերն այստեղ լիմինալ նշանակություն ունեն՝ նրանք գտնվում են իրականության նմանակումի եւ վիրտուալի, վերացականի սահմանin: Արվեստագետի մոտեցմանը բնորոշ է քաղաքային տարածքներում ամեն հայտնաբերվածի աբստրահումը, կամ տրոհումը՝ հիմքում պահելով մարդակերպական (անտրոպոմորֆական) որակները՝ դա է հոդավորում աշխատանքների շարքը. իսկ այս նախագծի իմացաբանական ըմբռնումը ամբողջությամբ թողնված է հանդիսատեսին:
Նախագծում տեղ գտած առանցքային աշխատանքներից մեկը՝ վիդեո-սլայդ-ձայնային ինստալացիան առաջին հայացքից “անշառ” քաղաքային դրվագների հերթափոխ է, որը սակայն գաղափարաբանական դասավորություն ունի՝ տեղի (տոպոսի) կարեւորությունը կապվում է “ու-տոպիական” մտածողությանը, եւ վերջինիս հետ սերտ առընչվող երկու այլ մոդուսների՝ դիս-տոպիային եւ հետեռոտոպիային: Վիդեոշարքի պատկերները, ըստ արվեստագետի, դասավորված են վերը նշված մոդուսների եւ ամեն մոդուսին ներհատուկ ձայնային կոմպոզիացիայի համաձայն: Այստեղ էլ հանդիսատեսը պիտի փորձի “ընթեռնել” ներկայացված տոպո-գրաֆիայի “փիլիսոփայությունը”:
Վեբբի պնդմամբ՝ նախագիծը մարտահրավեր է հատկապես ետ-խորհրդային տարածքներում գոյացած նոր հարուստների խավին, ում hամար շուրջ կյանքը երանգավորված եւ սահմանափակված է սեփական մեքենաների մգեցված ապակիներով՝ նրանք անհաղորդ են հանրային կարիքների նկատմամբ, եւ քանի որ նախագիծը հղում է կյանքի ավելի լայն “ներկապնակին”՝ Վեբբն իրավունք է վերապահում բռնվել հանդիստաեսի հետ մտերմիկ խոսակցության մեջ՝ ներքաշելով նրան գոյության շուրջ խորը մտորումների:

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Դիքի Վեբբի արվեստագիտական պրակտիկաներում ներկա է թափառականի հայացքը՝ երկար տարիների հետեւողական տեղարշարժերի ընթացքը մղել են նրան հասարակական նորմերից դուրս: Գտնվելով ապրելակերպի պերիպաթեթիկական (արիստոտելյան) մի քանի ձեւերի մեջ՝ նա հետազոտում է շրջակա միջավայրի հետ մարդկանց կապերը՝ ձգտելով փոխել պատկերուցումները “տուն” եւ “հասարակության սպասումներ” եզրերի մասին: Քննելով այժմյա գոյության խնդիրները, Վեբբը հարցի է դնում քաղաքային լանդշաֆթների իրական եւ դրան հակադիր վիրտուալ գոյությունը՝ հիմնվելով Մարկ Օժեի “ոչ-տեղերի” եւ Միշել ֆուկոյի “հետերոտոպիաների” տեսական պնդումների վրա: Երեւակայված, կամ
չ-անձնավորված, անցողիկ տեղերը նրա համար անոմալիաների եւ անճշտությունների բացահայտման միջոցներ են: Տարածության գաղափարը՝ օժտված մարդակերպային հատկանիշներով, դրթում է Վեբբին դիտարկել այն որպես ընթացիկ խնդիրների ներկայացման հարթակ՝ թե՛ անհատականի, թե՛ հավաքականի դիտանկյուններից: Վեբբը օգտագործում է տարածության գաղափարը “միջավայրի” ասածի տեսանկյունից՝ հաճախ ներկայացնելով այն փոխաբերական լիցքերով լի: Նա բնավ տարված չէ ճարտարապետական կառույցներով, այլ հետազոտում է տարածքների անցումային, լիմինալ որակները՝ բացահայտելով այդ մշուշոտ արենան աութսայդերի հայացքով:

Դիքի Վեբբը աշխատանքները հիմնականում վերածվում են ինտերակտիվ կամ տեղին հատուկ ինստալացիաներ, թվային աուդիո մանիպուլացիաների, լուսանկարների, քանդակի, տպագրության, սենսորային լույսի միջամտության, ձայնի, բույր, գծանկարի, կազմման եւ ապակզմման ընթացքների եւ քաղաքային տարածքներում ներխուժումների
Օգտագործվող նյութերն են՝
ներկ, բրոնզ, ալյումինիում, սապոն, բետոն, աղ, շաքար, սառույց, ապակի, մետաղ, փայտ, բլեկնախեժ, թանաք, կաթ, մոմ
Օգտագործվող օբյեկտներն են՝ ստվարաթղթե արկղեր, կահույք, ծրարներ, ավտոմեքենայի առջեւապակիներ

Դիքի Վեբբը ծնվել է 1979թ. բրիտանական Օքսֆորդ քաղաքում: Մի երկրից մյուսը հաճախակի տեղաշարժերի հետեւանքով՝ նա բնակվում է ներկայում Նոր Զելանդիայի, Միացյալ Նահանգների եւ Միացյալ Թագավորության միջեւ: Վեբբը բակալվրի կոչում է ստացել Էդինբուրգի Արվեստի քոլեջում՝ համատեղելով ուսումը Նյու-Յորքի Պետական համալսարանին կից գործող Փրչեյզ (Purchase) քոլեջում՝ մինչ այդ նա Բրիտանիայի Օքսֆորդ Բրուքս (Oxford Brooks) համալսարանի շրջանավարտներից էր: Վերը նշված ուսումնառության տարիներից հետո նա սկիզբ է դնում շարունակական ճամփորդությունների եւ աշխատանքային այցերի դեպի Ճապոնիա, Նոր Զելանդիա եւ Չիլի՝ հընթացս ներգրավվելով արվեստագետների կացարանների ծրագրերի մեջ Աթենքում (SNEHTA կացարան, Հունսատան), այժմ էլ Հայաստանում գործող “Արտ կոմունա” արվեստագետների միջազգային կացարանում (ԱՄՀԼ):

Վերջերս նա մասնակցել է մի շարք ցուցահանդեսներում ԱՄՆ-ում, Միացյալ Թագավորությունում եւ Հունաստանում, որոնց թվում են՝
(2014) ՀԻՄԱ ԲԱՆԵՐՆ ԱՅԼ ԵՆ, Արտ Աֆինա, Հունաստան
(2014) Սահմաններ-Արվեստատեղեր, Աթենք, Հունաստան
(2013)Չամրագրված փաստեր, Aghias Zonis 1 Space, Աթենք, Հունաստան
(2013) Մեկ հայտարար, միանվագ հայտարարներ, Cultybraggan POW ճամբար, Փերթշիր, Միացյալ Թագավորություն
(2013) Կանգառ Նյուհեվանում, Էդինբուրգ, Միացյալ Թագավորությւոն

Ցուցահանդեսի կազմակերպիչն է
Արվեստի եւ մշակութային հետազոտությունների լաբորատորիան (ԱՄՀԼ)
Նախագիծը իրականացվել է [Արտ Կոմունա] Արվեստագետների միջազգային կացարանի ծրագրերի շրջանակում (ԱՄՀԼ)

Նախագծի հովանավորն է Եվրոպական Մշակութային հիմնադրամը

Աջակցության համար հատուկ շնորհակալություն ենք հայտնում Երեւանի Ժամանակակից արվեստի թանգարանին, թանգարանի տնօրեն Նունե Ավետիսյանին եւ անձնակազմին

BEN FROST’S SONIC ARCHITECTURE

~ Posted by Charlie McCann, November 6th 2014

Re-post from Intelligent Life- Original article click here

When the Australian composer and producer Ben Frost released his fifth album, “A U R O R A”, earlier this year the reviews were rapturous. Rolling Stone called it “unrelentingly menacing”, Drowned in Sound said it was a piece of “aural suffocation” (in a good way), and both picked it as “Best Album of the Year So Far”. Frost, though, is more low-key. His albums, he has said, are “over-glorified business cards”—adverts which get him well-paid commissions (he has written music for ballet, opera and film) and bring audiences to his live shows. He has been touring “A U R O R A” since April, and is playing six nights in Britain next week. It’s only live that you hear the album’s terrifying architecture. Listening to it on headphones is like reading a book about brutalism: it doesn’t do justice to its scale and weight.

An architect is certainly what Frost sounds like when you talk to him. When I spoke to him recently, he referred to sounds as “objects that have texture and shape”, and composing as “an arrangement of space”—which suggests his music is meant to be felt as much as heard. In August in a small south-London club, he played “A U R O R A” so loud and so deep that the audience couldn’t help but feel it. He has likened the pounding of the kick drum to “the externalisation of the human heart”. Shake your head all you like—as the drums thundered my heart hammered, and I began to wonder if it might leap out altogether. Some of the people pressed in close around me looked ecstatic, but plenty looked uneasy: the room cracked with the synthy snap of chain against metal; the air around us walloped with what felt like the weight of concrete slabs. On the small, dim stage, Frost was bent over his equipment, carefully adjusting knobs and dials—though he may as well have been operating a forklift.

In contrast to his previous albums, “A U R O R A” is more militant and synthetic-sounding: there are no guitars, piano or stringed instruments. Instead, he uses heavy percussion, synths and lots of distortion, and he processes the sounds through his computer. The result is a portentous mass of noise undergirded by simple rhythms and melodies that emerge occasionally from the aural chaos. These primarily recall the rhythms and melodies of techno, trance and industrial music, although, with a recurring bell motif and occasional brass burps, there are some classical flourishes. But this kind of music—the kind that hits you in the solar plexus—isn’t produced by simply turning up the volume. It also involves playing sub-bass sounds: frequencies so low they’re not so much sounds as they are thrums, of the kind you’ll feel if you place your hand on a subwoofer.

As PA systems grow in sophistication, musicians and sound designers are exploiting a wider range of sonic frequencies—ones that steal ever further into the realm of the physical. A range of artists—from the Seattle drone-metal band Sunn O))) to the Portland noise artist Pete Swanson and the London DJ duo Raime—have, in the last few years, been experimenting with low-end music that gets at the gut. The music magazine the Wire has called it “a live performance trend”.

But Frost thinks technology will take us further still. As absorbed as he is by music’s effects on the senses, whether aural or tactile, he’s intrigued by how advances in medical technology might improve upon our limitations. “Twenty years from now, I think we’re very likely to be able to have our ears upgraded so that we can perceive a wider range of frequencies—or by-pass the ear entirely,” he says. “I’m personally really excited about that. Every time the fucking jack cable rips out of my headphones when I stand up too quickly and I have to put it back in, there’s always this little moment where I want to jam it straight into my skull.”

Frost might be looking to the future, but he should just look at what’s right in front of him: the people at his gigs, forced to listen with their whole bodies, already have their skulls full of his music.

Ben Frost The Haunt, Brighton, Nov 10th; Thekla, Bristol, Nov 11th; Capsule, Birmingham, Nov 12th; St John at Hackney Church, London, Nov 13th; Gorilla, Manchester, Nov 14th; Howard Assembly Room at Opera North, Leeds, Nov 15th 

Charlie McCann is editorial assistant at Intelligent Life

Here is a post by The Creators Project which outlines some of the techniques that I am employed to make my recent digital works.

Here’s What Happens When You Edit Photos Like Music

What’s known is that all digital files are made up of raw data: open any image, sound, application, or otherwise in a program like TextEdit, and you’ll see the Unicode alphabet representation of your chosen file. What’s unknown are the results of opening, say, a .txt file in a video program, a sound file in a word document, or playing an image file in a sound editor… More often than not, importing files into applications they’re foreign to will produce an error message and possibly crash your open application. Sometimes, however, using applications to manipulate non-native files results in beautiful art.

Masuma Ahuja and Denise Lu, of the Washington Post, put these ideas to the test by editing images in Audacity as if they were sound files. It’s called databending— the process, according to Ahuja and Lu, “of manipulating data in an editor traditionally used to edit media of another format,”— and the simple results are as colorful and sublime as they are inspiring.

Seen with an echo effect, the Eiffel Tower lives up to Paris’ name as “The City of Lights.” With fades and a reverse effect, the bleak southwest Iceland seaside becomes awash with cotton-candy waves. With a little reverb, the Brooklyn Bridge gets a throwback to the color stylings of Do The Right Thing. Below, Ahuja and Lu’s results are as mind-bending as they are data:

Ready to try databending your own image files? Check out Jamie Boulton’s tutorial on using effects in Audacity, andAntonio Roberts’ beginners tutorial on importing image files into the free sound editing software. Share your artworks with us in the comments section below! h/t FlowingData

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Patatap is a portable animation and sound kit. With the touch of a finger create melodies charged with moving shapes. While easy to pick up there is a wide range of possibilities. Switch between multiple color palettes and matching soundscapes on the fly. Whether its on your laptop, desktop, mobile phone, or tablet Patatap invites creators of all ages to engage the mind and senses in a different type of creation process.The motivation behind Patatap is to introduce the medium of Visual Music to a broad audience. Artists working in this field vary in discipline but many aim to express the broader condition of Synesthesia, in which stimulation of one sensory input leads to automatic experiences in another. Hearing smells or seeing sounds are examples of possible synesthesia. In the case of Patatap, sounds trigger colorful visual animations.The history behind the aesthetic expression of synesthesia arose from the paintings of Piet Mondrianand Wassily Kandinsky and the early videos of Viking Eggeling and Norman McLaren, to the contemporary animations of Oskar Fischinger and softwares of C.E.B. Reas. Patatap takes elements from all these visionaries and aims to present this concept in a direct way.

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 COLLABORATION

In order to create Patatap I worked with music composers Lullatone, the melody design unit of Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Seymour. Based in Nagoya, Japan, the duo have released more than 10 albums and frequently soundtrack films, commercials and more. With each sound they try to bring out the everyday wonder of overlooked moments and make the mundane seem magical.Lullatone Studio _2011_They created compelling sounds to accompany the animations. Each color palette has a unique corpus of sounds. Each set comprises sounds that enable a full-bodied composition both in terms of sound and visuals. These sounds are geared toward making tapping as melodic as possible, similar to a keyboard of drum pads. The result is a visceral and rewarding experience.

 

__Live Performance__ _2013___Live Performance__ _2013_

 

PRESENCE

Because Patatap is a website its relatively smooth to install and reconfigure the application. As a result, Patatap has had physical presence in the form of performances and installations. If you’re interested in having Patatap at your next event or exhibition please contact inquiries@patatap.com. Notable appearances are as follows:2014 The Tech Museum San Jose, US. Super Flying Tokyo Tokyo, JP. Punto y Raya Festival Reykjavík, IS.2013 CreativeCode.io San Francisco, US. 2012 MonarchSan Francisco, US.

 

re:post from http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2013/07/thermal.php

Written by Regine on July 26, 2013

One last project exhibited a few weeks ago at the Sight + Sound festival in Montreal. You might remember that a while ago I interviewed Arthur Heist about the workshopAnalyze Dat: TOR Visualization & online black markets. Before that, i talked with Nicolas Maigret about The Pirate Cinema.

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Organic polymers

This time, i had an exchange of emails with Mario De Vega to talk about Thermal, a performance in which he uses microwave ovens to alter the molecular composition of different materials. The work also uses custom-built hardware to sonify the electromagnetic activity produced by the overheating of the content of the ovens.

Hi Mario! Thermal is an audio-visual performance in which several objects are modified using a microwave oven. Now I’m sure you’ve been asked that questions many times but isn’t it dangerous to put objects inside a microwave? The photos from the performances look a bit on the hazardous side to me. Do you have to take certain precautions?

I over-expose danger and confront human vulnerability through a frontal situation. Security advices are given before the performance starts and audience are free to leave the room. I give information and advice of possible danger.

Of course, by overheating a device which development comes from radar technology research from WWII, confronts a complex paradigm: the oven could explode during the performance, gases are highly toxic and electromagnetic activity aim to be materialized thorough acoustic pressure.

Thermal is a confrontation with our own vulnerability using an electronic device that mainly everyone can recognize, a device that modified nutritional facts, social interaction and climate. The action has a political content itself without intending being political as principle. It confronts and intimidates through presence, ambiguity, over-exposed information and acoustic pressure. It also has a visual aim. I’m interested in how electronic devices or arrangements suggest context through ambiguity, in other words, I’m interested in producing events and situations in which codes are visible but not completely “readable”. We could be able, in this case, to recognize an object (microwave oven) but our understanding of things reduce our approach, resulting in a situation with dislocated semantic structure in which things are there, frontal and visible and more over we can not understand what is happening.

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Polyurethane

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During the performance, you put materials such as wax, ceramic, magnesium, carboxylic acid, pvc, etc. inside the microwaves. Could you describe how some of them react? Did any of the material you used react in a way you did not expect?

This has mainly a sculptural mean; with Thermal I’m interested in research materialization, irritation and modification as main topics. I modify materials, amplify, expose the process and materialize the results through different outputs. Technically, by irritating the molecular composition of matter, microwaves reflection change by absorption. We can think this in terms that certain materials absorb more than others, and here absorbing means less reflection and less dynamic range in an audio event.
We can understand amplification through four semantic layers.

The first one has the aim to amplify electromagnetic activity, high frequency mainly into the 2.4 GHz range. For this I use SNUFF and LIMEN, electronic devices based on logarithmic detectors used to demodulate high spectrum electromagnetic signals into a human audible ranges.

The second later is luminal activity. Using mainly a custom amplifier (BABEL) to convert lumens into sound.

The third part is electro-mechanic, using mainly a contact microphone to amplify friction and mechanic activity produced by the oven, rotating plate movements, for example.
The forth and last is probably the most dynamic part, reduced in a switch. On / Off. I turn on and off the device in order to maintain tension and produce a dynamic event.

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Window of the microwave oven during performance

More generally, could you describe what is going on during the performance? What can the audience see, smell and hear?

What you hear is mainly activity that in a normal situation humans would not be able to codify as acoustic pressure. I use electronic media to demodulate, amplify and over expose highly toxic electromagnetic pollution produced by an electro-domestic device used by 40% of the population worldwide. Burnt plastic and overheated corrosive materials are toxic; smell is an important issue for Thermal.

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Moscow Biennale, Moscow, 2009

If I understood correctly, the main instrument for this audio-visual performance is the microwave oven. Did you have to modify the household appliance for the work?

No, the ovens are not modified. This would be a very complex and even dangerous task. For me it’s even more interesting to use the devices as they are, I just simply amplify its activity.

Any upcoming project, event or research field you’d like to share with us?

Probably I should then here expose deeply my apologizes to delay this interview so long. I’ve been working in a solo exhibition in Mexico City during the last two years (SIN); the opening was on the 20th of June in a Museum located downtown namedLaboratorio Arte Alameda. It’s composed by 6 site-interventions, curated by Carsten Seiffarth and a retrospective salon curated by Michel Blancsubé.

An upcoming publication compiling 10 years of my work will be published this month, and an editorial project about thermal must be finished this year, as well as a vinyl edition with artkillart.

Thanks Mario!

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If you’re curious about Mario’s work, head to Berlin Art Link, they recently visited the artist’s studio.

Other works exhibited at Sight and Sound, a festival produced by Eastern Bloc in Montreal: Analyze Dat: TOR Visualization & online black markets and The Pirate Cinema, A Cinematic Collage Generated by P2P Users.

Photo on the homepage: © Kimberley Bianca / transmediale. All other images courtesy of the artist.