KONTRASTE KREMS Festival in Austria announces Sonic Acts as new curatorial team from autumn 2011 onwards

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 4:16 pm

The curatorial sextet responsible for programming the internationally renowned Amsterdam Sonic Acts Festival  will present cutting-edge sonic experiments, contemporary music and related art forms in thematic, historical and interdisciplinary contexts.

The comprehensive festival programme explores a wide variety of fields and practices and offers unique encounters with extraordinary and unconventional concerts, performances, installations, lectures screenings and presentations.

KONTRASTE KREMS capitalizes on the synergy of its special regional location and setting in combination with a strong international line-up. The festival highlights the characteristics of its main venue, the medieval church, Klangraum Krems Minoritenkirche. The festival will collaborate with various arts and cultural venues and stage manifestations in public spaces throughout the city.

The new annual KONTRASTE KREMS Festival will take place for the first time from 14 to 16 October 2011, with subsequent editions in autumn 2012 and 2013, all curated by the Sonic Acts team, led by the Dutch artist and curator Lucas van der Velden and Austrian-born producer and curator Annette Wolfsberger.

Sonic Acts Spin-Off: Labyrinthitis at Flevoziekenhuis

Monday, June 7th, 2010 11:46 pm

As a spin-off to Sonic Acts, Jacob Kirkegaard’s Labyrinthitis can now be experienced at:

Flevoziekenhuis,
Hospitaalweg 1 in Almere
from  9:00 until 17:00 hrs until Friday 11 June
Polikliniek KNO, 2nd floor – just ask at the reception!

The Poetics of Space: Terrain09 (onedotzero)

Sunday, March 28th, 2010 6:38 pm

Sonic Acts film programme
Wednesday 21 April from 20:00 hrs
NIMk, Keizersgracht 264, Amsterdam

Terrain 09, a programme curated by onedotzero, shows a choice of high-fidelity motion graphics for all fans of 3D animations. In Terrain09, images of big cities merge with natural landscapes, realistic cities transform into deconstructive sculptures and perception of nature as we know it are subtly being altered.

With works by among others:
Tokyo Sky Dive (Marakino Tachibana), The View from There (WoW), The Technocrat Retrofit of London (Keiichi Matsuda), City Scape (Seong Jun Lee), X13 The Scan (Clemens Kogler), Infinity (WoW), The End of Eternity (Institut Gotze), Strata #2 (Quayola), Without You (Tal Rosner), Fragments from Atlantida (Olga Mink & Scanner), She Goes (Dandelion + Burdock), Syn emergence (Richard Bevan, Anima + Devouassaoud, kajdan, maurice + lasbleiz)

Admission € 4,50 (students € 2,50), free of charge with Sonic Acts 2010 passepartout.
The exhibition will be opened half an hour before and after the film programme.

Reservations via: reservations[AT]nimk[DOT]nl

Last chance!

Terrain 09 is the final activity of The Poetics of Space. The Sonic Acts exhibition at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) will run for another 10 days until 2 May 2010.

Order now!

The publication The Poetics of Space is almost sold out. Order one of the last copies here!

Filmprogramme: The Poetics of Space – a NIMk Selection

Thursday, March 18th, 2010 3:04 pm

Wednesday 24 March, start 20:00 hrs at NIMk

An evening with selected works from the NIMk-collection relating to the Sonic Acts theme The Poetics of Space, from classics to new work by Mark Bain, Bernard Gigounon, Steina Vasulka, Kurt D’Haeseleer, Thomas Mohr, Semiconductor and Anouk de Clercq.

Selected by Martijn van Boven.

NIMk, Keizersgracht 264, 1016 EV Amsterdam

Admission: € 4,50 (students € 2,50), free admission with Sonic Acts 2010 passe-partout

Reservations: reservations@nimk.nl

More information: http://www.nimk.nl/eng/the-poetics-of-space-a-nimk-selection

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Thursday, March 18th, 2010 1:00 am

D-Fuse: Latitude @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Sunday, March 7th, 2010 2:36 pm

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.

Inspired by the idea of drifting through the city, Latitude 3110N /12128E follows the emotive qualities of the space that surrounds us. Fragments of conversations, crowds, journeys, lights, deserted spaces and architectural contrasts are reconstructed to form a unique live performance that traces the multitude of paths, identities, encounters and influences that constitute everyday life in the city.

D-Fuse is a group of artists and designers who explore the relationship between image and sound, it was founded by Michael Faulkner in the mid 90s. D-Fuse encourage their audience to reflect on the process of experiencing their performances in a multi-dimensional, multi-sensory way. Working across a wide range of creative media, from live audiovisual performances, mobile media, web and print to art and architecture, TV and film, D-Fuse have collaborated with groundbreaking musicians Scanner and Beck. As well as contemporary classical composers Steve Reich and the Italian ensemble Alter Ego (that works with Salvatore Sciarrino and Philip Glass). D-Fuse’s visual art is screened internationally at festivals and in museums. Their first solo exhibition entitled Transmit at the MU in Eindhoven presented a retrospective of D-Fuse’s diverse practices.

www.dfuse.com

Cluster live @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Friday, March 5th, 2010 8:57 pm

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.

Legendary German band, consisting of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Since the early 1970s, the duo have produced exceptional instrumental music, floating somewhere between Krautrock, improvisation and elektronica. Cluster recorded several albums with Brian Eno and helped to develop the genre of ambient music.

myspace.com/theonlyclusterthatmatters
roedelius.com/

The most important and consistently underrated space-rock unit of the ’70s, Cluster (originally Kluster) was formed by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler as an improv group that used everything from synthesizers to alarm clocks and kitchen utensils in their performaces. Continuing on as a duo, Moebius and Roedelius eventually recorded many landmark LPs – separately, as a duo, and with all manner of guest artists from Brian Eno to Conny Plank to Neu!’s Michael Rother – in the field of German space music often termed kosmische. Cluster also continued to explore ambient music into the ’90s, long after their contemporaries had drifted into tamer new age music or ceased recording altogether. Cluster originally came out of a Berlin art/music collective named the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, formed by Conrad Schnitzler (one of the leaders of the city’s avant-underground), and also including Hans-Joachim Roedelius plus future members of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and Guru Guru. After Schnitzler and Roedelius met an art student named Dieter Moebius, the threesome formed Kluster in 1970. The group performed around Europe and even in Africa, engaging in wild improv sessions utilizing any instruments they could get their hands on; while touring they met engineer Conny Plank, soon to become a major part of Cluster’s recorded output into the late ’80s. The first three Kluster LPs, 1970’s Klopfzeichen and Zwei Osterei plus 1971’s Eruption, consisted of side-long improvisatory jams. Soon after the release of Eruption, Schnitzler left the band for a solo career. Moebius and Roedelius continued on as Cluster and, with the help of Plank, released two eponymous studio albums in 1971 and 1972. An ongoing collaboration with Michael Rother (Neu!) began in 1973, after the duo founded their own private studio out in the German countryside. After inviting Rother down to record, the results were released as the 1974 Cluster LP Zuckerzeit, a watershed of electronic pop midway between Cluster, Neu! and Kraftwerk (the latter just about to explode with their own Autobahn LP). That same year, Moebius, Roedelius and Rother formed a Krautrock super-group named Harmonia; two excellent albums followed in the next year, Musik von Harmonia and Harmonia De Luxe, as well as a few sessions with Brian Eno (unreleased until 1997’s Tracks & Traces). Eno himself began his own collaboration with Moebius and Roedelius in 1977, when Sky Records released Cluster & Eno. The trio also recorded After the Heat two years later (technically credited as “Eno Moebius Roedelius”), and after a hiatus of six years resumed the relationship with Begegnungen and Begegnungen II (both featuring Plank in the lineup as well). Though Roedelius and Moebius also launched solo careers around this time (1978 and 1983, respectively) they continued to release compelling Cluster material in keeping with Zuckerzeit, including Sowiesoso in 1976, Grosses Wasser three years later and Curiosum in 1981. Besides the Eno collaborations and many other solo works, almost fifteen years passed before the appearance of another Cluster album, 1994’s One Hour. Moebius and Roedelius continued to work and tour together continually. [John Bush, amg]

Acousmonium: Hans-Joachim Roedelius @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Friday, March 5th, 2010 8:51 pm

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.

German electronic music legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius (AT) has been active in music for over thirty years, has . He is a pioneer in electronic music, not least for his collaborations with musicians and composers as Peter Baumannn, Holger Czukay, Brian Eno, Dieter Moebius, Conny Plank and Michael Rother. He has worked as a soloist and founded several groups, most notably Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia. Over his prolific career, Roedelius’ musical output has covered a great deal of sonic territory and emotional range: from deeply introspective to very rhythmic, from experimental improvisations to heart-felt vignettes.

The Acousmonium is the sound diffusion system designed in 1974 by François Bayle and used originally by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) at the Maison de Radio France. The Acousmonium contains eighty speakers of different sizes placed across a stage at varying heights and distances. Their placement is based on their range, their power, their quality, and their directional characteristics. When built, Bayle stated: “It puts you inside the sound. It’s like the interior of a sound universe.” It provides a very complete and complex system for sound projecting acousmatic and electroacoustic music or instrumental music transformed by computers.

The Groupe de Recherches Musicales is a French organisation for research into sonology and electroacoustic music. It was founded in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer as part of the ORTF and since then led by composers such as François Bayle and Daniel Teruggi. In 2008 the GRM celebrates its 50th anniversary with a series of special projects in France and across the globe. In collaboration with Sonic Acts the GRM compiled the programme of this night.

Acousmonium: Kasper Toeplitz @ SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL XII 2008

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 3:18 pm

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.

Bass player Kasper Toeplitz convinced the composer Eliane Radigue to write Elemental II for him. In this piece the bass is plugged directly into the computer, running a MaxMSP patch.
Kasper T Toeplitz (D) is a composer, electric bass player and musician who has developed his work in the no man’s land between academic composition (orchestra, ensembles, opera) and electronic new music or noise music. He has integrated the computer into the very heart of his work, as a tool of thought and composition, and as a live instrument, hybridising more traditional instruments if necessary, or working on sheer electronic noise.

Eliane Radigue (F) studied electro-acoustic music under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Around 1970, she created her first synthesizer-based music on a Buchla synthesizer. Her goal by that point was to create a slow, purposeful unfolding of sound, which she felt to be closer to the minimal composers of New York than to the French musique concrete composers. In 1975, Radigue became a disciple of Tibetan Buddhism, after which she composed a large-scale cycle of works based on the life of the Tibetan master Milarepa. She dedicated much of the 1980s to a three-hour work, the Trilogie de la Mort, which was as influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Notoriously slow and painstaking in her work, Radigue has produced in the last decades on average one major work every three years. Very recently, in response to the demands of musicians worldwide, she has begun creating works for specific performers and instruments together with electronics.

Sonic Acts preview at Kindamuzik

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 3:02 pm

Kindamuzik published an in-depth preview on the upcoming Sonic Acts edition here.

Peter Bruyn tips Sonic Acts

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 2:56 pm

Peter Bruyn tips Sonic Acts in Stream magazine this week. Read more about it here.

Ulf Langheinrich @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 12:15 am

Ulf Langheinrich @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008 from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.

This third recording is the performance Drift Ulf Langheinrich did in 2008 at Sonic Acts. Enjoy!

(more…)

Sonic Acts @ Casa Luna 23 February 2010

Monday, February 22nd, 2010 7:24 pm

Tomorrow night Sonic Acts is featured at Casa Luna Radio 1 at midnight, with an interview and a nice sonic overview of of the artists appearing at The Poetics of Space. Read more about the broadcast and listen tomorrow to it here.

Sonic Acts interviewed by Cafe Sonore

Sunday, February 21st, 2010 11:04 pm

Last night Café Sonore featured a 1 hour special on the upcoming Sonic Acts festival. Armeno Alberts interviewed Sonic Acts and played a nice selection of the artists appearing at The Poetics of Space. Read more about the broadcast and listen to it here.

Ryoichi Kurokawa @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Sunday, February 21st, 2010 8:52 pm

Ryoichi Kurokawa @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008 (Excerpt) from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material.
This recording is a 10 minutes excerpt of the performance Ryoichi Kurokawa did in 2008 at Sonic Acts. Enjoy!

Read more about this here.

Christian Fennesz @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 9:56 pm

Acousmonium: Christian Fennesz @ SONIC ACTS XII 2008 from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Alongside the 2010 edition we start to bring the content of previous Sonic Acts editions online. Expect in the coming months weekly new material. We start with the concert Christian Fennesz did in 2008 in Paradiso on the Acousmonium system from GRM. Enjoy!
Read more about this here.

Jacob Kirkegaard & Sonic Acts in NRC Next

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 8:48 am

NRC Next published a 2 page article on Jacob Kirkegaard & Sonic Acts. You can read more here: http://www.nrcnext.nl/blog/2010/02/16/deense-geluidskunstenaar-laat-je-oren-zingen

Sonic Acts & Gonzo special in Cultureel Supplement NRC Handelsblad

Friday, February 12th, 2010 4:51 pm

NRC Handelsblad published a 6 page special in their Cultureel Supplement on Sonic Acts and Gonzo (circus).
You can read more here: http://weblogs.nrc.nl/cultuurblog/2010/02/12/cs-sonic-acts-beeld-en-ruimte