Performances


Robotcowboy
, Dan Wilcox aka danomatika (US)
Tuesday, 1 June 2010, 20:00

Robotcowboy is a one-man cyborg band musical project using custom hardware and software running on a wearable computer. An attempt to meld rock with realtime algorithmic composition tools into a dynamic live show, it combines a MIDI guitar, control devices, various masks, and synchronized visuals to make as new wave experience. It is an exploration into a post-digital renewal of embodiment and physical instrumentality in electronic musical performance.

An ex-member of the elite Space Ranger unit 7inchWave,

danomatika

aka

Dan Wilcox

has gone solo through the universe in a quest to sing melodic electronic-noise songs to dying astronauts. He wandered to the land of the Vikings in 2005 in search of blonde girls, minimal-chaotic-electro, and upper education with the result being a combination of his engineering skills and musical forte: the robotcowboy wearable computer music system. Currently works as a Creative Engineer for the Ars Electronica Futurelab.
www.robotcowboy.com


robotcowboy
the benchmark consort (laptop participatory performance)
, hans w. koch (DE)
Thursday, 3 June, 21:00

the benchmark consort

is a performance for an infinite number of laptops, playing unamplified. It consists of the pieces

more&more

for a laptop-orchestra of volunteer participants and a soloist, playing the piece

bandoneonbook

on a titaniumpowerbook.

more&more

is a piece about the failure of even the fastest computer. In failing, the machines produce sounds, impossible to obtain with mere software. Each participant has the same programme installed on his machine, which progressively overloads it: new windows are created in random positions and colours, each representing a simple FM Synthesizer.
After a while, the computers start choking, dropping and/or distorting sound, the window creation stumbles. Out of these "digital ashes",

bandoneonbook

emerges as a solo piece for a titanium-PowerBook's built in microphone and speaker, controlling the feedback between the two with a keyboard-operated filter and by opening and closing the lid. The piece terminates by all participants purposely crashing the software after it has faded into silence.

Audience members are invited to bring their own laptops, either PC or Mac; the required software is provided as Max/MSP-standalone-application!



Besides developing performances and open forms for various, often interdisciplinary ensembles,

hans w. koch

creates (sound-)installations, sometimes involving computers and digital media. The search for hidden aspects of everyday tools, household appliances, old computers and traditional instruments takes place alongside his explorations of sounds and musical structures. Whether working with digital media or using computers as musical instruments in a physical manner, he explores boundaries and implicit (de)faults, in order to arrive at interactions that keep lives of their own and react to human input in unpredictable ways.
www.hans-w-koch.net


benchmark consort
Cirkulacija 2
(SI)
Friday, 4 June 2010, 21:00

Cirkulacija 2 will lead an improvised multimedia intervention, perhaps more akin to a concert than a typical Cirkulacija happening.

Cirkulacija 2 develops social forms through arts – these should be more structured in the circulating environment, therefore they give precedence to rational approaches. Because the event itself is a real-time improvisation – assembled from different modules, which the performers bring to the event – a conflict emerges between the body and the will. These two inertia set up the borders and define the field of the event. It’s highly unlikely that these borders will easily cross and clearly result in any future meaning or pleasure. But that’s precisely one of the purposes of Cirkulacija 2.

Cirkulacija 2

, a Ljubljana-based artists’ initiative, takes its name from the hall where they are currently squatting – the heating station at the former bicycle factory Rog. The name nicely points to the principles that the group tries to elaborate through their collective work: the principles of evolving production through a series of projects – and trying to point out the processual nature of artists’ work. Cirkulacija 2 is mainly concerned with technological and media approaches in art (radio, television, video,…robots, mechanisms, devices,…). Core members are:

Ksenija Čerče

,

Stefan Doepner

,

Milan Kristl

,

Boštjan Leskovšek

and

Borut Savski

.
www.3via.org/cirkulacija


Cirkulacija 2
Un-drum 2: The Chinese Connection
, Tarek Atoui (LB)
Friday, 4 June, 22:00

Un-drum is a series of intense physical sound performances that emerged from Tarek Atoui’s residency at the Sharjah Biennial 9 in 2009. The series presents a complex interaction between music composition, body movement, performance, and computer and electronic engineering. The Chinese Connection looks back at the cultural shift that China underwent during the Maoist revolution when all forms of music, theatre and the arts were purged of traditional and occidental influences, promoting a new esthetics aiming to raise a new popular myth of the communist ideology. Likewise, many national and popular movements in the Arab world today follow the same strategies in creating new myths and sectarian identities.
The sound material for the performance is taken from demonstrations and trials of opera, music and art masters judged by the youth of the communist party. The constant subversion between compositional elements and their scale in a conflicted way reflects the condition of these painful and hard times of forced cultural and social change.

Produced by the Sharjah Art Foundation.

An electro-acoustic musician/composer who studied at the French National Conservatory of Reims,

Tarek Atoui

uses electronic music and new technologies as powerful tools of social/political expression and identity in multidisciplinary interventions, events, concerts and workshops. He was co-artistic director of the STEIM Studios (NL), has released a solo album on Staalplaat label’s Mort Aux Vaches series (NL/DE), and has played and performed at contemporary art events and festivals such as Today’s Art Festival (NL), Club Transmediale (DE), the New Museum (USA).
www.tarekatoui.com


Un-drum 2: The Chinese Connection