Thursday October 7, Opening concert @ Dokkhuset:
Tomoko Sauvage (JP/FR): Waterbowls
http://o-o-o-o.org/o/waterbowls.html
Tomoko Sauvage opens Meta.Morf 2010 with a concert based on water filled amplified Chinese waterbowls.
It was at this interestingly combined all-night-long concert in Paris in February 2006, titled “nuit indienne” with Terry Riley’s “In C” performed by Ictus and Riley himself and groups of Rajasthani music and Carnatic music when I first saw this instrument, jalatharangam, porcelain bowls filled with water hit with bamboo sticks, virtuosic performance with delicate sound by Aanayampatti Ganesan. Impressed by its simple mechanism, I quickly started to hit bowls with kitchen tools at home. I bought more bowls in china town to tune them up in some ragas I was learning. First I was doing improvisation exercises of classical indian music on these bowls with organ drone notes giving raga’s tonality like a tambura but gradually I was getting more into this instrument’s sound itself, waves in water creating particular vibratos, as well as the sensation of touching the water, the element that I had always been attached to. I started to use hydrophones, tiny submarine like underwater microphones to capture the subtle sound of water drops or waves resonating in porcelain bowls with the musical result of randomness and fluidity. Momus was right when he uttered just after singing at our long performance in Vienna, “… it’s the spirit of water…”. Apam Napat: the god of fresh water (Sanskrit).
Bio
Tomoko Sauvage is a musician/ sound artist working on self-developed instrument with water-filled porcelain bowls and hydrophones for electro-acoustic performances, compositions and installations.
Born in Yokohama, Japan, she grew up with classical then jazz piano education. While searching for her own sound after influenced by musicians like Terry Riley and Alice Coltrane, she met jalatarangam, a rare, disappearing instrument of traditional south Indian music, porcelain bowls filled with water. Fascinated by its fluid sound material, she has been developing this ‘electro-aquatic’ instrument in exploring sound texture of water.
In her recent performances and compositions, she captures the subtle sound of water waves and drops resonating in porcelain bowls with hydrophones (underwater microphones), then uses simple electronics to weave an aquatic soundscape with this irregular yet lively sound source. She literally plays with water by touching and agitating it or by making water drops fall into the bowls. In this project, her search for musicality develops from a simple attitude of listening to nature in keeping fragile balance between being controlled and uncontrolled, repetitive and transient.
She has made numerous performances internationally and her works have been released on labels such as either/OAR (US) and dokidoki editions (FR) among others.
She uses H2a-XLR of Aquarian Audio (hydrophones).
Thursday October 7, Opening concert @ Dokkhuset:
Antoine Schmitt (FR) / Jean-Jacques Birgé (FR): Nabaz´ Mob
Opera for one hundred electronic rabbits.
http://nabazmob.free.fr/English.html
100 Nabaztag smart rabbits play together in an opera specially composed by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé.
Inviting John Cage, Steve Reich, Conlon Nancarrow and György Ligeti, this musical and choreographic score in three movements, transmitted via wi-fi, plays on the tension between the orchestral ensemble and the individual voices to create a strong and involved showpiece. This opera questions the issues of working together, organization, decision and control, which are increasingly central and difficult in our contemporary world.
Schmitt and Birgé have chosen to twist the industrial object into an artwork in which the choreography of the ears, the play of light and the hundred small loudspeakers hidden in the stomachs of each rabbit create a composition with three voices built on time delay and repetition, programming and disrespect for rules.
Choreography and music by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé.
Bio
Antoine Schmitt
Visual artist and programming engineer, Antoine Schmitt creates artworks in the form of minimal and abstract objects, installations and situations, where movement and action are central. Heir of kinetic and
cybernetic art, nourished by philosophy and science-fiction, he reveals and literally manipulates the forces at stake, questioning the modalities of the free being in complex systems of reality. For this, he places programming, a radically new material in art history due to its essence of active matter, at the core of most of his artworks. Antoine Schmitt, alone or through collaborations, has undertaken a confrontation of this approach with more established artistic fields like music, dance, architecture, literature or cinema, of which he revisits the codes. He has thus collaborated with Vincent Epplay, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Atau Tanaka, Anne Holts et Jean-Marc Matos, Alberto Sorbelli, Joana Preiss, Juha Marsalo.
Jean-Jacques Birgé
Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer (co-founder of Un Drame Musical Instantané which with he records about 30 albums, as well as for movies, theater, dance, radio), film director (La nuit du phoque, Sarajevo a Street Under Siege, The Sniper), multimedia author (Carton, Machiavel, Alphabet), sound designer (exhibitions, CD-Roms, websites, Nabaztag, etc.), founder of record label GRRR. Specialist of the relations between sound and pictures, he has been one of the early synthesizer players and home studio creators in France in 1973, and with Un d.m.i. the initiator of the return of silent movies with live orchestra in 1976. Since 1995, he has become a sound designer in all multimedia areas and interactive composition.
Friday October 8 @ Dokkhuset:
STAALPLAAT SOUNDSYSTEM (NL) presents YOKOMONO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWb2gyivBhU&feature=related
http://www.staalplaat.org/site/projects/yokomono
“delightful wireless symphony” (The wire 2008)
The present setup for the YOKOMONO live concert version consists of 10 vinyl killers – toy car record players, each customised with its own fm transmitter. The sound will come through a set of radios that receives the signal transmitted by the vinyl killers You might think Yokomono is just a DJ set with 10 turntables, and in a way that is correct but in many more ways Yokomono is completely different. First of all; each killer is mono and has pour sound quality, but much more Yokomono is very hard to handle, you can not really select a track or make it stop when you want to, its more putting the needle down blindfolded. The real difference starts when you realise each killer runs on batteries, meaning the speed is unstable and it will slow down during the concert, the fact that the batteries run out will not only effect the speed but it will effect the fm frequency that the killer is transmitting too.
…The fact that we transmit with 10 fm transmitters at the same time means that each transmitter is effecting the other. These interference and the unstable media that is transmitting makes the whole set unpredictable and hard to control, making Yokomono unique and adventures.
Bio
The initiator of Staalplaat Soundsystem Geert-Jan Hobijn is the founder of Staalplaat , graphic designer, curator and soundartist. Other members are: Carsten Stabenow, the founder of the german Media Art festival garage curating and organising for many different media- and sound art festivals, Carlo Crovato is working as an solo artist also under the pseudonym plastic-electrics and Jens Alexander Ewald software developer and research associate at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel.
Staalplaat Soundsystem has been showing works at several international festivals, museums, galeries and events like Avanto (Helsinki), Sonar (Barcelona), 798 South Gate space (Beijing), DEAF (Rotterdam), Transmediale (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), Todaysart (Den Haag), MOCA Taipei, Museeum Weserburg (Bremen), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Steirischer Herbst ( Graz), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Khoj International Artists (New Dehli).
Friday October 8 @ Dokkhuset:
Roberto Paci Dalò (IT)
MAGNETICA – live media
Magnetica: a touching journey based on the invisible architecture of sound and electric dust. Dealing with the space through resonance, reverbs, echoes. A chemical laboratory where thin acoustical textures are developed through revolving layers and abstract forms. Moving on the threshold between broken melodies, loops, voice frequencies, soundscapes, and noise. Magnetica creates an aural sonic and visual environment every time different and challenging.
Magnetica’s materials have been presented in New York City, Linz, Graz, Berlin, Vienna. The work has been premiered in Rimini at the Dal Vivo festival 2009 with further performance in Rome (Festa dei pirati 2010).
http://www.giardini.sm
http://www.digicult.it/Agency/sections/artists/pacidalo_magnetica.asp an interview to Roberto Paci Dalò
Bio
Roberto Paci Dalò. Italian artist, musician, director. His unconventional work across sound, image, and space has won him international admiration from among others John Cage and Aleksandr Sokurov. Oustanding collaborations include Scanner, Philip Jeck, Kronos Quartet, Maurizio Cattelan, Kurt Hantschläger, Terry Riley, Gerfried Stocker, Hermann Nitsch, Mouse on Mars, Giorgio Agamben, Fred Frith. Roberto has been several times awarded at the Prix Ars Electronica. A pioneer in the use of digital technologies and telecommunication systems in art, he created concerts, live media performances, music-theatre, interactive sound-video installations, radioworks, films presented at Venice Biennale, Kunsthalle Vienna, Ars Electronica Linz, Locarno Film Festival, Maerzmusik Berlin, Strasbourg Musica, Wien Modern, Charlottenborg Copenhagen, Fundaciò Joan Mirò Barcelona, Vienna Opera House, a.o. His work has been presented throughout Europe, Russia, Middle East, USA, Canada, Mexico, South America.
Friday October 8 @ Dokkhuset:
AudioVision (DE) presents: LIVE CINEMA
Karl Bartos’ Rhythmic Screen
http://www.karlbartos.com/youtubevideo/qUpPOLZIx5U.html
http://www.karlbartos.com
Hardly any other name in pop music is as synonymous with electronic sound as that of Karl Bartos. Originally a classically trained percussionist and keyboarder, he later became a composing member of the legendary German group Kraftwerk.
As a member of KW for more than 15 years, Karl Bartos took part in creating some of modern music’s most influential classics like: “Radio-Activity”, “Trans Europe Express”, “The Man Machine”, “Computer World”, “Tour de France”, “Electric Cafe” and “The Mix”; thus, altering our perception of sound.
By using film and video, even before the arrival of MTV and it’s subsequent transformation of the music business, KW had a great influence on forming the language of contemporary art, especially media art.
After having left KW, Bartos’ activities as an author and producer lead to globally successful co-operations with Electronic (Bernard Sumner / Johnny Marr), OMD (Andy McCluskey), Information Society (USA), The Mobile Homes (Sweden), and Anthony Rother (Germany), as well as making records for his own project entitled: Electric Music.
“Communication”, the first album under his own name, was launched in 2003 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA), and has been successful in twenty different regions, spanning the entire world.
In 2004 he co-founded the master program “Sound Studies – Acoustic Communication” at the Berlin University of the Arts where he was a visiting professor teaching Auditory Media Design until 2009.
“Camera Obscura”, the first single on Karl Bartos’ label AudioVision, was released in 2005.
In 2006, he completed the soundtrack to the film “Moebius Redux – A Life in Pictures” – starring the renowned French comic illustrator Jean “Moebius” Giraud. The film was released on January 30th, 2007 in Berlin.
Together with other illustrious names, including Lalo Schifrin, Michael Stipe, Bjork, Malcolm McLaren, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Johnny Marr, Courtney Love, Yoko Ono, Kanye West, and Grace Jones, Mr. Bartos was recently invited to collaborate on an issue of the prestigious art & fashion publication Visionaire, which is dedicated to “sound”.
AudioVision consists of Karl Bartos and Mathias Black.
Bartos´s program for the night, click on a pic to zoom:
Saturday October 9 @ Dokkhuset:
Pierre Bastien(NL) – Mecanicum
Pierre Bastien is back for the third time at Dokkhuset visiting TEKS and Trondheim with his crazy lovely analog machine orchestra! For the biennial he has prepared new machines and a whole new set!
” A composer’s dream : a fail-safe orchestra at one’s fingertips obeying ever so gently to his every command : a timeless sounding orchestra, both futuristic and slightly dada, conjuring ancient traditions in its surprisingly sensuous music. This is, in a nutshell what Pierre Bastien’s “Mecanium” is all about, a daydream of sorts that he has successfully pursued since 1976. The musicians of his orchestra are machines. And the idea behind it is simple, efficient and poetic : to have traditional instruments (Chinese lute, Morrocan bendir, Javanese saron, koto, violin, sanza, etc.) played by a mechanical instrument made of meccano pieces and recycled turntable motors. These hybrid and self-playing sound sculptures perform a series of short pieces, charming and hypnotic. ” (Michel F. Côté)
Bio
Pierre Bastien (born Paris, 1953) post-graduated in eighteenth-century French literature at University Paris-Sorbonne. In 1977 he built his first musical machinery. For the next ten years he has been composing for dance companies and playing with Pascal Comelade. In the meantime he was constantly developing his mechanical orchestra. Since 1987 he concentrates on it through solo performances, sound installations, recordings and collaborations with such artists as Pierrick Sorin, Karel Doing, Jean Weinfeld, Robert Wyatt or Issey Miyake.
Saturday October 9 @ Dokkhuset:
a r t i f i c i e l (CA): POWEr
http://www.artificiel.org/POWEr
Canadian Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy uses an audio-modulated Tesla coil as a live instrument, electrical arcs are generated and transformed in an ongoing, realtime audiovisual process!
POWEr is a performance based on high-voltage electromagnetic perturbations, by Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy. Using an audio-modulated Tesla coil as a live instrument, electrical arcs are generated and transformed in an ongoing, realtime audiovisual process. Electricity is used as a subtle yet intense material, manifested as an instrinsically synesthesic phenomenae.
Bio
artificiel is a creation studio that is dedicated to producing artworks through digital technologies. The works have different formats, from installation to performance, and are presented as exhibitions, stage- based shows or in- situ interventions. Sound art, visual art, software/hardware design and context are integrated in each project
Saturday October 9 @ Dokkhuset:
i n c i t e /(DE): dualicities
http://www.incite.fragmentedmedia.org
i n c i t e / is back to rock your bones!
i n c i t e / is Kera Nagel and André Aspelmeier.
Mixing eye-catching experimental audiovisual art with dynamic distorted IDM grooves, the duo criss-crosses art and club worlds, creating intense experiences for ears and eyes. Fragmented electric junk, fragile bursts of static noise and extra-charged sub-bass-kicks join semi-abstract monochromatic imagery. incite/ play seriously weird glitch and quasi-danceable grooves in synced conjunction with intense grayscale visuals.
i n c i t e /’s audiovisual creations – from abstract to semi-narrative – deal with subjects between quantum mechanics, urbanity and other aspects of everyday life . The distorted visuals are mostly unrecognizable, hiding the underlying stories – an exciting expedition for the audience.
Live shows are the main focus of incite/. Since April 03 Kera and André have played far more than one hundred gigs: tours in Europe and the US, gigs on many of the leading international media-art festivals such as 5DaysOff (Amsterdam), Cimatics06+08 (Brussels), Némo 08+09 (Paris), ExperimentaClub (Madrid), Dokfest (Kassel), Gogbot (Enschede), RECmadrid (Madrid), Media Art Biennale WRO 07 + 09 (Wroclaw), VAD Festival (Girona), The Great Escape (Breda), Simultan Festival (Timosoara), Kontra-Musik Festival (Malmø), Tewakfest (Zürich), LEM (Barcelona), OpenZemos98 (Sevilla), Trondheim Matchma- king, International Videofestival (Bochum), Avantgarde Festival (Schiphorst), Contemptronics (Hamburg), Forms of Hands (Gladbeck), 25fps (Zagreb), Cinesthesy (Paris), VAD (Girona), zxzw (Tilburg), Kontra-Musik (Malmö), CoCart (Torun) Videomedja (Novi Sad), DarkFibre (London), Ostrale (Dresden), e-pulse (Breda), Scopitone (Nantes),
FIAV (Casablanca) and others.
Bio
Kera (Kerstin) Nagel born 1965 in Luebeck, Germany studied History, Philosophy, German Language, Literature and Education Science in Hamburg works part-time in the educational field (including teaching new media).
André Aspelmeier born 1966 in Bielefeld, Germany studied Sociology in Bielefeld and Media Technology in Hamburg works as a Live-Sound-Engineer.
ORIGAMI REPUBLIKA celebrates its 20th anniversary!
TORE BØE (NO/SP)/ KAI KOBI MIKALSEN (NO) / ALEXANDER RISHAUG (NO)
Concert initiated and arranged by Ny Musikk – Trondheim.
Wednesday October 20 @ Blæst:
Origami Boe
Alexander Rishaug
Kai Kobi Mikalsen
Tore Bøe (NO/SP)with guests from his acoustic laptop workshop during Meta.Morf!
Friday October 22 @ Theathercaféen:
Saturday November 6 @ Verkstedhallen:
GREG POPE (UK/NO)
Light Trap
Light Trap is a live performance using four prepared 16 mm projectors to create a voluminous and spatial sound/light sculpture that is in constant flux and explores the raw elements of cinema.
Bio
After dabbling in punk rock bands and absurdist performance, Greg Pope (UK) founded the Brighton based Super 8 film collective Situation Cinema in 1986 that evolved into Loophole Cinema (London 1989–99), which used 16 mm multi-projection techniques. Working collaboratively and individually, Pope has made video installations, live art pieces and single screen film works since 1996. He currently lives in Norway and is active teaching, projecting and making film.
The concert is curated by Per Platou. Produced and funded by PNEK – Production network for electronic arts, Norway.
Saturday November 6 @ Verkstedhallen:
BRUCE McCLURE (US)
PIE PELLICANE JESU DOMINAE: And After Several Rapid Strokes of Their Wings
Photo: Robin Martin
As each projector sets bi-packed film loops into motion, achronicity is chronicled away. Footage from Birds of Northern Places, a 1950s nature documentary is centrifuged, drawing out sequences in space that evidence time displacement as a primary agent in dimensional perception.
Bio
Film-projection artist Bruce McClure (US) works with sound and film technologies such as experimentation with spinning discs. He is best known for his groundbreaking multi-projector performances that interrogate the very substance of film and its mechanical supports.
Bruce McClure has performed extensively in cinemas, festivals and museums in the United States and abroad. Producing a totally sensory experience, McClure’s groundbreaking multi-projector performances are informed by the way the brain reacts to light and sound. Using an array of modified 16 mm projectors, film loops, and guitar pedals, his work challenges the very substance of film and its mechanical supports. Film loops patterned with patches of emulsion on a translucent base are combined with an optical soundtrack to create a physically intense adventure.
The concert is curated by Per Platou. Produced and funded by PNEK – Production network for electronic arts, Norway.
Thursday 7th October @ exhibition opening, Trondheim Art Museum Gråmølna
CELLULOSE (NO) is a duo consisting of Audun Eriksen and Arnfinn Killingtveit. The project explores psychoauditive cross-temporal time tangents through the use and hybridisation of ancient and modern music technology, respectively the didgeridoo and the computer.
Friday 8th October @ exhibition opening, Babel – Showroom for art.
Sohnified (NO)
Sohnified is Claus Sohn Andersen. Sohnified sounds somewhat solid. Sounds sum up space, sorbet and sorrow. Some say Sohnified should shut up. Some say some should sit down. Some say.
Saturday 9 October @ exhibition opening, TSSK – Trøndelag Senter for Samtidskunst.
kAOS (NO)
http://www.myspace.com/bjornstr
kAOS is the solo project of Bjørn Strand. The music is freely improvised, working with a guitar and a bunch of effect pedals, through several amps. The kAOS expression lies somewhere between jazz, rock and contemporary. Energy, soundscapes and big dynamic contrasts are the main focie in the perfomance. The music ranges from tender melodic lines to big noise blow outs. Bjørn Strand is inspired by artists such as MoHa!, Stian Westerhus, Special Defects and Øystein Moen. Bjørn himself have recently become educated in the field of musical sciences. He is also involved in the projects Strand/Strand/Ørnes Andersend and 2010. He have done previous work with Gallery, Pepote Rouge, Rhys Marsh and others.
Friday November 5 @ Theathercaféen:
Hands Up Silver Spacesuit (NO)
http://www.myspace.com/handsupsilverspacesuit
http://joakimblattmannmoldestad.wordpress.com/
Hands Up Silverspacesuit works in low-key and often fragile sonic landscapes. Fieldrecordings and soundcollages meets instruments like the banjo and houseorgan. The sounds are manoeuvred and handled by Joakim Blattmann Moldestad, a masters-student at the Art Academy in Trondheim. The project first appeared sometime early 2010 somewhere between the before mentioned art academy and some cottage-walls further south. The live-presentation is constantly changing, at Meta.Morf the project will be accompanied by Greger Stolt Nilsen on visuals.
Friday November 5 @ Theathercaféen:
Killing Fields (NO)
http://www.myspace.com/honkobubbe
Killing Fields is Thorbjørn Ottersen.
Killing Fields plays capricious electronic impro in a melodic landscape where short stories plays out and creates the backdrop for frameworks, illusions, social pleasuers and diversion. Bob Dylan plays synth, in other words.
Friday November 5 @ Theathercaféen:
Flymodus (NO)
http://www.and-oar.org/pop_eitherp31.html
http://www.myspace.com/havardvolden
http://www.myspace.com/taxtmusic
Håvard Volden – guitar and electronic devices / Martin Taxt – tuba and sheng
“Two carnivores slowly approach one another, go in and out of sync. Håvard Volden
and Martin Taxt explore the nuances between synchronicity and braiding, free improv
and form, tension and moments in love. Your pulse will follow.”
Friday November 5 @ Theathercaféen:
Lumisokea
Andrea Taeggi (IT) – elektron monomachine/piano/harmonium/percussion – Koenraad Ecker (BE) – laptop
NB! New material: http://soundcloud.com/lumisokea
Lumisokea plays semi-composed electronic music : not your usual “I prepared-30-loops-and-I’m-playing-them-in-random-order” kind of electronic live performance, but two people developing the music in real-time. Through intense onstage communication, Lumisokea manages to sound like one single meta-instrument, combining the attention to detail and structure of studio-based music with the uncompromising immediacy of improvisation. Adding acoustic layers to their use of digital instruments gives the music a richness in texture rarely found in live performed electronic beat-music. Reflecting its name (“Lumisokea” means “snowblind” in Finnish), a sense of dark introspection pervades the music, which ranges from minimalistic soundsculptures to beat/drone-based, high-intensity walls of sound.
Origami Boe aka Tore H. Børe is a Merz artist, coordinator of the Origami Republika open network since 1990, inventor of the acoustic laptop, father to three and seasonal bartender in Gran Canaria, Macaronesia.