Festival of sound creation using the network as a live venue, Audioblast broadcasts numerous networked audio practices including; experimental music, drone, noise, field recordings, sound poetry, electronic and contemporary music.
Audioblast Festival is in its ninth year having began life in 2012 as the only “Live” experimental sound festival using the network as its primary venue.
The adventure has seen hundreds of artists and musicians experiment with the online format and networked live performances over the years. Practices as diverse as radio art to live coding, improvisation to sound poetry and everything else in between.
Restrictions of movement and closure of cultural venues across the globe, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, has resulted in a surge in Live online performances these previous 12 months.
Leading many more artists by necessity to discover the tools for live performance, experimenting with performance formats and connecting with their audiences and communities through the wires.
Co-production Apo33 and Art Zoyd Studios.
Curation: Kasper T Toeplitz & Julien Ottavi.Curation : Kasper T Toeplitz & Julien Ottavi.
This year’s theme is : Divergent Landscapes
Divergent Landscapes
“The physical and environmental attributes of landscapes often shape patterns of population connectivity”
This years Audioblast festival explores the theme of Divergent Landscapes
In the wake of multiple lock-downs, transforming city centers into wildlife friendly zones whilst simultaneously separating urban populations from accessing nature, our experiences of landscape has become mediated, hybrid, multiple and connected. Whether strolling on picturesque beaches in popular video-games, designing virtual realty utopias online or listening to the intensity of birdsong in a soundscape otherwise saturated by the drones of engines ferrying children to school or people to work, we have come to depend on our connected devices to navigate our isolation from each other, from nature and from culture.
Divergent Landscapes seeks to highlight this dichotomy of our virtual wildernesses, hybrid journeys, streams of resistance, phantasmagoric forests and a networked embrace. Making visible the Divergent Landscapes, through our sonic identities, digital realities and public/private (exterior /interior) spaces.
Π Node
Intervention of Π Node at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present the project Π Node, the relation to transmission and the collective ?
∏Node (pronounced Pi-node) is a radio that broadcasts in DAB+ in Paris and Mulhouse, and on the web. Carried by an artists’ collective and structured on a unique distributed model, it produces and broadcasts varied and demanding content, and disseminates through workshops and training in radio creation tools. These workshops are led by members of the artists’ collective who work to keep the station alive, and who develop it in different forms, not only related to the radio world, but also to the field of sound arts, plastic arts and digital technology,
Peer-to-peer radio
Since its creation in 2013, ∏Node has been dedicated to imagining what a distributed radio would be like, breaking away from traditional centralised models, a space where listeners would be able to participate freely in radio. Rather than an architecture around a central studio and a single broadcasting channel, ∏Node has bet on a fleet of small studios allowing everyone to build one at home and set up their own broadcasting channel, their own micro-webradio hosted on ∏Node.
∏Node is built as a space dedicated to radio practices, and defends radio as a symmetrical, hybrid, multi-channel and decentralised media.
Based on this unique and singular model, ∏Node is dedicated to re-interviewing and experimenting sound creation and the radio experience, reconfiguring its modes of diffusion according to contexts, thanks to its multiple mobile micro-studios, allowing for the aggregation of singular events. ∏Node has been broadcasting in Mulhouse on DAB+ since February 2019 and has also made a major contribution to the setting up of the independent MBC multiplex in Mulhouse, enabling the 13 radio stations located on this multiplex to independently own and manage their broadcasts. ∏Node obtained the CSA’s authorisation to also broadcast in Paris, and will start broadcasting in April 2020.
∏Node thus creates a hybrid analogue and digital, terrestrial and networked, local and international broadcasting system.
A distributed and resilient infrastructure
The model of ∏Node has been structured thanks to the shaping of a robust architecture and a multitude of research and development works, and thanks to several intensive one-off actions within international events, the activation of a network of partners and contributors, and an intensive activity of workshops for the manufacture of these micro-studios, and an updated approach to the radio media: construction of radio micro transmitters, or small modular studios (the famous piboxes), streaming, etc. These creation workshops have been given in many contexts, festivals, universities, art schools, medialabs and fablabs, allowing it to bring together a large group of actors.
∏Node thus brings together technical, artistic and pedagogical skills and knowledge of actors in the field. The radio station ∏Node relies on the availability of time, know-how and very specific and sharp skills of its founding members, professional networks and contacts, but also collective skills to adapt quickly in any situation, especially in times of crisis and transition, allowing it to evolve rapidly.
The infrastructure supports the operation
Simultaneous delivery of several dozen streams, several hundred hours of podcasts and audio archives, feeding 2 audio streams for their broadcast on DAB ;
The tools and interface design is a real public social space (website, irc channel, stream management tools, programme management interfaces, specialised, internal and public mailing lists); Collaborations are fuelled by discussions on a discussion and announcement list bringing together more than a hundred subscribers specialised in radio practices and radio culture.
Daily care is taken in the maintenance, editorialisation and archiving to improve the readability and accessibility of the contents;
Listening and adaptability are deployed to respond to all situations, but also to the most singular proposals, creating a dynamic and a favourable ground for experimentation and creativity.
Simplified uses allow for the empowerment and appropriation of this radio space, whose access to contributors is made possible thanks to training courses adapted to the technical environment of each person (we estimate that in the last two months we have trained about a hundred people who are now able to stream from home and each has their own editing point, i.e. their own stream channel);
The deployment from one person to the next is based on mutual interest, establishing a basis of trust between contributors, and is supported by sustained communication work: calls for contributions, personal invitations, information and mobilisation of the international experimental art scene, as well as friendly and even family and proximity networks.
∏Node is also an infrastructure that allows other initiatives to broadcast, sometimes in a more underground and deeper way, such as the Acentrale initiative, and the radio station Sonic Protest, both of which broadcast thanks to the structural contribution of ∏Node. Another example is Radio Tsonami (Chile).
How did you set up your performance programme for audioblast 9 ?
title : ARAIGNEES
images: 2 proposals attached
G.O.L.E.M. is a live sound construction resulting from the aggregation of audio streams from several speakers. Each participant receives, modifies and reinjects his or her sound vision, misled by parallel temporalities, into the large common flow. Sensitivities are immediately modified by others, a feedback phenomenon.
comes into play. A form languidly appears to give birth to a bioinformatics entity giving off a futuristic Out-of-Control.
How do you see the artistic relationship in a radio project like yours ?
Open, shared, precise and free
How have online performances in general changed the way you play today ? How do you see the future of physical performance online in the coming years ?
For most of the people in the collective, the practice of online performance has been a reality for more than 20 years for some of them. LePlacard, Rybn, Nomusic, Radio WNE, Radio Free Robot are experiments that have all or part of their attraction to online performance, linearity and symmetrical data… Between radio and networked performance, this modus operandi has forged not only an artistic practice but also a bias in terms of artistic approach.
This year’s Audioblast theme is « divergent landscape », how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also, how do you think you are connected to this concept even if you have not worked on this aspect in your performance ?
The field of stream/stream propagation is a network of redundant streams circulating on arcs and nodes of the web. The spider, the motif chosen to set this G.O.L.E.M. in motion, is the animal that typically works on uneven, flat, suspended territories. We thought this model was ideal for the Audioblast9 proposal. Moreover, we added a technically imposed figure: slots and streams that follow one another according to a subjective codification. This grid resembles a grammar involving certain postures for this live performance. Several rehearsals gave the collectives the opportunity to follow this model.
What are your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
A G.O.L.E.M. World including an immeasurable amount of media, frequencies, streams, artists and servers.
A Radio Fischli-Weiss installation
https://p-node.org/works/artworks/radio-fischli-weiss
Residences for the collective on invitation (to be published).
Performance of Π Node at Audioblast 9
Alexei Borisov
Intervention of Alexei Borisov at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
Outside of his native Russia, Alexei Borisov is probably best known as a live performer with a sound and visual style that make his performances transcend the usual gig situation and resemble Beckett-style absurd theatre. Perhaps the most appropriate term for their soundtrack would be ”live collage”, often based on domestic or everyday material – ”found sounds” and home recordings of all sorts. They include field recordings of arbitrary soundscapes and conversations, mostly done diary-style with a cheap dictaphone, Borisov reciting his automatic writing-type lyrics, snippets of music from the radio, separate instrument tracks recorded for his other projects, solo playing on various instruments in a sleepwalking style or ”blindfolded”, as he has described his working (anti-)method with computers. The elements are mixed and cut up through effects in a manner which remotely resembles dj’ing with its sharp timing – Borisov’s long experience as a live dj can be felt – or a manual telephone operator turning his work at a switchboard into poetry, as David Keenan noted in The Wire magazine about his live album Before the Evroremont: ”The whole is rent with fuzzy, intercepted conversations that sound like archived wiretaps”.
(text by Anton Nikkila)
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast 9 ?
I will use laptop with Audio Mulch software. The basic sound components – audio fragments of field recordings, live sets, voices etc.. processed a bit and remixed in real time. Also I plan to install some of my staff to produce extra sounds as an addition to the information coming from my laptop.
In your performance you use mainly electronic instruments and computers, how do you think playing live on the internet will influence your music ?
When I play live somewhere I use different staff like diy synths, micro modular, cassette players, dictaphones, phrase sampler, pick ups and mics, guitar or bass and laptop sometimes.Internet sometimes limits my technical abilities but gives extra opportunity to communicate with different people from different countries at the same time and in real time, which is cool! I plan to perform from my apartment, in this situation I need to optimize my set up somehow…
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? And How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance over the next few years ?
I cannot say that my way to perform changed much in the situation of online performance. Some technical nuances are taken place, of course. But stylistically my music did not change much. I think that most important thing now is to make online performances of musicians like me more attractive visually.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
The concept looks interesting and abstract at the same time, which is good, to my mind. I am not sure that I could reproduce this concept directly, indirectly would be the best approach in my case.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
I am going to use both – butt for sound (laptop) and zoom (iphone or ipad) for visual part of my performance. I hope it will work somehow.
What are your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
Fortunately the situation in Moscow is slowly improving. I could perform more less regular, at some clubs, galleries and venues, but for limited audience. Also it’s even possible to travel – in March I plan to go to Rostov the Great (3-4 hours far from Moscow by train) to play some sort of an ambient set in local Kremlin, as part of some exhibition/installation. There is a possibility that in April I could visit Bryansk (about 4-6 hours by train from Moscow to the West) with silent movie and in May my band Notchnoi Prospekt should perform in Kazan (Tatarstan) at AWAZ festival.
Performance of Alexei Borisov at Audioblast 9
Meryll Ampe & Milène Tournier
Could you present your artistic works as a duo of artists ?
This is our first collaboration. We worked on the correspondences between music, text, voice, rhythm.
How did you set up your performance programme for audioblast 9 ? What are the connections between your research during the residency at Art Zoyd Studios and what you present at Audioblast ?
We had a three-four day residency at Art Zoyd Studios. We started from the echoes between the theme «insurgent landscapes» and our own practices, both individual (writing and noise) and in pairs. We wanted to build bridges between our two practices in relation to the theme.
Why did you choose to record a video rather than make your creation in live streaming ?
The video allows for archiving. This decision is not ours to make, we were offered this capture format.
How have online performances in general changed the way you play today ? How do you imagine the future of online physical performance in the coming years ?
Being in this practice of live performance, it is still difficult for me to consider live streaming as a new genre. I hope that we won’t get too used to this kind of broadcasting where the notion of physics is totally dissipated.
This year’s Audioblast theme is «divergent landscape», how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not? Also, how do you think you are related to this concept even if you didn’t work on this aspect in your performance ?
We worked on the concept of landscape by creating planes and backgrounds, appearances and emptiness, between tension and flow, repetition and silence.
Performance of Meryll Ampe & Milène Tournier at Audioblast 9
Gail Priest
Intervention of Gail Priest at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
All my work is focused on the aural realm manifesting in a range of formats. My overarching preoccupation is with the liminal zone between figuration and abstraction. I am always torn between making sense and making sensation. My performances and compositions use field recording, live vocal processing and machine noise. Over the years I have begun to separate my compositional output from my live performance, allowing the latter more unpredictability to ensure a performative liveness. These semi-improvised performances use irregular voice loops and long delays, to create dense harmonic material in response to harsher noise floors generated by internal machine feedback and modular synthesizers. Essentially I use the machines as improvising partners. My compositional recordings are often in response to themes, locations or situations, with recent releases on my own label, Metal Bitch, including Songs from the Omega Point (2019), Heraclitus in Iceland (2017), blue | green (2012, split LP with Kate Carr/Flaming Pines), Fear of Stranglers (2010) and Presentiments from the Spider Garden (2010, through Endgame Records).
My installation work focuses more on text-based explorations interrogating aspects of sounding and listening, presented as immersive spaces that require the attention of a performance. For example Sounding the Future (2014-2017) is an interactive installation that explores what art in the future might sound like. Operating like an immersive hypertext (programmed by Julien Pauthier in Processing), the solo participant, seated in the center of a circular projection, can navigate between both speculative fiction and related factual material experienced via wireless headphones.
SonoLexic (2017-2020) is an ‘audio essay as installation’ that explores the relationship betweenlistening and language. It comprises a soundscape delivered via near field speakers, with the spoken text delivered via an ultrasonic, hyper-directional speaker. This manifests the voice in a very narrow beam creating a highly specific spatial listening experience. This is accompanied by a proto-hologram—a projection through a liquid-filled tube—showing the spectral information of the voice, creating a visual mediation of the text and sound. Within my installation works I am interested in creating a relationship of visu-audition (Chion 2016), in which visual material accompanies, rather than dictates the experience.
My background is in theatre so I often undertake sound design and composition for performance and dance works as well as creating my own‘sound theatre’ works. Most recently I’ve presented A continuous self-vibrating region of intensities (Liveworks Festival 2019-2021), in collaboration with designer Thomas Burless, which explores vocal cymatics. Inspired by audiovisual experimental devices from the 19th century, Burless and I have created a number of kinetic objects that are variously activated by the voice, generating vibratory patterns. These are combined to create a performance environment that is activated by myself and two other guest vocalists.
Additionally my practice has always involved curation of exhibitions and concert events as well as writing for and about the arts. The interrelation of language and sound making forms the subject of my current PhD research in which I am exploring forms of creative sound theory.
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast#9 ?
This performance, for me, will take place as the day begins. If you are situated in the Northern
Hemisphere I will be performing in your future; you will be watching me from what is my past; both of us in now. But sound is always about time—a series of indivisible presents that we hear as a flow. Working with field samples, voice and modular synthesizers, the focus of this performance will be on textural and timbral transformation of melodic fragments and entwined drones to heighten our sense of time’s implacable progression. Occasionally I may attempt to regulate time through metric beats, however this will only confirm the sense of inevitable propulsion: an energetic surrender of the next moment to the next. Given that the performance occurs in the morning, I intend to offer a sense of this slow awakening and activation by streaming realtime vision of my garden, just outside my studio window. This will present a minimal background of morning life as it unfolds, its small fluctuations forming chance visual synchronicities with the sound.
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance over the next few years ?
This Audioblast#9 presentation will actually be my first online performance. In general I am excited by the potential for online performance to allow access to the work of artists from across the world. Given the restrictions on travel, and the geographical distance of Australia from Europe and the US, it’s fantastic to be able to experience work that I might not previously have been able to access. However my concern with the form is that within a live environment, the act of collective listening encourages a focus and intention that is vital to the appreciation of experimental electronic music. With online performance, the various distractions available to a home viewer are considerable and generating an incentive to remain with the work is a challenge. However I am interested in how the phenomena of collective listening translates to an online environment. From my experiences of watching online performances, this sense of collective listening is not completely lost, and in some ways is amplified, as the facility to respond in realtime via various facilities (liking, commenting etc) offers a sense of immediate connection, reaching out beyond one’s space to meet in the alterity of the performance.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
Streaming from Australia, I am definitely in a ‘different’ landscape as well as a different time to that of a Northern Hemisphere audience. Four years ago, after living my whole life in the city of Sydney, I moved to the top of Blue Mountains (two hours inland of Sydney, altitude 1040meters). The difference of environment and climate is significant. For example, in most temperate zones in Australia, you don’t really get a strong sense of four seasons, rather a hot summer gradually slides into a not so cold winter and back again. But where I now live, we are often 10 degrees cooler than the city, and seasonal shifts more marked. We sometimes even get snow. While I live in the town, native bushland is visible and within walking distance, a both beautiful and hazardous reality brought home by the sight of flames from my front window during the devastating fires that burned out vast amounts of the natural bush across the summer of 2019-2020. Also living here has made me more aware of the reality that
I am living on ancient land that was taken from the Indigenous people, the Darug and Gundungurra groups who hunted and camped here for millennia without scarring the landscape. In my performance, I can only hope that a situated sense of this landscape seeps into the work through my use of field recordings from the area, the small window of vision offered, and the way being here inevitably effects my making. However I feel that the word “divergent” implies that there is something singular, a consensual norm, from which something is deviating. This makes me think that the online meeting space is the divergent landscape. A realm of absent-presence where all the traces of the places that we inhabit, and that inhabit us, join to create a new landscape.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
I am always curious about the relationship of sound and vision and enjoy composing soundscapes for the video works of others. In my own installation work, after initially desiring audio only spaces, I have reconciled with the use of video, believing that is important to seduce a gallery visitor into staying with the work. However my use of video in these contexts is in what I would call the mode of visu-audition, a concept proposed by Michel Chion (2016), that is an alternative to audio-vision. In visu-audition the sound is foremost and the use of visual material is always an accompaniment, creating added value to sound rather than driving the experience.
In my solo laptop performance, I tend to eschew visuals in order to focus on the listening experience. In terms of performative gesture, I happy for this to remain minimal and essential, believing that intensity is communicated through absorption and focus. However, I can see that this attitude is dependent on the live performance context and in adapting to an online streaming context I need to reconsider. In this instance, I feel I am limited by technical capacities and Australian internet speeds (which are appalling), so I am erring towards a minimal, ambient approach in which the visuals provide an anchoring focus, while leaving more progressional (narrative) space for the sound.
What’s your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
If we can keep the borders open between states (Australia has 6 states and 2 territories, and when there is an COVID outbreak in one state, hard borders are implemented essentially limiting travel between cities) then I will be performing at a new concert series being presented by Cat Hope in Melbourne in May. My sound theatre project mentioned above, now retitled We are Oscillators, is also set to be presented in Melbourne this year, virus willing. In between I will be continuing working on the creative components of my PhD which involve online hypertext experiments around sound and writing including an ambisonic audio essay delivered using a 360VR format. I have recently been working on the sound for a number of 360VR performance videos through the theatre company Kantanka and I am very interested in how the format can be developed, preferencing the sonic experience over the visual, allowing for spatially interactive, immersive audio experiences.
Reference
Chion, M. (2016). Sound: An acoulogical treatise (J. A. Steintrager, Trans.). Duke University Press.
Performance of Gail Priest at Audioblast 9
GX Juppiter Larsen
Could you present your artistic works ?
Much of my work is a lexicon consisting mainly of personalized units ofmeasurement. A casual observer’s literacy of this vernacular isoptional. I employ all misunderstandings as a calibration. Comparing a reinterpretation to the original intent gives my a deeper awareness of my own thought process. By this means, there is no passive audience, only collaborators.
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast 9 ?
Done partly as a response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, the collage suggested instructions for a performance piece that people themselves could do. Various voices speaking in different languages advise people to kick a ruler as they walk. This performance could be enacted by anyone anywhere.
Why did you choose to record a video rather than live streaming ?
Simply more interesting for me.
Your performance is very much related to space, confinement and the action of performing with others, do you think people will join you online ? How is this work linked to previous performances you made, especially the more industrial ones ?
I think some people might enact the performance, yes. Maybe not during the video, but afterwards, when the time is more advantageous for them.
How is this work linked to previous performances you made, especially the more industrial ones ?
Words are always misread. The sender’s intent is consistently filtered
by a receiver’s anticipations. This unavoidable relationship is constantly active. At best, all symbols, be they words, numbers, or pictograms, can only function as approximations. Language is a probability model of potential meanings. No symbol is an absolute. All of this, of course, almost never happens. Numbers are always miscounted. Truth is neither an abstract ideal nor a physical attribute. Within the context of language, truth is the adjective or adverb form for the
concept of entropy. Inconvenient truth is redundant. If it’s not inconvenient, it’s not true. Just what is an answer ? Sure, that’s easy you say; it’s a solution. But is it ? Could an answer just be a prediction that happens to come true more often than not. If so, there
would be occasions in which the popular answer would still be wrong.
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? And How do you imagine the future of online-physical performances over the next few years ?
Since antiquity, technology was used to modify the environment. Since the industrial age, technology has become the environment. Such a transition can leave whole cultures feeling disoriented and alienated.
The trick is to remain flexible, steadfast and fearless.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is Divergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly, in your performance ?
The sound is divergent while the visuals are the landscape.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (moving images, the video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
Yes I could; but where’s the fun in that ?
What are your upcoming performances or projects over the next few months ?
I am currently working on my third feature-length movie. The story, which is a sci-fi romantic comedy, takes place in a public library where
time has stopped working. I hope it will reveal what the history of noise and the future of books have in common.
Performance of GX Jupitter Larsen at Audioblast 9
Dror Feilor
Intervention of Alexei Borisov at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
The Archipelago of Noise islands is a composition based on the concept of islands of instruments sounds (reed instruments) in a sea of noise in which the abrasive raucousness of the sonic events and the textural complexity paired with instrumental sound fragments are combined into contrasting sound objects in an attempt to challenge how we hear/listen/perceive music/sounds.
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast#9 ?
In The Archipelago of Noise islands we will be engaged in a struggle to make some sense of what we hear when difficulties to categorize/define the audio stimulus that arise, our attention will be funnelled into the work’s singular moments, and once we realize that each island in The Archipelago of Noise islands is not here to fulfil a macro-structural objective, it becomes something that ends in itself. Instead of singular sonic events existing for the abstract achievements of the whole, the whole is composed to throw us back onto the horns of the singularities. Every singular sonic/textural element/ingredient in the music takes on a specifically meaning, and no clear hierarchy exists between them. Each sonic element in the music is equally close to the centre. Yet equality does not slip into interchangeability, for each ingredient in the music/texture remains painfully particular. Thus we find a possible exemption to Adorno’s claim that the «history of music at least since Haydn is the history of fungibility: that nothing is in-itself and that everything is only in relation to the whole. »
Why did you choose to record a video rather than making your performance in live streaming ?
I chose to record a live concert and not have a direct streaming because the place I can do it was not available on the date of streaming and because of the fact the internet connection from the place I could steam from if it would have been available is not stable.
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? And How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance in the next few years ?
Online performance is the poor cousin of the live physical concert and will always be. The online/live streaming performance can only be a poor substitute to real-life performance. The online performance can develop into an independent artform but could never replace the physical live performance.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
The Archipelago of Noise islands is built of divergent sonic elements that are sprinting toward each other from opposite far ends of the aural space and will collide in a direct impact. While sound connotes nothing more than the sense-data of hearing, The Archipelago of Noise islands divergent sonic elements will develop/suggests a disturbance, confusion, and/or interference baldly challenging the conformity of so called “musical quality” and that in sociological terms for me is the essence in the arts.
The Archipelago of Noise islands’ auditory “divergent landscape” is creating a “disturbance” that is being generated by sequences and squeals of sounds, by a collision of the now, the memories and the romantic notion of how it was/could/will be, that makes the complexity of sound becomes a form of aural agitation that is affective and transformative and politicizes the aural/textural environment.
In my music divergent sonic landscapes are important elements so this theme was fitting my way of thinking/composing/playing.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
The performance of The Archipelago of Noise islands is a unedited live video recording in one shot. The photographer is moving in a spontaneous way as a reaction to the music and what is going on during the performance. It is an effort to preserve a live performance.
What are your upcoming performances or projects for the next few months ?
In the coming month I am going to produce some new solo performances that will be recorded and streamed if the technical conditions will be optimal. I am working with a new chamber orchestra commission for the Musikprotokoll festival 2021 in Gratz.
Performance of Π Node at Audioblast 9
Christian Zanési
Intervention of Alexei Borisov at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your musical research in a general way ? How do you work as a composer and your career at GRM ?
I left the GRM at the end of 2015 for which I was artistic director and responsible for several years. Since then I have been concentrating on my work as a freelance composer. I take projects as they come and so far this is harmoniously linked together.
How did you set up your performance programme for Audioblast 9 ?
Kasper Toeplitz asked me to do something for this new edition. I was OK, but I told him I couldn’t do a one-hour performance.
He told me ok anyway.
Why did you choose to record a video instead of live streaming your creation ?
I asked two of my friends from the GRM to help me record my live because I didn’t have the time to do so.couldn’t do it alone. I played under the conditions of the concert in one take. I have just added at the beginning (taken separately) a dedication to a comrade of France Musique, who died the day before, Bruno Riou-Maillard, who directed Bruno Letort’s show « Tapage Nocturne » for many years. A worker in the shadows, he has contributed a lot to experimental adventure.
How have online performances in general changed the way you play today ? How do you see the future of online physical performance in the coming years ?
This is the first time for me. I miss the concert and the presence of the audience because it’s naturally influences my playing. It is a form of spiritual exchange. So for this performance my audience was limited, Manu in sound and Jean-Baptiste in image. But this was enough, I was concentrated well.
This year’s Audioblast theme is « Divergent landscape », how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not? Also, how do you think you are related to this concept even if you didn’t work on this aspect in your performance ?
Because of this theme I have taken up and modified for the occasion a performance based on nature sounds recorded by the audio-naturalist Marc Namblard. It is therefore for Audioblast a new version.
Could you explain in detail how you work on the relationship between the visual (moving images or video of your performance) and the music (sound as a flow of time) within the act of performance ?
The most important thing for me is to focus on the sound and the musical form. I have the impression that if I am totally «in the sound» those who listen to me make the journey with me. My experiences with video have been delegated. For example when
I did with Arnaud Rebotini the « Frontiers » tour we had a video maker (Zita Cochet) who did the video part. Among other things, she filmed us in black and white with webcams that she mixed with archive images from Stockhausen, Schaeffer, Ferrari etc… so well that it was that a kind of temporal leap turned us into an archive. I liked this idea because deep down I have a Buddhist point of view on the impermanence of beings and things.
What are your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
I have three projects in progress:
A concert with the composer / pianist Stéphane Orlando in July as part of the Lyon Superspectives festival. The theme is the disappearance of insects.
I am also taking part in a show in homage to David Jisse. Before leaving us he had imagined a work on the theme of the tunnel boring machine that was digging a new metro line which passes precisely under his house in Cachan. He had recorded sounds and written a synopsis. His daughter Jane has relaunched the idea and it is Michel Risse who has taken up the torch to which I bring my stone with also Thierry Ballasse. It’s for autumn 2021.
Finally I have a commission for an acousmatic work from GRM for a later season.
Performance of Christian Zanési at Audioblast 9
Lars Âkerlund
Intervention of Lars Âkerlund at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
My artistic work includes composition, performance and collaboration with other musicians – as well as – choreographers, film makers, writers and visual artists.
I mostly use electronics in some way to make sound – analog or digital.
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast#9 ?
I am planning to record a live electronic set that has been prepared in beforehand, meaning that certain patches – analog and digital – are made ready to be performed.
I don’t think a live video of my handling of some faders would be very interesting to watch.
Instead I’ve shot a video that I hope will cause the listener to forget, or maybe remember, something. Or close their eyes.
Something quite simple.
In your performance you use mainly laptops with audio programmes, how do you think your composition will be listened to on the internet in a live concert context ?
Well, I do not mainly use only laptop. I also use analog equipment, as Dark Energy for example.
I hope the composition will be listened to as any piece of music.
The question is more like: What will the listener hear ?
I think generally that to perform on the internet has a problem: as a performer you don’t know what the listener will receive. In a normal concert situation I always prefer to have the same listening perspective as the audience.
In this way you know what you deliver to the listener. You share the room.
On the internet you actually don’t know much: Is the music listened on head phones? On the loud speakers of a laptop? On a PA? At what volume is it played?
These circumstances create very different experiences.
But, to give an advice: I think the best listening would be with head phones, unless you have a great PA, of course. And to listen at a loud volume.
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance over the next few years ?
Well, I didn’t do many online performances because of the reasons just mentioned.
I can imagine online performances that take all the pros and cons in consideration that really would be media accurate – but for me the direct electricity that happens in a physical performance never could be substituted by the online version.
Probably there will be a lot more online performances but I think in general, people will prefer the physical one.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
When I got the offer to participate I was told the theme was ”Paysages Insurgés» (Insurgent Landscape).
Well, very nice, I thought, that could be the title of a number of my own pieces – so for me: No problem to relate.
Now Divergent Landscape is a bit different, of course… the landscapes we create in sound are not that easily diverged, as by a little pandemy, I think.
What is different is the time you spent without confronting your music to others. This has been an opportunity to rethink your methods and preferences, both in life and in your practise and by extension the result of this might be heard. I think it is.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
No, I can’t. I do not strive for direct connection. Maybe a real divergent landscape ?
What are your upcoming performances or projects for the next few months ?
I have quite a few things that are pending since last year. Hopefully they can become real this year. I want to resume collaborations, to play live to live audiences, to make tours and continue to compose and develop new collaborations.
Performance of Lars Âkerlund at Audioblast 9
Phill Niblock & Katherine Liberovskaya
Phill Niblock is an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space.
Katherine Liberovskaya is a video and media artist based in Montreal, Canada, and New York City. She has been working predominantly in experimental video since the late eighties. Over the years, she has produced many single-channel videos, video installation works and video performances which have been presented at a wide variety of artistic venues and events around the world.
http://phillniblock.com/
A set alternating between parts featuring Katherine Liberovskaya performing live visuals to Phill Niblock mixing field recordings and a section with pre-recorded composition and video by Niblock accompanied by live musicians
– part 1:
Katherine Liberovskaya (live visuals with live cameras; and maybe live toy automatons and sound) with Phill Niblock (field recordings)
– part 2:
Music by Phill Niblock “Noizzze” (2020, 23 min) [recorded samples by I R E :Kasper Toeplitz, bass; Franck Vigroux, guitar; Helene Brischand, harp]
Video by Phill Niblock “32 Waves” (2018)
joined live by Kasper Toeplitz, Julien Ottavi on modified basses and Jenny Pickett modified basses and guitar
– part 3:
Katherine Liberovskaya (Visual Foley: live visuals via live cameras and materials) with Phill Niblock (field recordings)
Performance of Phill Niblock & Katherine Liberovskaya at Audioblast 9
Marinos Koutsomichalis & Algo-noise Orchestra
Intervention of Marinos Koutsomichalis & Algo-noise Orchestra at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
My work is hybrid and multi-modal, pivoting on a broad array of practices such as artistic residencies, generative algorithms, digital sound synthesis, networks, DIY electronics, landscape exploration, ethnographic field-work, critical theory, machine, experimental making, DIWO (Do It With Others) workshopping, radio-frequencies, and data, to name a few. Accordingly, my artistic output is rather prolific, concerning anything from algorithmic images, to large-scale media art installations, to experimental noises, data physicalizations, DIY electronic instruments, poetry/text-sketches, or a cinematic film. However eclectic, my entire artistic corpus still revolves persistently around the same few and closely-related themes: material inquiry/exploration; self-erasure (in/through performance and production tactics); the quest for post-selfhood (through social, hybrid, and networked practices involving both human and nonhuman actors).
Could you explain your project with the Algo Noise Orchestra for this years Audioblast 9 ?
The work is intented as a collective meditation on the emergent virtualities as we network with one another, ‘performing’ our intimate spaces as well as fragments from the great outdoors amidst an ongoing pandemic. In the wake of multiple lock-downs and extraordinary political manoeuvring affecting everyday life globally, «(Ir)rationalités In/Ex-térieures» inquires the possibility of a (post-)pandemic distributed utopia—the possibility of a new hybrid public/private space wherein fragmented aspects of the everyday are juxtaposed and orchestrated in ever-creative fashions. Individuals compose and selectively live-stream local (ir)rationalities concerning their immediate surrounings; possibly utilising objects, radio receivers, window views, moving bodies, whispers/voices/shouts, poetry, improvised bedroom noises, and so on. A server of mine in Nuremberg manipulates these streams as they arrive in a semi-automated fashion—also taking into account arbitrary instruction streams arriving through a special web pipeline. The system is not interactive proper, in that albeit aware of all instructions/streams, it would only selectively execute them with respect to intrinsic rules. In a nutshell, you have a remote software automaton that collects audio, video, and instructions from the clients and decides what to do with them. This system eventually sends the synthesised audiovisual composition to Apo33 servers in Nantes for broadcast. In this fashion, an improvised cybernetic audiovisual landscape emerges—one that is intended as an introspection of the complex dynamics forged at the intersections of local pandemic (ir)rationalities, their improvised and semi-automated manipulation, and a public broadcast thereof.
In this performance you will work with some of your students, how do you involve them in the performance? What system is in place to open a space up to all of them ?
Over the course of several lessons we come to understand how exactly we can individually and collectively improvise and become creative employing voices, radios, our bodies and our intimate spaces, nearby objects, our rooms/houses, our relatives, exterior views and sounds, our imagination, and so on. We’ve decicated a lot of time in staying silent listening and observing the sounds and views of the pandemic, keeping notes, experimenting with a wide array of ways to become creative within the imposed constraints and given the psychological angst they cause. For what the students are concerned, these exercises are the most important aspect of the project; they learn how come up with ways to be creative in this particular (and hopefully, in any other exceptional) period. As described above, the performance set-up pivots on a software automaton running in a server in Germany—students’ stream arrive therein from Cyprus to be manipulated. A new composed a/v stream is then sent to APO33 servers in France. Students would be able to listen/watch either their individual streams, or to the synthesized output, or both. They will be also able to contribute instructions to the automaton through a special web-interface that I am designing these days—note, however, that the automaton is not guaranteed to respect them; in the end of the day it has its own, algorithmic, agenda!
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? And How do you imagine the future of online-physical performances over the next few years ?
I performed online for the first time 13 years ago, and have done so anew on a few other occasions hitherto. So this is not really something new to me. That said, ‘physicality’ is very important for me; I like touching, smelling, and tasting things. For its greatest part my artistic work over the last 15 years pivots on physical presence: field-work, spatial installations, DIY electronic instruments, cybernetically generated physical artefacts, CDs/LPs, etc. My last work, pre-covid19, has been a hybrid multimedia synthesiser system, involving concrete, steel chicken-wire, 4 different embedded micro-computers, bespoke electronics, loudspeakers screens, etc. And the one before that, has been about a multi-modal exploration of North Nordic subarctic landscapes (Iceland, Faroe Islands, Norway), involving lots of traveling in truly exceptional and uncanny places. So, what is entirely new to me not is not the concept/practice of online performance, but the harsh reality that the later comes not as complimentary or side-project to what I typically do, but as the sole most plausible way to be creative and in touch with a real audience whatsoever. The first months of the pandemic I was in denial, not really involved in anything online but rather preparing myself for the day after, working on hardware-based prototypes and projects to be presented once all is over. But then the lack of human presence and audience become paramount. I’ve missed this sense of ‘presence’ with, and for, others—so I gradually got involved in a few online performance projects, mostly DIWO ones, wherein it’s not just me—but me alongside others, exploring the creative potential of this weird state of affairs. Other than this, I’m not imagining anything for the future, I don’t care doing so really. one way or another we’ll all be here/there somehow doing art; what matters is always stay open to creatively experiment with whatever is ready at hand on each given historical context. A much more important question for me, at an academic level, is how exactly covid19-era online performances differ from existent online practices and whether there are any methodological shifts or not. We’re actually working on an article on this exact topic with Apo33.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself directly or indirectly in your performance ?
Well, the performance is pretty much all about this theme. The pandemic has certainly caused our everyday realities to ‘diverge’ pretty much globally; this, in turn, has significant ramifications in politics, professional life, wellbeing, being-creative, being – in general – and also affects the nonhuman world: plants, animals, cityscapes, objects, goods, have all experienced their lives to diverge so that they are shaped or produced in different fashions. ‘(Ir)rationalités In/Ex-térieures’ invites participants to explore and capture these divergences, to account for interior and
exterior landscapes and fragments thereof in creative fashions, and — maybe most importantly, even if implicitly — to collectively mediate and speculate on what a post-pandemic utopia/dystopia may look like.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (moving images) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
They are treated somewhat differently technically-wise, in that the ‘visual’ is showcased in single layers—that is, no overlapping of different environments on top of one another, and no silly VJing-style effects: the automaton would simply alternate between different views of interior/exterior spaces, bodies and objects in an one-stream-at-a-time fashion. Audio streams, on the other hand, are allowed to be mixed, juxtaposed, and manipulated in more ‘destructive’ ways. In this fashion, one is able to listen to gestalts and totalities as they are produced in a distributed manned, but to only survey fragments of a broader visual landscape that is never fully unveiled.
What are your upcoming performances or projects for the next few months ?
I’m now finishing a few album based on older material to be released within 2021 (some physical, some digital only). There are a couple online performances/showcases already booked for the next few months, to boot. A physical event in France is also on schedule in May, but this one would be most likely deferred or canceled, as the pandemic does seem to facilitate that kind of things any time soon. Other than this, I’ve just realized SENTIENCE: a DIY speculative ‘infra-instrument’, pivoting on Morse code, poetry and loud low-frequencies, and I’m also working on a couple of other hardware-related projects pivoting on radio-frequencies, Morse-code, and data sonification. I’m also setting up remotely an experimental creative ecosystem in my server, that I plan to use as a platform for experimental streaming-based artworks and creative experiments over the next few months.
Performance of Marinos Koutsomichalis & Algo-noise Orchestra at Audioblast 9
Gérard Lebik
Intervention of Alexei Borisov at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works ?
The low of the refraction and an orange glow night after night illuminates the sky of the city.
The composition is based on the classic method of FM and AM synthesis, binaural beats created by medical software GnauralJava, and refers to a fragment of the text describing the tangle of certain historical and everyday events, obvious facts, and unconfirmed or falsely disclosed information directed to social media.
… In 984, the Persian mathematician Ibn Sahl أبو بن سهل; c. 940–100 discovers the law of refraction describing the change in the direction of a wave passing from one medium to another, which depends on the speed of wave propagation in a given medium.
Returning home, Thomas Harriot thought that he should not explain his concepts to Kepler in such detail. Suddenly he surprised, it was night. What’s so shining ? This is a gigantic investment of Citronex – 43 hectares of vegetable greenhouses. Why do they turn on the sun at night and why in the west ? Studied color prints from modern laser microscopes taking photos of eyeballs tests confirmed that it is no longer possible to correct eyesight…
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast9 ?
It will be a live concert where I will perform a composition based and inspired by a fragment of text describing the tangle of certain historical and everyday events, obvious facts, and unconfirmed or falsely disclosed information directed to social media.
The thought link begins with the discovery of a Persian mathematician regarding the law of refraction describing the passage of light from one center to another, then goes through the reflections of Thomas Harriot, who influenced Kepler’s theories, then unexpectedly stops at the strange lap of the second sun, which began to appear near tp Wroclaw, due to the glow of the light generated by the investment of the company that built 43 hectares of glowing tomato greenhouses, the story ends when the protagonist gets the results of optical tests and analyzes the printouts of the analyzing machines and learns that, unfortunately, there is no chance of an operation correcting his eyesight. In fact, the story may begin with this last fact and end with the discoveries of a Persian mathematician.
The composition is based on the classic method of FM and AM synthesis and binaural beats created by medical software GnauralJava. It will be played as live streaming from Sokolowsko at the building of the former sanatorium founded by the German doctor Dr. Brehmer.
Refraction
In physics, refraction is the change in direction of a wave passing from one medium to another or from a gradual change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but other waves such as sound waves and water waves also experience refraction. How much a wave is refracted is determined by the change in wave speed and the initial direction of wave propagation relative to the direction of change in speed.
Glow
Great glow over Wrocław. Giant greenhouses can be seen from several dozen kilometers
An orange glow night after night illuminates the sky over Lower Silesia. – I think it’s a sign of the end of the world.
What’s so shining ? This is a gigantic investment of Citronex, worth over EUR 300 million. 43 hectares of plantations of the famous Siechnica tomatoes. Everything under glass.
For 3 years, Horticultural Production Enterprise Siechnice has been using the method of adding additional lighting to vegetables, which is still relatively unpopular in Poland.
Thomas Harriot
As a scientific adviser during the voyage, Harriot was asked by Raleigh to find the most efficient way to stack cannonballs on the deck of the ship. His ensuing theory about the close-packing of spheres shows a striking resemblance to atomism and modern atomic theory, which he was later accused of believing. His correspondence about optics with Johannes Kepler, in which he described some of his ideas, later influenced Kepler’s conjecture.
Ibn Sahl
(full name Abū Saʿd al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Sahl أبو سعد العلاء ابن سهل; c. 940–1000) was a Persian mathematician and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age,[6] associated with the Buwayhid court of Baghdad. Nothing in his name allows us to glimpse his country of origin.
Why did you choose to record a video rather than making your performance in live streaming ?
It will be a live streaming
How has online performance changed the way you perform today? How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance over the next few years ?
The pandemic changed a lot. It particularly influenced the relations between the creators and recipients of art. Most of the events at that time, due to restrictions and the law, took place online, which radically changed the flow of energy and the impact of the work of art. I think that the Internet is not able to transmit metaphysics and certain spiritual values related to the impact of performance, concert, or work of art. I think, with all due respect to the speed of data transfer and the usefulness that the network gives us, we cannot give up the live activities taking place between people, the energy and atmosphere that is created between the audience and the artist, and the esoteric and spiritual layer of this relationship. I think that if the technology in the future develops in such a way that we can feel virtually the way we feel in reality, then such a relationship may make sense. In a situation where the artist creates in real-time, and the recipient is sitting in front of the computer, checking social media emails and watching millions of other things, being unable to focus for 2 minutes does not bode well for the perception of artistic works. We must also take into account the fact that the social media policy, which completely dominated the Internet, is aimed at selling us mainly advertising content, so the change of the paradigm of the reading text into informational memes makes us addicted to the increasing speed of visual impulses, which works against the natural focus of attention. I have a bad feeling about this.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
I treated the metaphor of Divergent Landscape very literally.
In my work, I criticize certain unnatural changes in the ecosystem and landscape of the Lower Silesia region. I refer to a certain light phenomenon which is non-natural pollution and destroys the ecosystem’s trace.
To quote information from the public newspaper: « Great glow over Wrocław. Giant greenhouses can be seen from several dozen kilometers »
An orange glow night after night illuminates the sky over Lower Silesia. – The people think it’s a sign of the end of the world.
What’s so shining ? This is a gigantic investment of Citronex, worth over EUR 300 million. 43 hectares of plantations of the famous Siechnica tomatoes. Everything under glass. For 3 years, Horticultural Production Enterprise « Siechnice » has been using the method of adding additional lighting to vegetables, which is still relatively unpopular in Poland.»
The object looks like a second setting sun from a distance. Seeing this phenomenon every night, an enormous glow of light disturbing the natural ecosystem and the natural cycle. Light pollution is an important topic of debate related to ecology, in Poland we do not have sufficient standards to regulate this abuse, so corporate investments are unpunished and cannot be undermined by law.
The changing landscape in this case is about light pollution, in another about cutting down trees, all unfortunately subordinated to the desire for profit. Money.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
My work will be live stream during the concert that I will play for the festival. Visuality is always an element of music, song, but not always necessary. I have played concerts many times when I have covered people’s eyes or performed music in complete darkness. I think the perception of visuality always wins in the face of sound perception. If we have a buzzing visual act, we are not able to focus on sound in a proper way, on the other hand, the act of expression is a very desirable and interesting phenomenon for the audience. In art, we have always divided into constructive acts (visual arts) and expressive acts, such as performing music. Finding a balance between them is always a challenge for an artist active in the field of live music and performance.
What are your upcoming performances or projects for the next few months ?
Hope the situation will change and we will be able to return to the natural acts of creation and reception. Already from May, I have several live concerts planned with the audience. I never thought there would ever be a situation in which I would reflect on the naturalness and value of the obvious.
Performance of Gérard Lebik at Audioblast 9
Sisterloops
Intervention of Sisterloops at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your artistic works as a duo ?
For the past 8 years we have been developing mainly three projects. One where we’re playing broken cymbals with kitchen knives, and two voice projects where we growl, howl and shriek together as the duo Sisterloops.
Our works are strict and rather minimal, we are using a reduced set of material; technically; voice, microphones, cymbals, microphones; minimal filters and processing; a high gain and a detailed sound; CRASH, RIDE, Coup D’état and Fanfare, Hospice and Wild (Puss) Cat. We are interested in abstracting concrete sounds, going beyond recognition, and into the unknown.
Marie is a performing artist with background in dance and sculpture; Alexandra with background as a musician and trumpeter and currently working as a musician, composer and sound artist. With our different skills and practices we complement each other. In our sound projects we always have a scenic and visual approach. We strive to present a strong physical output, sometimes that output is extremely feminine. We have performed in fine arts exhibitions, theaters, experimental music festivals, harsh noise festivals and one of our best gigs was on a tour in Russia, a tiny space in the basement of the Eastern European Institute for psychoanalysis; Freuds’ Dream Museum in St. Petersburg.
Could you explain the performance you proposed this year for Audioblast#9 ?
Since we are mainly a live act, we have been discussing how we would like to present our work through this limited setting of just The Screen. Instead of trying to do an ok documentation of a live gig we decided we rather use the possibility to emphasize our visual concepts.
We will present the voice pieces Hospis and Wild (Pussy) Cat and excerpts from Crash Ride, a piece for broken cymbals and kitchen knives. We will use both live video and pre-recorded and edited video material. Our performance will be broadcasted from a space for experimental arts, Lokal Harmonie, in Duisburg and from an apartment in the south part of Stockholm.
How has online performance changed the way you perform today ? And How do you imagine the future of online-physical performance over the next few years ?
We haven’t changed at all. Yet.
But well, If the future requires us to go on online in order to meet a bigger audience with our performances, we think the form of presentation has to come to some extremes to keep up being interesting.
It’s a good question to what extent we, as performing artists, want to explore the medium of online streaming and its possibilities or if we want to go another way. Make things IRL and find new ways to document them and share them ?
Or will we be working more withdrawn on long term processes and not publish any material for a longer period of time ?
Streamed performance is a little bit like radio, you don’t know and you cannot control on which device, with what quality and under what circumstances an audience is watching/ listening. Somebody might look and listen while having a great dramatic quarrel with their lover, in the bathroom, in the car, on a parking lot, or on a big screen in an empty cinema ?
We doubt online performance can replace a live gig IRL.
The screen will continue to be flat, a flat deep black canvas. A digital stage in 3D might be part of a future arena also for our work.
We like the live presence very much, robust face-to-face exchange with an audience, to share frequencies in one space, or to share one image.
At home people can just turn down the volume as they like. We would prefer if they just left the room instead. – despite our love for IRL – this invitation to the Audioblast festival actually pushed us to be working more digitally, and audio-visually, which is interesting for us.
Audioblasts’ theme this year is DIvergent Landscape, how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also how do you relate to the concept itself, directly or indirectly in your performance ?
We are scandinavians. Landscape means something for us. Landscape is serious.
We relate to the theme on a private-political basis. If life was precarious before; during half-lockdown there is not much of a choice and very much became uncertain.
We would like to contribute to the ’Virtual Wildeerness’.
Could you explain in detail how you work between the visual (you playing or video) and the music (sound as time) within the performance ?
We relate to sound and image in various ways. The visual as a manifestation of the sound in a very concrete way or just abstract. Or both at the same time. We strive for many layers of meaning / possibilities for interpretations. There has to be friction between sound and image.
There is an ambiguity in what we do _ sexy mouth and brutal noise sound. Voluntary objectification. Power play.
We are producing an industrial contra corporeal experience. Meaty.
A manifestation. Amplification. Zooming in on sounds.
ALMOST EATING THE MICROPHONE.
What are your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
We will be developing our next project that we do as Sisterloops this spring and summer. CRASH RIDE6, a performative sound work for 60 broken and amplified cymbals, where we extend our work with cymbals and also involve more electronics and machines than we have done before. We collaborate with the programmer and artist Fredrik Olofsson for this project. We have a collection of used and broken cymbals of all kinds that we got donated from Metal-, Punk and Rock drummers from Sweden and Germany.
The piece is a sounding sculpture and a kind of noise-dance-concert.
We love high heels, we don’t use drum sticks
We are very excited to work intensively on this project and hope this pandemic will let us premiere the work in September at our home- and favorite venue, Fylkingen – New Music and Intermedia Art in Stockholm, and for a decent crowd.
We are about to release our first EP, with our voice work this year.
Performance of Sisterloops at Audioblast 9
Barbara Dang
Intervention of Barbara Dang at the Audioblast 9 seminar
Interview
Could you present your musical research, writing and improvisation work with your instrument : the piano ?
To contextualise my approach, I followed two academic courses in classical and then jazz. But free improvisation has always been present in my work, thanks to a fairly eclectic musical education and encounters which offered me a diversion. Later it was the work on experimental pieces (Andriessen, Cage, Cardew, Cowell, Feldman, Lucier, Malfati, Pisaro, Satie, Sfirri etc.) that led me to use unusual techniques (prepared, amplified piano, playing indoors, integration of silence and sounds from the environment, exhaustion of musical material) and to favour pure musical action, the gesture being accompanied by chosen objects.
Technically, the piano is only an interface made of wood and metal on which one can come to create sounds or alter them. It is generally open, and at the beginning unprepared like a blank page that fills up with sound objects, if not the other way around… The piano is an amplifier that allows small sounds to be revealed from the inside (as in John Cage’s Cartridge Music), if not from the outside (as in Lucier’s Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drum), or to be tapped as on percussion instruments, or to strum the strings as on a guitar. In other words, I feel closer to a craftsman (invotorizing sounds, associating them to create material and then listening to them or having them listened to) than to an abstract artist with a well-established discourse.
How did you set up your performance for audioblast 9 ?
I was welcomed by Oudom and Etienne who installed the recording device according to my movements and the palette of sounds that were going to be used.
Why did you choose to record a video rather than live streaming ?
When I was thinking about what I was going to play, I was mainly thinking about content that would support the video well. I wondered whether the idea of capturing a pianist playing one or more written pieces (as static as a Feldman piece, for example) and therefore visually not very dynamic, would be really relevant. So I chose free improvisation instead, thinking that the recording could be done essentially in the piano, where you could see the objects used up close.
How have online performances in general changed the way you play today? How do you see the future of online physical performance in the coming years ?
When I play I propose a particular listening situation with the audience. My music is altered according to the context in which it is played. The spatial setting of a sound or the sound setting of a space with the bodies present is therefore irreplaceable. For me, making a filmed concert is very unusual, even very much linked to the current context we are going through. In my opinion, watching a filmed concert keeps the listener (who then becomes a viewer) in a fixed frame of mind when he should be able to move around, close his eyes to listen to the space he is in, look elsewhere distractedly, leave the place to return or not… I believe that live performances in streaming can work well if the proposal, whatever the artistic field, takes into account the complete device of the capture, the video technique and the multiple supports of diffusion used by the viewers, in order to create a real virtual object.
This year’s Audioblast theme is «divergent landscape», how did you imagine your performance in relation to the theme or not ? Also, how do you think you are related to this concept even if you did not work on this aspect in your performance ?
To be honest, I didn’t know about this theme before I recorded the performance, or I was told about it and didn’t register.
I haven’t yet seen the result of the recording but from memory, the form and sounds I produced should make you think of a divergent landscape, shouldn’t it? I leave it up to you to decide. Having said that, if there is a landscape, I prefer Goldsworthy’s rather than an apocalyptic science fiction landscape.
What are your next performances or projects for the next few months ?
At the moment I am mainly preparing cancelled concerts (laughs)!
For the moment I’m continuing to create a solo project for piano and harpsichord where I articulate the written and the improvised. And with the Muzzix collective, of which I’m a member, we’re continuing to meet and record musicians. And I’m finalising a record: Tombstones.
Performance of Barbara Dang at Audioblast 9
Find all the artists and interviews in the catalog!
