Search results for sonic acts 2015
Interview Jananne Al-Ani
RESEARCH SERIES #24 Born in Iraq, London-based artist Jananne Al-Ani engages with the politics of the image. In her works in photography, film and video, Al-Ani interrogates our ways of seeing by undermining the structures of scale and perspective in which visual culture is shaped. While her conceptual application is subversive, her methods are gentle, often resulting in evocations of assumptions which are quietly unsettled. Julian Ross interviewed Al-Ani when she attended the Sonic Acts Festival in 2015 for the screening of her two films Shadow Sites I and Shadow Sites II.
The Stack and the Post-human User: an interview with Benjamin Bratton
RESEARCH SERIES #15 Benjamin Bratton is a theorist whose work spans Philosophy, Art and Design. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Director of The Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also Professor of Digital Design at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In his book The Stack, due to be published in December 2015 by MIT Press, Benjamin Bratton develops a political perspective on computation on the planetary scale.
Interview with Karl Lemieux
RESEARCH SERIES #16 Live presence is not often considered to be a part of cinema, but Karl Lemieux thinks it should be. Using 16mm projectors as his principal tools, the Montreal-based artist employs various tactics to manipulate both the film material and apparatus itself during the act of projection—an approach that results in a distortion of the image. Working with Swedish composer and sound artist BJ Nilsen, Lemieux shot footage on the border between Russia and Norway. This would be the basis of their collaborative performance, unearthed, presented at the 2015 Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam.
Interview with Lukas Marxt
RESEARCH SERIES #17 In one static shot, Lukas Marxt’s Reign of Silence (2013) observes a vessel boat swirl in circles in the Arctic sea and watches the ripples spread. While it’s only for a moment, the central theme that occupies Marxt makes itself visible – the dialogue between human and geological existence. As he journeys to the far corners of the earth, the Austrian artist lets so-called ‘deep time’ – the unimaginably vast time scale that describes geological processes – intersect with what we consider ‘real time.’
Interview with Mark Williams on the geological record
RESEARCH SERIES #18 Sonic Acts was very happy to welcome Mark Williams to the 2015 festival ‘The Geologcic Imagination’. After his lecture on the fundamental changes in the earth systems, Williams talked to Sonic Acts' Liesbeth Koot and Menno Grootveld.
The Geologic Imagination: Lectures, Interviews and Recordings
RESEARCH SERIES #19 To get you in the mood for the upcoming Dark Ecology Journey, Research Series #19 includes recorded lectures, excerpts of live performances, sound recordings and interviews made during the 2015 festival The Geologic Imagination. With contributors such as Timothy Morton, Jana Winderen, Espen Sommer Eide, BJ Nilsen and Karl Lemieux, Raviv Ganchrow, Ele Carpenter and Graham Harman.
What Is Dark Ecology?
RESEARCH SERIES #26 In this essay, which draws on his book Dark Ecology, For a Logic of Coexistence, Timothy Morton — who originally coined the term dark ecology — explains what dark ecology is. He also argues how agrilogistics underpins our ecological crisis and our view of the world.
We Are All in the Mud
RESEARCH SERIES #32 Eyal Weizman is a London-based Israeli architect, Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures, and writer, who focuses on architecture as a form of political intervention and the role of architecture in modern urban warfare. Lucas van der Velden interviewed Eyal Weizman after his lecture at the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival.
Jennifer Walshe, Timothy Morton, Áine O’Dwyer, Lee Patterson, M.C. Schmidt, Streifenjunko and Vilde&Inga – Time Time Time
Time Time Time is an operatic work written by Jennifer Walshe and Timothy Morton, which premiered at Sonic Acts Festival 2019. Morton and Walshe join forces with an ensemble of renowned musicians and sound artists to explore the multiplicity of temporalities at the heart of being human.
Programme announced! Rosa Pistola, No Bra, Lone Taxidermist, SHYBOI and lots more confirmed for Sonic Acts Academy 2020
The Sonic Acts Academy 2020 programme is now online, with a new wave of artists and speakers announced for a packed three days of live, immersive, expanded and charged experiences, and vital critical perspectives.
Dark Ecology
Dark Ecology was a three-year art, research and commissioning project, initiated by Sonic Acts and Kirkenes-based curator Hilde Methi, and in collaboration with Norwegian and Russian partners. Dark Ecology unfolded through research, the creation of new artworks, and a public programme that was presented in the zone on both sides of the border in 2014, 2015 and 2016. darkecology.net
Raviv Ganchrow – Long Wave Synthesis
Long Wave Synthesis is a land-art scale sound installation that investigates infrasound, and probes the relations between how we perceive the landscape and long-wave vibrations. The piece creates a complex topography of acoustic waves in a range of 4 to 30 Hz (mostly in the infrasound range, below the threshold of human hearing) spreading out from an array of custom-built, very low frequency generators. Commissioned for Dark Ecology Journey 2014
Jana Winderen – Pasvikdalen
Drifting away from a state of stability, blurring acceleration, moving out of sight, but not out of mind. Invisible but audible, the consequences reveal themselves through the silence of species we have never heard. Jana Winderen’s new work Pasvikdalen is based on recordings made both above and under water close to the border between Norway and Russia.
Save the Date: Sonic Acts Academy
From 26 to 28 February 2016, Sonic Acts hosts a new research-oriented programme at the intersection of art, music and science at several locations in Amsterdam. Over the course of three days, Sonic Acts Academy will invite artists, theorists, and scientists to expand on their research through lectures, concerts, film programmes, work presentations, masterclasses and workshops.
Otto Piene's The Proliferation of the Sun at Stedelijk
After the impressive performance of The Proliferation of The Sun (1967) by ZERO artist Otto Piene during the Sonic Acts Festival 2015, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Sonic Acts present the performance again in honour of the opening of the exhibition ZERO: Let Us Explore The Stars on Friday 3 July.
Sonic Acts Commission Dolmen by Mario de Vega in Berlin
From 9 to 20 December 2015, Mario de Vega’s Dolmen will be presented by singuhr-projects at Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin. This installation was commissioned by Sonic Acts in collaboration with donaufestival and was first presented in the context of The Geologic Imagination, the 2015 edition of the Sonic Acts Festival.
LYSN: Murmansk Spaceport – ЛИСН: Мурманский Космодром
Hilary Jeffery’s Murmansk Spaceport is an environment designed for exploring unknown territories. During November 2015 musicians from Murmansk (RU) and Bodø (NO) in the Barents Region work together with Hilary Jeffery in a new formation of LYSN to perform Murmansk Spaceport.
Sonic Acts & EYE on Art: Weather Report
Following the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, on 15 December Sonic Acts and EYE on Art will host a Dark Ecology inspired evening on climate change. The programme explores the subject from the perspective of Dark Ecology. Included are works from EYE’s collection as well as contributions by artists who are part of the 2015 Dark Ecology Journey.
Progress Bar in Amsterdam!
We’re thrilled to announce that Sonic Acts, Viral Radio and Lighthouse will present a special season of Progress Bars in Amsterdam. Starting with the first event on 16 January 2016, Progress Bar is a night for cutting edge thinking and dancing that presents a lively mix of talks, screenings, performances and a club in a single night.
Margrethe Iren Pettersen – Living Land - Below as Above
Living Land – Below as Above is a soundwalk developed by Margrethe Iren Pettersen. The idea of the soundwalk began with Pettersen’s interest in ice as a metaphor, and as the primary archival medium of the Arctic. In the dark wintertime, life in the Arctic is at rest, hidden, and the spectre of what is visual and audible is scaled down, and invites a deeper attention of our senses to nuances.
#Additivism: An Encounter with The Fluid Outside
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY #Additivism: An Encounter with The Fluid Outside 28 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- A talk and Q&A session by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke about The 3D Additivist Manifesto + The 3D Additivist Cookbook and the artist’s own research and pr...
Dark Ecology 2015
The second Dark Ecology research Journey took place from 26–30 November 2015. Participants traveled from Kirkenes in Norway’s northern extremes, to the neighbouring town Nikel (just across the border in Russia), Zapolyarny and to the largest city in the far north: Murmansk (Russia). The program...
Interview Ele Carpenter
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Interview Ele Carpenter 28 February 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interview by Oleg Khardatsev and Zhanna Guzenko / Fridaymilk Fridaymilk (RU) is a well-known media platform in Murmansk, Russia, run by a team of 10 people who are eage...
Interview Raviv Ganchrow
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Interview Raviv Ganchrow 1 March 2015 - Australiehaven, port of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interview by Oleg Khardatsev and Zhanna Guzenko / Fridaymilk Fridaymilk (RU) is a well-known media platform in Murmansk, Russia, run by a team of 10 people who...
Interview Mario de Vega
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Interview Mario de Vega 27 February 2015 - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interview by Oleg Khardatsev and Zhanna Guzenko / Fridaymilk Fridaymilk (RU) is a well-known media platform in Murmansk, Russia, run by a team of 10 people ...
Interview Jana Winderen
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Interview Jana Winderen 27 February 2015 - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interview by Oleg Khardatsev and Zhanna Guzenko / Fridaymilk Fridaymilk (RU) is a well-known media platform in Murmansk, Russia, run by a team of 10 people ...
Interview Graham Harman
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Graham Harman 26 February 2015–- Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interview by Oleg Khardatsev and Zhanna Guzenko / Fridaymilk Fridaymilk (RU) is a well-known media platform in Murmansk, Russia, run by a team of 10 people who are eager to promo...
Espen Sommer Eide: A Tuned Chord is like a Scientific Instrument Probing the Universe
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Espen Sommer Eide: A Tuned Chord is like a Scientific Instrument Probing the Universe 26 February 2015 - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Espen Sommer Eide: A Tuned Chord is like a Scientifi...
BJ Nilsen & Karl Lemieux: unearthed
Live première, commissioned by Dark Ecology / Sonic Acts SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION BJ Nilsen & Karl Lemieux: unearthed 27 February 2015 - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The border area of Norway and Russia, where the sparse beauty of the Arctic landscap...
Otto Piene: Die Sonne kommt näher / The Proliferation of the Sun (1967)
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Otto Piene: Die Sonne kommt näher / The Proliferation of the Sun (1967) 27 February 2015 - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands In collaboration with Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen & ZERO Foundation --- Die Sonne kommt näh...
Raviv Ganchrow: Long Wave Synthesis
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Raviv Ganchrow: Long Wave Synthesis 1 March 2015 - Australiehaven, port of Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The field trip to the site of Raviv Ganchrow’s Long Wave Synthesis promises to be an impressive infrasound experience. Long Wave Synthesis is a l...
Mario de Vega: Dolmen
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Mario de Vega: Dolmen 27 February 2015 - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- In the large entry hall of the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Sonic Acts presents Dolmen, a new installation by Mexican sound artist Mario de Vega. De Vega is kno...
John Tresch: Fiat Lux and Earth’s Answer
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION John Tresch: Fiat Lux and Earth’s Answer 27 February 2015–- Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The notion that humans play a role in nature’s creation has roots that long precede discussions of the Anthropocene. Very compelling are the Rom...
Jana Winderen: Listening without getting Answers
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Jana Winderen: Listening without getting Answers 27 February 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Acidification, overfishing and humans have created imbalances in fragile underwater ecosystems. Through recording and presenting sounds we...
Espen Sommer Eide: Material Vision – Silent Reading
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Espen Sommer Eide: Material Vision – Silent Reading 27 February 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Material Vision – Silent Reading is an artistic research project, which includes the creation of new musical instruments and a perfor...
Ele Carpenter: The Nuclear Anthropocene
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Ele Carpenter: The Nuclear Anthropocene 28 February 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Ele Carpenter introduces her curatorial research into nuclear culture, drawing on artistic practices in Europe and Japan, and field trips to undergro...
Raviv Ganchrow: In the Company of Long Waves
SONIC ACTS Festival - The Geologic Imagination Raviv Ganchrow: In the Company of Long Waves 1 March 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The saturated spectrum of infrasound suggests that toned-down sounds don’t necessarily diminish. The lowest threshold of human hearing is also the u...
Benjamin Bratton: Geobiopolitics and Planetary-Scale Computation: Sensors, Abstractors, Governors
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Benjamin Bratton: Geobiopolitics and Planetary-Scale Computation: Sensors, Abstractors, Governors 28 February 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Geography, geology and geodesy now converge on computational platforms to form interlocking...
Timothy Morton: Subscendence
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION Timothy Morton: Subscendence 26 February 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- We have all heard of transcendence. But what about the inverse, where something shrinks into its component pieces in such a way that the whole is always less th...
Mark Williams: The Human Impact from a Geological ‘Anthropocene’ Perspective
SONIC ACTS Festival - The Geologic Imagination Mark Williams: The Human Impact from a Geological ‘Anthropocene’ Perspective 26 februrary 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The history of human evolution extends back for more than two million years, and in all that time humans and th...
Jonathan Hagstrum: Avian Navigation, Pigeon Homing and Infrasound
SONIC ACTS Festival - The Geologic Imagination Jonathan Hagstrum: Avian Navigation, Pigeon Homing and Infrasound 29 februrary 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Birds can navigate accurately over hundreds to thousands of kilometres. Their senses outnumber those of humans and can detect...
Graham Harman: Anthropocene Ontology
SONIC ACTS Festival - The Geologic Imagination Graham Harman: Anthropocene Ontology 26 februrary 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The proposed Anthropocene Epoch is not an Anthropocentric Epoch, for the obvious reason that it highlights the fragility of the human species rather than h...
::vtol:: aka Dmitry Morozov – Лесофон / Lesophon
Лесофон / Lesophon is an audiovisual installation. Slowly, adhesive tape rolls unroll themselves over the course of many hours. This process is recorded and the generated data produces an algorithm that generates sound which is subsequently transmitted on FM. People are invited to listen to the installation as it unwinds, through headphones and via FM radio.
BJ Nilsen – ORE
ORE is an acousmatic work that reveals the artist’s research into the mining of iron ore and its impact on society and cultural relevance. The work was developed for the Acousmonium sound diffusion system during a residency at Ina GRM, Paris, and was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Sonic Acts Festival 2015 – The Geologic Imagination
The Geologic Imagination examined how art and science map and document new insights, and how the changes and transformations that occur on a geological scale can become something humans can feel, touch, and experience. Sonic Acts invited artists and theorists to reflect on these transformations and make them imaginable. sonicacts.com/2015
Sonic Acts Festival 2013 – The Dark Universe
For The Dark Universe, Sonic Acts brought together scientists, artists, theorists, musicians and composers. They investigated how to make the invisible imaginable, taught us how to embrace the unknown, and guided us through the dark universe. The festival contained experiments with projections, sound generation and ‘expanded’ experiences to enhance the senses. sonicacts.com/2013 Download the programme brochures of the previous editions: 2020 - Sonic Acts Academy 2020 2019 - Hereafter 2018 - Sonic Acts Academy 2018 2017 - The Noise of Being 2016 - Sonic Acts Academy 2015 - The Geologic Imagination 2013 - The Dark Universe 2012 - Travelling Time 2010 - The Poetics of Space 2008 - The Cinematic Experience 2006 - The Anthology of Computer Art 2004 - Unsorted 2003 - Sonic Light 2001 - Point Pixel Programming 2000 - Sonic Acts 2000 1999 - Sonic Acts VI 1998 - Sonic Acts V 1997 - Sonic Acts IV 1996 - Sonic Acts III 1995 - Sonic Acts II 1994 - Sonic Acts I
Angeliki Diakrousi and Yara Said selected for Underexposed
Underexposed is an online mentorship and training programme – part of a Sonic Acts talent development initiative – that focuses on supporting artists at the beginning of their career. Motivated by the number of exciting projects from young local artists, shown by many of the applications to our recent OVEREXPOSED residency call, Underexposed includes a mentorship period in which artists work directly with members of the Sonic Acts curatorial team, providing an opportunity to get feedback on the development of artistic projects.
Kontraste 2013
The tenth edition of the Kontraste festival Dark As Light took place from 10 to 13 October 2013 in and around Krems, Austria with a compelling programme of cutting-edge films, unconventional concerts, installations, an illustrated lecture, and a publication. Presented in a thematic, historical and interdisciplinary context. Kontraste 2013 was curated by Sonic Acts. sonicacts.com/kontraste/2013
Keynote Michael J. Morgan: Representation of Space in the Brain (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
As Descartes realized, there is no obvious reason why an image has to represented as another image in the brain. Yet, it is, at least in the early stages of representation. Reasons that have been advanced for this topographical representation include the need to establish ‘local sign’ during the development of the brain; the advantages of short-range connections over long nerve tracts; the simple mapping of sensory information onto motor maps; and the need to keep the maps from different senses in register.
Paul Prudence: Generative Spaces: The Spatiotemporal Subroutines of Runtime Planet Earth (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
From the global to the microscopic, the Earth runs subroutines that generate a multiplicity of complex patterns & emergent spaces – their runtime(s) lasting from anywhere between a few milliseconds to millions of years. Paul Prudence discusses the metamorphic algorithms, hydrodynamic computations, aeolian protocols and sonic mechanisms, sometimes acting in collaboration with living organisms that define the dynamic generative forms and spaces around us.
Science Fiction by Omar Muñoz-Cremers and ARC
RESEARCH SERIES #1 The publication of The Absence of Light inaugurates the Sonic Acts Research Series, in combination with the ARC panel videos we organised in cooperation with Simon Ings of ARC – ‘a magazine of futures and fiction from the makers New Scientist’.
Kontraste Festival 2012
From 12-14 October 2012, the Kontraste Festival – curated by Sonic Acts – will take place in Krems, Austria. Have a look at the festival website for additional information.
Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič – Bring Me the Head of Henri Chrétien!
Billy Roisz and Dieter Kovačič explore the world of cinematic formats based on the genre that experimented with the width of the screen to display spectacular landscapes: Western movies and their wide span of (male) heroism between life and death. Commissioned for Vertical Cinema
Dark Ecology Interview Tim Morton
RESEARCH SERIES #6 During the first Dark Ecology journey, which took place from 9 to 12 October 2014, a group of artists, researchers and theorists travelled the border zone between Norway and Russia. On the last day we sat down with Timothy Morton, author of amongst others The Ecological Thought and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World.
GIL, Know V.A., Zaïre Krieger and more confirmed for Progress Bar on 20 March
After Sonic Acts Academy 2020, a new edition of Progress Bar takes place at OT301 on Friday 20 March, with performances, DJ sets, films and presentations by artists and speakers including Chooc Ly, GIL, Ifeoluwa, Know V.A., pía ío luuuz, Yantan Ministry and Zaïre Krieger.
Tim Maughan interviews Liam Young
RESEARCH SERIES #7 One of the speakers at the next Sonic Acts Festival is speculative architect Liam Young. Together with Kate Davies he runs the Unknown Fields Division, ‘a nomadic design studio that ventures out on annual expeditions to the ends of the Earth exploring unreal and forgotten landscapes, alien terrains and obsolete ecologies’.
An interview with Hillel Schwartz
RESEARCH SERIES #9 During Dutch Design Week, on Saturday 25 October 2014, Sonic Acts presented ‘A Day of Noise’ in Temporary Art Centre (TAC) in Eindhoven. The keynote speaker was cultural historian Hillel Schwartz, undoubtedly one of the world’s foremost experts on noise.
Interview with Noam Elcott on Verticality
RESEARCH SERIES #12 In February 2014 the Vertical Cinema programme was screened at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The programme was accompanied by four long lectures by experts on cinema, video, new media, and contemporary art. The American scholar Noam M. Elcott gave an impressive lecture-presentation which also sketched a possible genealogy of 'vertical cinema'.
Interview with Bart Rutten on Verticality
RESEARCH SERIES #13 In February 2014 the Vertical Cinema project was presented in the Stedelijk Museum. The programme was accompanied by lectures by experts on cinema, video, new media, and contemporary art, one of which was Bart Rutten, at that time still curator of modern and contemporary art at the Stedelijk Museum.
Naut Humon: Transitions of the Spacial Station (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Director of Recombinant Media Labs (RML) Naut Humon (USA) speaks on the formation, deployment and current activities of California’s Recombinant Labs and their West Coast affiliates. RML is an experimental mobile facility for the experiential engineering of surround cinema and immersive arts. Recombinant is a term derived from the field of genetics. Springing from this elastic media grid is a process which illustrates how an electronically strained ‘offspring’ comes to possess cultural characteristics not always present in either ‘parent’.
Interview with Don Foresta
RESEARCH SERIES #14 In June 2014 Sonic Acts invited research artist Don Foresta to give two presentations in the Netherlands. Before his lecture presentation at STEIM in Amsterdam, Arie Altena sat down with him to talk about his experiences, working with Nam June Paik, Woody and Steina Vasulka, and other pioneers of video art, and his involvement in the first experiments with network art.
Hildegard Westerkamp: What’s in a Soundwalk? (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This presentation will be a reflection on seven years of public soundwalks put on by the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective within the cultural context of Vancouver New Music’s concert and performance seasons. It will trace how this continuity of soundwalk activities over time and with increased involvement may have shifted and deepened experiences in listening and relationships to space and place. Have they altered cultural, political and ecological attitudes within the Collective, changed and inspired daily life activities, work, studies, creative processes?
Daniel Teruggi: The Fifth Element (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Positioning sound sources in space permitted new perspectives and conceptions of the effects space could exert on music. At the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) musique concrète evolved alongside the sound systems and carriers that were used to compose the music. This multiple approach has important implications for the composition of music, as well as for the tools and environments needed for it.
Ralf Baecker: Rechnender Raum (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Rechnender Raum (2009) is a light-emitting geometrical sculpture made of sticks, wires and small pieces of lead that is simultaneously a fully functioning neural network. The functioning of the machine is completely transparent, but it carries out its computations only for itself, concealing the results.
Edward Shanken and Yolande Harris: Tuning In and Spacing Out: The Art and Science of the Presentness of Sound (Sonic Acts XIII,2010)
A presentation that explores sound and space as modes of understanding environmental phenomena. Drawing on a variety of examples from sound art, visual art, and science, Harris and Shanken weave together extreme ideas from the mythic and scientific significance of marine mammals to the surprising interconnectedness of the sea andouter-space.
Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag: raum-Arbeiten – The Space of Sound and Acoustic Architectures (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
In 1993 I realized, on an IRCAM Workstation, together with programmer Jörg Spix, the first endlessly rising and falling movements in noise to create a paradoxical situation of perception by a simulated volume movement in the space. The main problem of talking about the acoustic space is, that what we call hearing happens in our brain and not only with the ears, with the space of our body too, and also combined with all the other senses. Sonntag will talk about the theoretical background and the development of his raum-Arbeiten and sonic architectures.
Hans Christian Gilje: Conversations with Spaces (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
HC Gilje researches how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physical spaces. In his own work he works with real-time environments, installations, live performance, set design and single-channel video to make this research tangible.
Marcos Novak: 21st Century Invisible Architectures: The Poetics of Transactivated Space (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Spaces are the lightest of media, demanding the greatest subtlety in both sensibilities and poetics. Initially trained as a physicist, Gaston Bachelard used phenomenology to build a philosophical bridge between the science of space and the poetics of making significant places.
Combining Compositional Precision and Uncontrolled Processes: Interview with Thomas Ankersmit
RESEARCH SERIES #23 On 12 October 2013 Arie Altena interviewed Thomas Ankersmit about his work and his set-up for his concert the following day in the Minoritenkirche in Krems. Ankersmit was there as part of the 2013 Kontraste Festival
Robert Whitman: On Experiments in Art and Technology (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
In his lecture Robert Whitman discusses the way that he has used space as part of the vocabulary of his installation and performance pieces. In 1966 Whitman was one of the New York artists who worked with Billy Klüver and more than 30 engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories to create works for the now legendary 9 Evenings.
Annea Lockwood (Interview by Arie Altena) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Annea Lockwood has been involved in the recording of environmental sounds for a long time, her A Sound Map of the Hudson River (1989) and A Sound Map of the Danube can be considered as classics of the genre. An informal interview with her will touch on her views on field recording, composition, and sound mapping. Hildegard Westerkamp, Edward Shanken & Yolande Harris will also join the conversation.
Christopher Salter: Immersion, Absorption and Dissolution in Cross-modal Environments (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This talk will examine the repercussions of Turrell’s and Irwin’s proposal to investigate the thresholds of perception in an experiential environment. Specifically, I will focus on the conception of the self and body in both contemporary artistic practices with media coupled with recent concepts arising from enactive cognition. What role does spatiality play in these synchretic perceptions? What happens to the ‘sensing self’ and its embodiment in audio-visual environments that overload or reduce our perception and how does this self expand or dissolve through such encounters?
Philip Beesley: Responsive Environments (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This lecture was part of Sonic Acts XIII within a session called Gardeners of the Future. This session was about the following: In order to survive the near future, humans need to rapidly adapt to the challenges ahead. Artists will play an important role in ‘gardening’ the future, not only by shifting from computer technology to biology and genetic engineering, but also by starting to understand the universe as a single, large natural algorithm that needs gardening in order to function in a sustainable way.
Fred Worden: When Worlds Collude (Lecture & Screening) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Relations among time, space and motion have befuddled thinkers since at least the time of Zeno and his paradoxes. With the invention of cinema came a promiscuous new tool for staging various thought experiments on how best to understand the complex and often slippery interrelations among these terms.
Roger Malina: Intimate Science; Or Artists in the Dark Universe (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This lecture was part of Sonic Acts XIII within a session called Gardeners of the Future. This session was about the following: In order to survive the near future, humans need to rapidly adapt to the challenges ahead. Artists will play an important role in ‘gardening’ the future, not only by shifting from computer technology to biology and genetic engineering, but also by starting to understand the universe as a single, large natural algorithm that needs gardening in order to function in a sustainable way.
Raviv Ganchrow: Sense of Ambiguity (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This lecture was part of Sonic Acts XIII within a session called Architectures of Sound, in which the following questions were asked: How do composers work with spatial sound using arrays of loudspeakers? How is space constituted in music? How do we listen to the sound-space?
Keynote Derrick de Kerckhove: Beyond Perspective, From the Point of View to the Point of Being (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
We may be traversing a Neo-Baroque era where the effects of a dominantly visual episteme are reversed in multimedia, 3D and VR. In the global environmental perception that is developing, the point of being, that is a proprioceptive sensation of the world, may be doubling if not replacing the point of view as the principal referent of my position in space.
Jacob Kirkegaard, Labyrinthitis (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Labyrinthitis (2007) relies on a principle that when two frequencies of a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations generated in the inner ear, so-called ‘distortion product otoacoustic emission’ or ‘Tartini tone’, will produce a third frequency…
Jacob Kirkegaard: Sabulation (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Kirkegaard's "Sabulation" was part of "Acoustic Spaces", a more than four-hour-long programme devoted to various approaches to soundscape composition. It featured works produced by several generations of composers and musicians – from acoustic ecology to extreme field recordings.
Duncan Speakman: On Subtlemobs (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This lecture was part of Sonic Acts XIII within the session The Poetics of Hybrid Space. In this session, a panel will explore the new conditions of experience emphasized by the concept of Hybrid Space through the prism of a series of artistic and interventionist projects drawing on the increased hybridity of the contemporary spaces of everyday life. The concept of Hybrid Space does away with misleading spatial dichotomies that have accompanied the rise of digital and networked media; real versus virtual; physical versus immaterial; flows versus places (Manuel Castells).
Peter Westenberg: On Urban Interventions (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This lecture was part of Sonic Acts XIII within the session The Poetics of Hybrid Space. In this session, a panel will explore the new conditions of experience emphasized by the concept of Hybrid Space through the prism of a series of artistic and interventionist projects drawing on the increased hybridity of the contemporary spaces of everyday life. The concept of Hybrid Space does away with misleading spatial dichotomies that have accompanied the rise of digital and networked media; real versus virtual; physical versus immaterial; flows versus places (Manuel Castells).
Monolake and Tarik Barri: Monolake Live Surround (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
This performance by Monolake and Tarik Barri was part of Sonic Acts XIII: The Poetics of Space and took place in 2010. Founded in 1995 by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles, Monolake (DE) is an open project dedicated to computer-generated music. Robert Henke was born 1969 in Munich, moved to Berlin in 1990 and studied sound engineering and computer science. His works use multi-channel audio to explore how sound can redefine physical and mental spaces, and how much time is required for the structure of a musical idea to emerge.
Acousmonium: Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
German electronic music legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius (AT) has been active in music for over thirty years. Over his prolific career, Roedelius’ musical output has covered a great deal of sonic territory and emotional range: from deeply introspective to very rhythmic, from experimental improvisations to heart-felt vignettes.
Ulf Langheinrich: Drift (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
With 'Drift' Ulf Langheinrich (D) brings abstract images and sounds from both art and music into the cinematic space. A stream of abstract, deep and dense images and sounds evolves from a realistic image. The images are transparent, high in resolution and fine in detail. A process of multiple metamorphoses in several parallel spaces and time-layers constantly transforms their consistency, viscosity and transparency.
Ryoichi Kurokawa (Excerpt) (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP) is an audiovisual artist living in Osaka. His work takes on multiple forms: projections, recordings, installation and live performance. He composes time-based sculptures with digital generated materials and field recording in which minimalism and complexity coexist. He treats sound and imagery as a unit, not separately. He constructs exquisite, precise computer-based works with his audiovisual language that shortens the distance between sound and visual composition.
More artists, speakers and commissioned works announced for Sonic Acts Academy 2020
Sonic Acts is excited to now reveal the second wave of artists, thinkers and commissioned works for Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam from 21 to 23 February 2020 at Paradiso, De Brakke Grond, Stedelijk Museum and OT301.
Gert-Jan Prins, Bas van Koolwijk, Justin Bennett, Tina Frank, Jerome Noetinger and Billy Roisz – The Synchronator Orchestra
The Synchronator Orchestra is a live performance project in which several artists produce sound as well as visuals, using a Synchronator device. Commissioned for Kontraste Festival Krems in 2012
Kontraste 2012
Kontraste festival Electric Shadows presented cutting edge live performances, installations, films, lectures and sound walks, from 12 to 14 October 2012 in and around Krems, Austria. The festival was conceived as a ‘leap into the void’, with audiovisual experiments that manipulate analogue and digital signals to amplify our senses, investigate the dark, and explore cosmological unknowns. Kontraste 2012 was curated by Sonic Acts sonicacts.com/kontraste/2012
Vertical Cinema
Vertical Cinema is a series of ten newly commissioned large-scale, site-specific works by internationally renowned experimental filmmakers and audiovisual artists, which are presented on 35 mm celluloid and projected vertically with a custom-built projector in vertical cinemascope. Vertical Cinema is a Sonic Acts production in collaboration with several partners. verticalcinema.org
Kontraste 2011
The new Kontraste Festival -Imaginary Landscapes- took place for the first time from 14 to 16 October 2011 in Krems, Austria. Kontraste capitalized on the synergy of its special regional location and setting in combination with a strong international line-up. Kontraste 2011 was curated by Sonic Acts. sonicacts.com/kontraste/2011
Sonic Acts XV - 2013 - The Dark Universe
Impression of the fifteenth edition of the Sonic Acts festival 2013, entitled The Dark Universe. Starting points for the theme The Dark Universe are recent developments in science. These developments show that our world is more unfamiliar and weirder than we imagine. We know that in all likelihood ...
Vertical Cinema at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, IFFR & Kontraste Festival
"Vertical Cinema," the most ambitious and promising show in the entirety of the Rotterdam festival" "Yet simply the readjustment necessary to watch this program was something tremendous to experience, an exhausting craning upward at the skyscraper-like white tower of screen which asked for an up-and...
Tim Maughan: Watching Paint Die (Sonic Acts XV, 2013)
About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird universe that draws us in and enfolds us in its shroud, blacker than burned black. Seekers of the unknown and the undiscovered must be able to...
Frank Swain: Leave Nothing to the Imagination: Maps, Monsters, and the Importance of Uncharted Lands (Sonic XV, 2013)
About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird universe that draws us in and enfolds us in its shroud, blacker than burned black. Seekers of the unknown and the undiscovered must be able to...
Alastair Reynolds: White Noise (Sonic Acts XV, 2013)
About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird universe that draws us in and enfolds us in its shroud, blacker than burned black. Seekers of the unknown and the undiscovered must be able to...
Simon Ings: Cupid's Dart (Sonic Acts XV, 2013)
About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird universe that draws us in and enfolds us in its shroud, blacker than burned black. Seekers of the unknown and the undiscovered must be able to...
COLTERRAIN
COLTERRAIN BY TINA FRANK 10'20'' 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR SOUND: COH AUDIO TO VIDEO: GREGOR GÖTTFERT my tv has no picture, just vertical colour lines… sound is fine… Colterrain, the title of this film, refers to a colourful landscape, a terrain described by lines similar to geographic...
CHROME
CHROME BY ESTHER URLUS 7'40'' 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR SOUND: HUIB EMMER Chrome is inspired by the autochrome process, a colouring technique for black-and-white photographs invented by the Lumière brothers in 1903. In the autochrome process, microscopic grains of potato starch dyed red-ora...
#43
#43 BY JOOST REKVELD 10'30'' 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR The images in the film #43 are generated by systems in which the pixels are agents that are, in some respects, comparable to organic cells. These systems are bumped into motion by disruptions that cause a difference between some pixels a...
PYRAMID FLARE
PYRAMID FLARE BY JOHANN LURF 5’30’’ 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR SILENT Among the most mysterious man-made structures ever built, the pyramids still challenge scholars and provoke pseudo-scientific theories. Most architects have abandoned the idea of recreating a pyramid in modern times:...
DEORBIT
DEORBIT BY MAKINO TAKASHI & TELCOSYSTEMS 17'30'' 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR DRUMS: BALÁZS PÁNDI The myth of Icarus whose waxed feather wings melted away because he flew too close to the sun is an early record of an object falling back to Earth. A more recent atmospheric entry is that of the...
BRING ME THE HEAD OF HENRY CHRÉTIEN!
BRING ME THE HEAD OF HENRY CHRÉTIEN! BY BILLY ROISZ & DIETER KOVAČIĆ 8’17’’ 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR SOUND MASTERING: MARTIN SIEWERT There’s no sentiment as bold as the one in a duel shot in cinemascope. There’s no emotional drop height as big as in abstract vertical movies. ...
LUNAR STORM
LUNAR STORM BY ROSA MENKMAN 6’00’’ 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR The surface of the Moon seems static. Though it orbits the Earth every 27.3 days, with areas of it becoming invisible during this rotation, it is always (visibly or invisibly) above us, reassuringly familiar. The Moon is the...
WALZKÖRPERSPERRE
WALZKÖRPERSPERRE BY GERT-JAN PRINS & MARTIJN VAN BOVEN 11’11’’ 35MM VERTICAL CINEMASCOPE COLOUR Light and sound engraving on weathered concrete created by scanning the architectural elements of a bunker wall. Verticality as a concept of resistance. The freezing of time to its absolute limit,...
Opening Sonic Acts exhibition The Dark Universe
With works by: Matthew Biederman, Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves, HC Gilje, Ivana Franke, Matthijs Munnik, Semiconductor, Yolanda Uriz Elizalde, Jürgen Reble, Justin Bennett The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird, dark ...
SONIC ACTS 2012 Travelling Time
Sonic Acts XIV is a four-day festival of concerts, performances, lectures, presentations and exhibitions. Titled Travelling Time, this year’s festival offers an intense experience of time and explores radical ideas relating to time. Music and the other arts enable us to investigate the nature of t...
Monolake & Tarik Barri: Monolake Live Surround (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. This performance by Monolake and Tarik Barri was part of Sonic Acts XIII: The Poetics of Space and took place in 2010. www.monolake.de/ Founded in 1995 by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles, Monolake (DE) is ...
Peter Westenberg: On Urban Interventions (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/peter-westenberg-on-urban-interventions-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Peter Westenberg (NL) is a visual artist and filmmaker producing short films and urban interventions, ...
Karen Lancel & Herman Maat: Tele-Trust (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/karen-lancel-herman-maat-tele-trust-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat (NL) create ‘meeting places’ in public spaces. These performances and ins...
Duncan Speakman: On Subtlemobs (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/duncan-speakman-on-subtlemobs-sonic-acts-xiii-2010-2/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Duncan Speakman (UK) examines how we use sound to locate ourselves in personal and political environments, cre...
Jacob Kirkegaard: Sabulation (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. ‘He tried thinking of something else. When he closed his eyes, a number of long lines, flowing like sighs, came floating toward him. They were ripples of sand moving over the dunes. The dunes were probably...
Jacob Kirkegaard, Labyrinthitis (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Labyrinthitis (2007) relies on a principle that when two frequencies of a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations generated in the inner ear, so-called ‘distortion product otoacoustic ...
Ralf Baecker: Rechnender Raum (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Rechnender Raum (2009) is a light-emitting geometrical sculpture made of sticks, wires and small pieces of lead that is simultaneously a fully functioning neural network. The functioning of the machine is co...
Keynote Derrick de Kerckhove: Beyond Perspective, From the Point of View to the Point of Being (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/keynote-derrick-de-kerckhove-beyond-perspective-from-the-point-of-view-to-the-point-of-being-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Between the Renaissance and Cézanne, the poetics...
Raviv Ganchrow: Sense of Ambiguity (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/raviv-ganchrow-sense-of-ambiguity-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. There is no single ‘sonic-spatiality’. Each approach to sound can yield diverse, yet distinct materialit...
Roger Malina: Intimate Science; Or Artists in the Dark Universe (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/roger-malina-intimate-science-or-artists-in-the-dark-universe/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Humans were designed very badly to understand the universe they live in. Our senses filter out almost...
Philip Beesley: Responsive Environments (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/philip-beesley-responsive-environments-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Beesley presents a detailed tour through his recent interactive immersive environments. Discussion of i...
Robert Whitman: On Experiments in Art and Technology (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/robert-whitman-on-experiments-in-art-and-technology/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. In his lecture Robert Whitman discusses the way that he has used space as part of the vocabulary of his install...
Christopher Salter: Immersion, Absorption and Dissolution in Cross-modal Environments (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/christopher-salter-immersion-absorption-and-dissolution-in-cross-modal-environments-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. In 1968, an unrealized proposal developed in 1968 by visua...
Panel Spatial Perception: Jacob Kirkegaard, Hans Christian Gilje & Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. How do we perceive space? How do artists reflect on the experience of space and heighten the sense of space using sound and vision in sometimes radical or radically reduced ways? This panel was part of "Ses...
Fred Worden: When Worlds Collude (Lecture & Screening) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/fred-worden-when-worlds-collude-lecture-screening-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Lecture: After Hours in the Cerebral Kitchen Relations among time, space and motion have bef...
Jacob Kirkegaard: Acoustic Spaces and Unheard Sounds (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Jacob Kirkegaard’ works focus on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that us...
Hans Christian Gilje: Conversations with Spaces (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/hans-christian-gilje-conversations-with-spaces/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. HC Gilje researches how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physi...
Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag: raum-Arbeiten – The Space of Sound and Acoustic Architectures (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/jan-peter-e-r-sonntag-raum-arbeiten-the-space-of-sound-and-acoustic-architectures/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology Since the Renaissance the visual sense in our Western civilisation dominates our o...
Steven Connor: Auscultations (Listening In) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/steven-connor-auscultations-listening-in/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. A lecture which rethinks listening through tinnitus and other internal body sounds, touching on quietness, inaudibility, a...
Marcos Novak: 21st Century Invisible Architectures: The Poetics of Transactivated Space (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/marcos-novak-21st-century-invisible-architectures-the-poetics-of-transactivated-space-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Spaces are the lightest of media, demanding the greatest...
Annea Lockwood (Interview by Arie Altena) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/annea-lockwood/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Annea Lockwood has been involved in the recording of environmental sounds for a long time, her A Sound Map of the Hudson River (1989) and A Sound Ma...
Edward Shanken&Yolande Harris: Tuning In and Spacing Out: The Art and Science of the Presentness of Sound (Sonic Acts XIII,2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/edward-shankenyolande-harris-tuning-in-and-spacing-out-the-art-and-science-of-the-presentness-of-sound-sonic-acts-xiii2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. A presentation that explores sound and s...
Daniel Teruggi: The Fifth Element (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/daniel-teruggi-the-fifth-element-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Positioning sound sources in space permitted new perspectives and conceptions of the effects space could exert on music. At the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) musique concrète evolved alongside ...
Hildegard Westerkamp: What’s in a Soundwalk? (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. This presentation will be a reflection on seven years of public soundwalks put on by the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective within the cultural context of Vancouver New Music’s concert and performance seasons....
Panel The Hot Space in Music (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology Steven Connor (UK) is a writer, cultural critic and the Academic Director of the London Consortium. He is the author of books on Dickens, Beckett, Joyce, ventriloquism, skin, flies, and other topics, and is n...
Dirk Hebel & Jörg Stollmann: Misuse/Technology/Architecture (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/dirk-hebel-jorg-stollmann-misusetechnologyarchitecture-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Strategies of misuse reveal the challenges and potential of space and can be turned int...
Barry Truax: Composing Music with the Environment (Lecture) (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/barry-truax-composing-music-with-the-environment-lecture-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Barry Truax was one of the members of the World Soundscape Project in 1973 at SFU whe...
Naut Humon: Transitions of the Spacial Station (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
http://www.sonicacts.com/portal/index.php/naut-humon-transitions-of-the-spacial-station-sonic-acts-xiii-2010/ Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Director of Recombinant Media Labs (RML) Naut Humon (USA) speaks on the formation, deployment an...
Paul Prudence: Generative Spaces: The Spatiotemporal Subroutines of Runtime Planet Earth (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. From the global to the microscopic, the Earth runs subroutines that generate a multiplicity of complex patterns & emergent spaces – their runtime(s) lasting from anywhere between a few milliseconds to mill...
Keynote Michael J. Morgan: Representation of Space in the Brain (Sonic Acts XIII, 2010)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. As Descartes realized, there is no obvious reason why an image has to represented as another image in the brain. Yet, it is, at least in the early stages of representation. Reasons that have been advanced fo...
Panel The Dream Machine, Part 2: Kurt Hentschläger: Flicker, Feedback, Void (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. "The Dream Machine" broached the issue of time and senses in cinema. In the past and the present, artists using the flicker effect conceive of cinema as a dream machine - sometimes literally. Henschlägers t...
Panel The Defeat of Time, Part 3: Joachim Nordwall (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. "The Defeat of Time" was a talk with Joachim Nordwall and CM von Hausswolff, moderated by Mike Harding. Following their respective performances in Paradiso on Thursday night,they discussed drone music
Panel Real Cinema, Part 1: Arjen Mulder: What's real about film (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Film bears a specific relation to reality, but the reality effect of film is not necessarily connected to the fact that film is a record or reality. A theorist and a filmmaker present their...
Panel The Dream Machine, Part 1: TeZ - PV868 (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. PV868 is an experimental performance by TeZ (IT), aimed at producing an audiovisual feed/stimulus which allows moving visual patterns to emerge directly in the brain of the viewer/listener. This stimulus is ...
Panel The Defeat of Time, Part 1: Introduction by Mike Harding (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. "The Defeat of Time" was a panel talk with Stephen O'Malley, Joachim Nordwall and CM von Hausswolff, moderated by Mike Harding. Following their respective performances in Paradiso on Thursday night, February...
Acousmonium: Kasper Toeplitz (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Bass player Kasper Toeplitz convinced the composer Eliane Radigue to write Elemental II for him. In this piece the bass is plugged directly into the computer, running a MaxMSP patch. Kasper T Toeplitz (D) i...
Acousmonium: Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. German electronic music legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius (AT) has been active in music for over thirty years, has . He is a pioneer in electronic music, not least for his collaborations with musicians and compo...
Ryoichi Kurokawa (Excerpt) (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP) is an audiovisual artist living in Osaka. His work takes on multiple forms: projections, recordings, installation and live performance. He composes time-based sculptures with digital ge...
Panel Perception and Illusion: Ulf Langheinrich: Interference Moments (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Cinema creates an illusion through the projection of 2D-images and sound. But what if we go beyond the audiovisual illusion? And what are the tricks that cinema can use to affect how the brain pr...
Panel Real Cinema, Part 2: Gerard Holthuis: The Art of Chatter (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Film bears a specific relation to reality, but the reality effect of film is not necessarily connected to the fact that film is a record or reality. A theorist and a filmmaker present their...
Panel The Defeat of Time, Part 2: Carl Michael von Hausswolff (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. "The Defeat of Time" was a talk with Joachim Nordwall and CM von Hausswolff, moderated by Mike Harding. Following their respective performances in Paradiso on Thursday night,they discussed drone music
D-Fuse: Latitude (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Inspired by the idea of drifting through the city, Latitude 3110N /12128E follows the emotive qualities of the space that surrounds us. Fragments of conversations, crowds, journeys, lights, deserted spaces a...
Cluster live (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Legendary German band, consisting of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Since the early 1970s, the duo have produced exceptional instrumental music, floating somewhere between Krautrock, improvisatio...
Acousmonium: Christian Fennesz (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. Christian Fennesz (AT) uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. His lush and luminant compositions are anything but sterile computer ...
Ulf Langheinrich: Drift (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. With 'Drift' Ulf Langheinrich (D) brings abstract images and sounds from both art and music into the cinematic space. A stream of abstract, deep and dense images and sounds evolves from a realistic image. Th...
Keynote Erkki Huhtamo: The Diorama Revisited (part 1) (Sonic Acts XII, 2008)
Sonic Acts is a biannual festival at the intersection of arts, science, music & technology. The word ‘diorama’ is widely used in contemporary culture, but its origins remain obscure. Erkki Huhtamo’s lecture provides an archaeology of the fascinating history of the diorama, its cultural backgr...
The meditative collage of the session Earth Magnitude and the World Beyond Humans
Accumulating knowledge is the collective crystallization of our sensory information. The drive for knowledge is the urge to make contact, to grasp, to touch, to understand. Yet, crystalized information over generations also provides insights into the mechanism of our sensory machines. And the more we investigate, the bigger the gap between what’s known and what’s unknown.
About
From 26 to 28 February 2016, Sonic Acts hosts a new programme at the intersection of art, music and science at several locations in Amsterdam. Over the course of three days, Sonic Acts Academy will invite artists, theorists, and scientists to expand on their research through lectures, concerts, film programmes, work presentations, masterclasses and workshops.
Re-Imagine Europe
Re-Imagine Europe is a four-year project presented by ten cultural organisations from across Europe, with an aim to respond to the social and political challenges that we are currently facing. Funded by Creative Europe, the project involves artistic residencies, commissions, workshops and symposia, using art to empower a young generation of digitally connected Europeans to explore new ideas. re-imagine-europe.eu
Anthea Caddy – Long Throw: An Exploration of an Expanded Energetic System for Cello and Loud Speaker
Long Throw: An Exploration of an Expanded Energetic System for Cello and Loud Speaker is a live performance that expands the physical properties of projected sound energy via amplified cello. The piece premiered at Sonic Acts Academy 2020 as part of Sounding Provocations programme at Stedelijk Museum.
Looking back on first edition Sonic Acts Academy
The first edition of Sonic Acts Academy has ended. We look back proudly on an opening night with performances at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, five workshops and two days of presentations celebrating today’s artistic practices at de Brakke Grond, and an invigorating line-up at Paradiso that had visitors dancing into the early hours.
Sonic Acts Academy publication now for sale
In context of the Sonic Acts Academy, Sonic Acts published a 64-page ’zine’, which contains a beautifully designed and printed collection of short essays, manifestos, statements and visual contributions that provide invaluable insights into the exploration conducted and during the Academy.
Secret Chamber / Тайная Комната (Tainaya Komnata) – Anya Kuts & Ivan Zoloto
Anya Kuts and Ivan Zoloto from Petrozavodsk curated two so-called ‘Secret Chambers’. ‘Secret Chamber’, in Russian Тайная Комната (Tainaya Komnata) is the name they use for the audiovisual events they curate in unexpected, ‘secret’ locations.
Progress Bar Amsterdam: Second Edition
On 26 March, the second edition of Progress Bar, a new collaboration between Sonic Acts, Lighthouse and Viral Radio takes place at Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam. Described as ‘cutting edge thinking and dancing’ by FACT Magazine, the event presents a lively mix of talks, screenings, li...
Sonic Acts Academy 2016: Impressions
From 26 - 28 February the first edition of Sonic Acts Academy took place in Amsterdam. For this three-day event artists, theorists, and scientists were invited to expand on their research through lectures, concerts, film programmes, work presentations, masterclasses and workshops. The Academy relate...
Femke Herregraven – Staring into the Ice
For her Dark Ecology commission, Staring into the Ice, Femke Herregraven examines the relations between the financial world and global warming, and how the melting Arctic ice now opens up new investment opportunities and trading routes for financial markets by making it possible to lay submarine cables on the Arctic seabed.
Katrina Burch: Paradigm patching in the analogic cockpit — Presentation on Dust Synthesis with/by Yoneda Lemma
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Katrina Burch: Paradigm patching in the analogic cockpit — Presentation on Dust Synthesis with/by Yoneda Lemma 28 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The coming techno-sapiens’ living body never listens alone. It traverses cosmically low. And wide ...
Louis Henderson: “Animism is the only sensible version of materialism”
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Louis Henderson: “Animism is the only sensible version of materialism” 27 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- For some time I have been working towards an archaeological cinema that investigates political problems inherent within institutional archi...
Heather Davis: The Queer Futurity of Plastic
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Heather Davis: The Queer Futurity of Plastic 28 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Plastic is often thought of as a malleable material; its metaphorical connotation, plasticity, implies movement and shape shifting. However, plastic is actually one of t...
J.G. Biberkopf
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY J.G. Biberkopf 27 February 2016 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- J.G. Biberkopf’s club- and grime-referencing collage compositions, which he classifies as ‘audio theatre’, float between intense ambience and slamming rhythmic constructions that are cinematic in scop...
Michael Doser: Does the Universe Have a Dark Side?
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Michael Doser: Does the Universe Have a Dark Side? 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The universe we see with our eyes is only a small fraction of what is out there... and what we think should be there, doesn’t appear to be. The...
Raphael Bousso: The World as a Hologram: Black Holes, Information, and the Quest for a Unified Theory of Nature
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Raphael Bousso: The World as a Hologram: Black Holes, Information, and the Quest for a Unified Theory of Nature 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Black holes are among the most enigmatic phenomenon in nature. Forged from the gravi...
Joris Luyendijk: Everything you always wanted to know about bankers and finance, but were too angry to ask.
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Joris Luyendijk: Everything you always wanted to know about bankers and finance, but were too angry to ask. 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- After two major financial crises in less than five years democracy is looking more and ...
Goodiepal: Closing Lecture
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Goodiepal: Closing Lecture 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Goodiepal (Gæoudjiparl) (FO DK) is a controversial musician and composer of his own kind of radical computer music. He declared intellectual war against the stupidity i...
Ewald Engelen: Parasitic Banking
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Ewald Engelen: Parasitic Banking 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- A lecture on the most current affairs in the dark world of banking. Ewald Engelen (NL) is a Professor of Financial Geography at the University of Amsterdam and col...
Tim Maughan: Watching Paint Die
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Tim Maughan: Watching Paint Die 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Groundbreaking science fiction writer Tim Maughan has been exploring augmented reality for several years now, particularly in his critically acclaimed collection Pa...
Keller Easterling: Extrastatecraft
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Keller Easterling: Extrastatecraft 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The free economic zone has become a contagious world city paradigm. While in the 1960s there were a mere handful of such zones around the world, today there are ...
Honor Harger: The Dark Arts
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Honor Harger: The Dark Arts 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Artists and musicians have been active in producing some of the most powerful and persistent ideas about the possibilities of the invisible universe that surrounds us. ...
Alastair Reynolds: White Noise
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Alastair Reynolds: White Noise 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird univers...
Simon Ings: Cupid’s Dart
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Simon Ings: Cupid's Dart 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the universe that remains mysterious. The Dark Universe is also the weird universe that...
Geoff Manaugh: Terrestrial Psychosis and the Rise of a Surrogate Earth
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Geoff Manaugh: Terrestrial Psychosis and the Rise of a Surrogate Earth 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Beginning with a brief survey of noteworthy or provocative discoveries in archaeology – from artificial mounds in Europe an...
Saskia Sassen - In the Shadows of Powerful Systems
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Saskia Sassen: In the Shadows of Powerful Systems 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- A powerful explanation is like a sharp circle of light on a dark street. But the more powerful that light, the more difficult it is to see what li...
Frank Swain: Leave Nothing to the Imagination: Maps, Monsters, and the Importance of Uncharted Lands
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Frank Swain: Leaving Nothing to the Imagination: Maps, Monsters, and the Importance of Uncharted Lands 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- About Sonic Acts XV - The Dark Universe: The Dark Universe is the unknown universe, the unive...
David P.D. Munns: A Single Sky
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE David P.D. Munns: A Single Sky 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Humanity now sees the universe with far more than merely its eyes. The last half-century has exploded the once comfortable notion of astronomy as a science centred o...
Raviv Ganchrow: Listening Sites
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Raviv Ganchrow: Listening Sites 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- In the panel Dark Signals the focus shifts towards the arts, and how they explore unknown behaviours of sound and electromagnetic signals. Raviv Ganchrow sheds ligh...
Pascale Ehrenfreund: Space Exploration and the Search for Life in the Universe
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Pascale Ehrenfreund: Space Exploration and the Search for Life in the Universe 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Several nations are currently engaging in, or planning for, space exploration programmes that target the Moon, Mars a...
Trevor Paglen: The Last Pictures
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Trevor Paglen: The Last Pictures 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Trevor Paglen will discuss his own work, including his project The Last Pictures, a collection of 100 images etched onto a gold silicon disc orbiting the Earth and...
Gerard ‘t Hooft: Human Expansion into Outer Space?
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Gerard t' Hooft: Human Expansion into Outer Space? 22 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Human presence in the universe is now a fact, although we can hardly speak of a physical human presence. Man-made robots have sniffed at all the ...
Andrew Pickering: Varieties of Cybernetics: Ontology, Critique, Politics
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Andrew Pickering: Varieties of Cybernetics: Ontology, Critique, Politics 24 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- What is the allure of cybernetics, what draws people to it? We teach our children to think of the world as a predictable pl...
Andrew Blackwell: Visit Sunny Chernobyl
SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL – THE DARK UNIVERSE Andrew Blackwell: Visit Sunny Chernobyl 23 February 2013 – De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Experts agree: humans are ruining the planet. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth visiting. For his book Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell set ou...
Interview Raviv Ganchrow - The Geologic Imagination Book Launch
Interview with Raviv Ganchrow about his new work: Long Wave Synthesis 17 January 2015 at De Balie Amsterdam Long Wave Synthesis is a land-art scale sound installation that investigates infrasound, and probes the relations between how we perceive the landscape and long-wave vibrations. The piece cre...
Hillel Schwartz Interview
During Dutch Design Week, on Saturday 25 October 2014, Sonic Acts presented A Day of Noise in Temporary Art Centre (TAC) in Eindhoven. The keynote speaker Hillel Schwartz, was interviewed by Sonic Acts on this occasion. Hillel Schwartz (US) is currently the Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academ...
Ana Vaz: i prefer not to be but to Tupi: the age of the earth
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Ana Vaz: i prefer not to be but to Tupi: the age of the earth 28 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- The Work in itself does not exist, there is no whole or wholesomeness, what exists is a series of gestures, a multiplicity of perspectives, an anthropop...
Yoneda Lemma & Anna Mikkola
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Yoneda Lemma & Anna Mikkola 27 February 2016 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Yoneda Lemma (aka You Need a Lemon, sometimes Yoni Dilemma) is a quasi-causal brainchild for abstract exploration, experimental research, and a platform for productions, plotted by Canadian-bor...
Ewa Justka
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Ewa Justka 27 February 2016 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Ewa Justka is an electronic noise artist, self-taught instrument builder and electronics teacher, originally from Poland and now based in London. In her artistic work Ewa explores the concept of the materiality...
Anton Kats: Radio Sound System
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Anton Kats: Radio Sound System 28 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Artist and researcher Anton Kats’ history with radio is a long one, spanning from his early memories of growing up in Ukraine, to recent projects in Jamaica. Anton’s fascination w...
Ewa Justka: Odd DIY Spectacle
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY Ewa Justka: Odd DIY Spectacle 27 February 2016 - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands --- Ewa Justka reflects on her current trajectory as a noise and performance artist in an academic research and learning environment. Her approach could best be described as research throu...
Sonic Acts & Radio Web MACBA Podcast on Dark Ecology
Before he left for the Dark Ecology Journey, Arie Altena contributed to Radio Web MACBA’S fourth episode in the OBJECTHOOD podcast series. This episode is about what lies beneath the surface: where development clashes with strange hyperobjects, where geology meets politics, where horror meets daily life. Altena talks about superstitions surrounding the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia.
Cecilia Jonsson – Prospecting: A Geological Survey of Greys
Prospecting: A Geological Survey of Greys is an interdisciplinary, site-specific art project that appropriates the scientific geological methods of extracting, analysing and categorising mineral specimens. The work consists of drilling residue, fragments from inside the rock. These residues serve to identify the bedrock’s various grey tones and visualise a temporary juxtaposition; a massive cylindrical column of rock core sample shadowed by its negative – the adjacent 5-centimetre-wide hole in the basement rock.
Justin Bennett – Vilgiskoddeoayvir: Wolf Lake on the Mountains
At 12 kilometres deep, the Kola Superdeep Borehole is one of the deepest man-made holes on Earth. The Borehole was a Soviet geology research project that started during the Cold War. Justin Bennett created a soundwalk for this abandoned site.
Nickel van Duijvenboden – Echolocation (Session)
Nickel van Duijvenboden gave a performative reading inside a disused communal space belonging to the Kirkenes mine. He blended speech with sound recordings and live instruments in a loosely arranged setting, creating a parallel narrative based on a prior visualization of the location and a psycho-geographical exploration of the surroundings.
Homage to Dick Raaijmakers at ICMC
After thirty years, the internationally renowned conference on computer music ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) is returning to the Netherlands. On Tuesday September 13 ICMC invites Thomas Ankersmit & Tarik Barri for a special performance of 'Homage to Dick Raaijmakers' and 'Versum' at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht.
Signe Lidén & Espen Sommer Eide – Altitude and History
Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén took participants on an evening trek in the mountains above Nikel, where they investigated the acoustic phenomena in relation to the topography of the area while relating them to the local history. Eide and Lidén had their specially developed mobile, meteorological music instruments with them, which they installed and activated at various places during the trek.
Justin Bennett and HC Gilje – Mikro
Mikro is a series of improvised collaborative performances between HC Gilje (video) and Justin Bennett (sound) that draws its raw material from the immediate surroundings. On the last day of the Dark Ecology Journey, Bennett and Gilje performed the latest version of Mikro using material gathered over the course of the Journey.
UNFOLD #3: Reinterpreting the digital
On 1 December, the third public event within the framework of UNFOLD continues with the research line mediation by reinterpretation. The evening will start with the workshop 'Sensory Augmentation and Obstruction', organised by Joost Rekveld and LIMA together with Sonic Acts.
Signe Lidén and Espen Sommer Eide – Vertical Studies: Acoustic Shadows and Boundary Reflections
In Vertical Studies: Acoustic Shadows and Boundary Reflections, a collaborative work with Espen Sommer Eide, Eide and Lidén wish to invite the participants on a journey to a 46 meter high former water tower in Sint Jansklooster.
'Sensing the Shipyard' at Damen Shiprepair
Sonic Acts is currently working together with several educational institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. As part of the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2018, we are collaborating with the ArtScience Interfaculty in The Hague on Sensing the Shipyard: A Sensorial Journey.
Sign up for workshops, seminars and guided tours at Sonic Acts Festival 2019
Sonic Acts is pleased to announce a special educational programme for Sonic Acts Festival 2019, with workshops led by artists and theorists including Christina Kubisch and Arie Altena, as well as seminars and guided exhibition tours.
Okkyung Lee – 틈 / Teum (The Silvery Slit)
틈 / Teum (The Silvery Slit) is an acousmatic piece written for computer-generated sounds, pre-recorded materials and cello that was developed for the Acousmonium sound diffusion system during a residence at Ina GRM, Paris, in January 2019. It premiered at Paradiso, Amsterdam, at the opening of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Hugo Esquinca – Deformation Studies on Dimension and Structure for Fifteen Point Three
Deformation Studies on Dimension and Structure for Fifteen Point Three is a mediation on the acoustic resonances of space. The work was developed during a residency at STEIM (organised by Sonic Acts) and presented at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Karl Klomp – Sonic Acts Festival 2019 spatial media design
For Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Karl Klomp developed an extensive spatial media installation comprising a monumental LED structure suspended from the ceiling and LED screens on stage displaying live video footage of the performances. The spatial media design was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Ji Youn Kang – Untitled
Untitled plays with two customised bamboos and a small Korean gong, with analogue devices that connect the instruments for further real-time processing. The work was developed during a residency at STEIM (organised by Sonic Acts) and presented at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
HC Gilje – Radiant (live)
Radiant is an audiovisual work comprising a white laser beam moving over a large surface covered with phosphorescent pigment. The laser draws lines and curves that are only visible for a short moment before disappearing. The live performance of Radiant was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Rana Hamadeh – Étude #1: On Recitation
Étude #1: On Recitation is a composition-in-progress with organ book, organ book machine, Disklavier, Sony cube monitor and horn speakers, and is a stepping stone towards a future compositional work by the artist. The work was presented at Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Phoebe Collings-James and Last Yearz Interesting Negro – Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival
Charting psycho-emotional landscapes and mapping them on to the physical, Phoebe Collings-James and Jamila Johnson-Small work with their multi-dimensional bodies as the primary technology and source material for a collaborative live performance. Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
The Rodina – Accidental Geopoetics
Accidental Geopoetics is a design intervention that takes revealing and hiding as two basic principles of design practice. At Sonic Acts Festival 2019, the work took the form of a navigational infrastructure at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, engaging the visitors while occupying the museum’s hallways.
Christina Kubisch – Electrical Walks Amsterdam
Electrical Walks Amsterdam continues a series of works by the artist that trace the electromagnetic fields of urban environments. The work takes the form of a city walk and enables a new experience of Amsterdam, uncovering its hidden electromagnetic phenomena. The work is No. 74 in Kubisch's Electrical Walks series and was presented as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Filipa César and Jin Mustafa – Meteorisations: Reading Amílcar Cabral's Agro-Poetics of Liberation
Meteorisations: Reading Amílcar Cabral's Agro-Poetics of Liberation is a performative lecture by Filipa César with sound by Jin Mustafa and images from Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, 1974, Cape Verde. The work was presented at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne – The Informals / Неформалы
The Informals / Неформалы is a part-autobiographical work and a universal statement on the notions of decentralisation, collectivism, and non-conformist ways of living in the digital age. The European premiere of The Informals / Неформалы was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019.
Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast: Sadaf speaks to Ivan Cheng
Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy. In the first episode, Sadaf speaks to Ivan Cheng and discusses the processes of making music, her work and the inspiration behind it all.
Hugo Esquinca and Yuk Hui – On 'A Psychedelic Becoming'
Hugo Esquinca’s live multichannel intervention On ‘A Psychedelic Becoming’ at Sonic Acts Academy 2020 confronts recursion and its openness to the necessity of contingency. The work follows that of his collaborator, philosopher Yuk Hui, who outlines these notions in his book Recursivity and Contingency (2019).
Apply for the Creative Spatial Design workshop with Heleen Blanken and Karl Klomp
The workshop Creative Spatial Design will be an introduction to the artistic practice of conceptual stage design, led by spatial media artists Heleen Blanken and Karl Klomp. It focuses on the basic artistic and technical skills necessary for developing stage scenography for live performances.
Sonic Acts podcast with Lukáš Likavčan in collaboration with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee
Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy. In the second episode, Lukáš Likavčan and Leonardo Dellanoce discuss how the future influences the present.
bod [包家巷] and Schwestern Sisters (SwS)– What If We Made A Video Game And It Was Like Dark Souls And All The Characters Were Artists (WIWMAVGAIWLDSAATCWA)
What If We Made A Video Game And It Was Like Dark Souls And All The Characters Were Artists (WIWMAVGAIWLDSAATCWA) is an enclosure of the audiovisual inputs of reality into the space of art that formally unifies performance and exhibition with the practices of organised interpersonal relationships.
Sonic Acts Academy 2020
Academy 2020 took its cue from inspiring artistic research with a special emphasis on experimentation and innovation. Informed by the urgency of the climate crisis and approaches to new futures, the Academy was an open invitation to listen, talk and learn with one another, fuelled by over 50 of the most exciting contemporary artists and thinkers from around the globe. 2020.sonicacts.com
Sonic Acts podcast with Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown Jr.) in collaboration with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee
Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2020. In the third episode, Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown, Jr.) speaks about the origins of techno and (un)available historical nostalgia.
Philip Vermeulen – More Moiré²
Philip Vermeulen’s sensorially powerful audiovisual installation More Moiré² premieres at Sonic Acts Academy 2020. In a panoramic Ganzfeld environment, with no horizon or anchor, the immersive cinematic experience puts visitors’ senses to the test. The tension between the experience of bodyless digitality and material physicality is palpable in More Moiré², which resets the senses in stimulating the awareness of one’s own material existence.
Karl Klomp – Sonic Acts Academy 2020 spatial media design
For Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Karl Klomp developed an extensive spatial media infrastructure for the festival's night programme at Paradiso. The work – an innovative spatial setup utilising various media – created an intense visual experience, complementing the presentations of performing artists and the progressive club environment.
Murmansk Prospekt
Murmansk Prospekt is a collaboration between Sonic Acts and Fridaymilk exploring the ways that artistic and speculative research can reveal the hidden histories and lost identities of the city of Murmansk. The project aims to enable current and future generations of citizens to re-imagine and redefine the city and articulate their personal identity through digital arts. fridaymilk.com inversiafest.com
Living Earth
Living Earth was a collaboration between Sonic Acts, Fridaymilk, Hilde Methi and several Norwegian and Russian partner organisations that was conceived as a follow-up to the successful Dark Ecology-project (2014–2017). Living Earth aimed to further develop conversations around the topics addressed through Dark Ecology and increase the impact of the thoughts and ideas behind the project.
AV impressions of Sonic Acts Academy 2020 now online
Complete photo reports of the Academy will be published in the coming week, but you can already browse through a selection of first impressions on our social channels. Festival aftermovies and videos of the entire conference programme will also be online soon.
MÆKUR's CONDITIONS : 1218-0719 now available as limited edition vinyl
Released as part of Sonic Acts Academy 2020 and now available for digital download and as limited-edition vinyl, CONDITIONS : 1218 – 0719 is the first release by MÆKUR, the collaborative project of Maiа Urstad, Eva Rowson and Anton Kats.
Free PDF download of the Academy 2020 Magazine
The impulse to listen, talk and learn with one another now hinges on the need to stay at home, and many of us have more time than ever to read. For that reason, we’re giving away a free digital edition of our latest publication, the Academy 2020 Magazine.
Thank you for contributing to an unforgettable Academy
Sonic Acts Academy 2020 is a wrap! As always, we are extremely grateful to everyone involved in making this year’s edition another great success. Thankfully, our incredible team of photographers and videographers were on hand to capture every moment.
Watch the 2020 conference talks and performances
In light of the difficult circumstances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working on ways to move future activities online. In the meantime, videos of the Sonic Acts Academy 2020 conference and performances can be watched over the weeks and months ahead.
Sonic Acts Academy 2018
Sonic Acts Academy 2018 was a platform for investigation, speculation, and reflection, focusing on educational practices and the critical examination of knowledge production in the field of art. By expanding artistic experience into an academy of engagement and exchange, it offered both a playground and a radical syllabus at odds with institutionalised learning. sonicacts.com/2018
Sonic Acts Festival 2019 – Hereafter
Under the title Hereafter, Sonic Acts explored the genesis of our current crisis by reflecting on the issues we are forced to confront on a daily basis: the inequalities caused by colonisation and geostrategic manoeuvring, the challenges brought forth by immigration and the climate crisis, and the way technological advancements disrupt and not emancipate. 2019.sonicacts.com
Sonic Acts Festival 2017 – The Noise of Being
The Noise of Being strived for a (de-)alignment of actors: humankind, Earth, technology and all other beings, by means of several strategies: de-colonising thought, de-normalisation, de-capitalisation, the inversing of time, creating cracks, and imaginative speculation – a chance to speculate about the strange and anxious state of being. sonicacts.com/2017
Sonic Acts Academy 2016
Sonic Acts Academy 2016 highlighted artistic engagement as vital to understanding the complexities of our contemporary world. Over the course of three days, artists presented work that challenged the sterile dichotomy of theory versus practice. Following an open and dynamic format, the Academy positioned art as a unique means of knowledge production. sonicacts.com/2016
Sonic Acts collaborates with Ràdio Web MACBA on new podcast with Terike Haapoja
In a new podcast on Ràdio Web MACBA co-produced by Sonic Acts, Finnish artist Terike Haapoja invites us to imagine a hybrid, expansive, empathetic 'we', with room for ambiguity and difference and for interspecies political understanding.
Dorian Concept and Zanshin – Half Chance
Dorian Concept and Zanshin perform Half Chance to the live audience on the Max Brand synthesizer. In their performance, Dorian Concept stepped on the foot pedals and played the keyboards, while Zanshin worked with the manual controls for the electrical production of sound.
Read online: Sensititve States of Perception with Kali Malone
From Colorado to Stockholm and from sound technician to organ tuner: Kali Malone highlights artistic journeys, both physically and intellectually and what it means to her to combine her musical experience in vocal music with theoretical practices.
Open Call: Underexposed – Mentorship Programme for Young Artists
Sonic Acts invites young artists to apply for Underexposed, an online mentorship and training programme. The programme is part of a Sonic Acts talent development initiative focussed on supporting artists at the beginning of their career.
Experience the interactive audio walk Plastic Hypersea by Sissel Marie Tonn
Plastic Hypersea is an interactive, site-specific work by artist Sissel Marie Tonn that invites the listener to contemplate a more expanded sense of self. The work can be experienced at the NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam from the end of April.
Ecoes – an independent magazine about art in the age of pollution
Ecoes is a new periodic magazine from Sonic Acts about art in the age of pollution. The magazine features a number of artists and thinkers that propose alternatives to the anthropocentric view that sees Earth and the non-human world as an endless resource.
Sissel Marie Tonn – Plastic Hypersea
Site-specific sound walk Plastic Hypersea by Sissel Marie Tonn invites the listener to explore and imagine the environment as an extension to their immune system and to contemplate the many ways in which their bodies are entangled with microplastics in the sediments of Amsterdam’s waterways.
Overexposed Podcast with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee featuring Devin Hentz
In the third episode of the Overexposed Podcast – a collaboration between Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee – artist in residence Devin Hentz about data thieves, trash and its role in the archive of history, and the death of clothes.
Artists in residence MELT look at different approaches to time
MELT (Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr) are arts-design researchers who work together on games, technology and critical pedagogy. During their 'residency time', MELT look at climate change and pollution in relation to different approaches to time.
Open Call: Sonic Acts continues its OVEREXPOSED home-based residency programme
Sonic Acts is proud to announce the continuation of the OVEREXPOSED residency programme. With this renewed open call, we invite applications from artists and researchers working across the fields of environmental humanities.
OVEREXPOSED
OVEREXPOSED is a residency programme from Sonic Acts investigating pollution and its effects on everything living and non-living, through which we aim to create awareness about pollution both in local surroundings and on a planetary scale. It fosters artistic research whose outcomes are presented in a variety of formats, including text publications, visual journals, and performative or discursive presentations.
Underexposed
Underexposed is an online mentorship and training programme – part of a Sonic Acts talent development initiative – that focuses on supporting artists at the beginning of their career. It includes a mentorship period in which artists work directly with members of the Sonic Acts curatorial team, providing an opportunity to get feedback on the development of artistic projects.
Hugo Esquinca & Russell Haswell – Cadáver Exquisito Caleidoscópico En Cuatro Ejes
Cadáver Exquisito Caleidoscópico en Cuatro Ejes is a work by artists Hugo Esquinca and Russell Haswell and commissioned by Sonic Acts. It incorporates the game of ‘exquisite corpse’ – a technique of collective assembly in which they took turns contributing to the piece after receiving only a portion of what the other had previously contributed.
Journeys into the Unknown: Making the Un-sensed Sensible
The "Journeys into the Unknown" panel revealed how contemporary technologies can illuminate aspects of the world we often ignore or about which we remain unaware. Through several modes of experience--vision, hearing, and speculative imagination--each speaker expanded our understanding of what the world is and what it could be.
Dark Ecology Critical Writing Academy
On 9 and 10 October 2015, Dark Ecology and Fridaymilk will organise a two-day Critical Writing Academy, in Murmansk, Russia. This workshop is aimed at emerging and mid-career writers, critics, bloggers, theorists and journalists in arts and culture from the Barents Region
Vertical Cinema at Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF)
Vertical Cinema is in Melbourne for its Australian premiere at Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). A special feature within the MIFF film programme, Vertical Cinema will be screened twice at Deakin Edge theatre in Melbourne on 14 August.
Dark Ecology Journey: First Journey Report
We are back home from a successful second Dark Ecology Journey. Over the course of five days, we travelled with a group of more than 50 artists, researchers, curators, writers and organisers to Kirkenes in Northern Norway from where we took a bus to Murmansk in Russia, to Zapolyarny and Nikel, and back to Kirkenes.
Susan Schuppli: 'Dark Matters - Bearing Material Witness to Climate Change'
DARK ECOLOGY Susan Schuppli: Dark Matters 28 November 2015 - Aurora Cinema, Murmansk, Russia --- In her keynote lecture Dark Matters: Bearing Material Witness to Climate Change Susan Schuppli introduces a new operative concept, that of the ‘Material Witness’. This is an exploration of the eviden...
Looking back on Progress Bar in Amsterdam: More than Music
Looking back on the first four editions of Progress Bar Amsterdam which took place at Paradiso Noord / Tolhuistuin between January and June of this year, the event series' resident interviewer Jo Kali recounts her experiences and positions these nights, which are characterised by the combination of talks and performances, within the contemporary (cultural) landscape.