Upgrade! Eindhoven: Tetsu Kondo (Japan) :: March 14, 2010; 8:00 -10:30 pm (doors open 7:30) :: Temporary Art Centre, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

The next Upgrade! Eindhoven presents Albert van Abbe and MAD Artist in Residence, Tetsu Kondo discussing Kondo’s work and vision. Kondo is an artist, musician and researcher whose work includes drawing, installations and musical instrument design. He is currently teaching at Tokyo Polytechnic University.

Kondo will also demonstrate his Dendraw, a software instrument he developed, that transforms the beauty of visual programming into live interactive sound performances. The Dendraw generates specific sine waves depending on screen position. Continue reading

Aion Experiments — with the Morris/Trasov Archive, Sam Keogh, Pádraic E. Moore, Takeshi Murata, Ulf Rollof, Ciarán Walsh, Robin Watkins and the Foundation for Aion Research :: February 12 – April 10, 2010 :: Closing Event: The Luminiferous Aether :: April 9; 7:00 pm :: Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 Ireland.

This experiment differs from some of the more intensive previous Aion Experiments in which volunteers remained under close observation for prolonged periods. Throughout the duration of this exhibition several devices will be installed in the exhibition space, which will in turn become highly charged with energy that fosters cell regeneration and cerebral stimulation. Continue reading

For Nothing by Pedro Torres :: January 7-17, 2010 :: AntiFrame - Independent Curating Project, Apartado 108, 2736-180 Cacem, Portugal.

Pedro Torres presents at Round Corner, the sound-installation For Nothing, based on the work by Samuel Beckett Texts For Nothing.

Pedro Torres entices us to hear voices that plunge into the emptiness. Murmured vocal blows. Spoken murmurs, whispered, hard to save. Like the sound. Like every other voices we hear and don’t want to hear, the inner voices that usually chase us and betray us too often. Is there infinitude of muted sounds that elude us: either because we don’t pay them the due attention or just because our hearing ability is formatted between the 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz? Continue reading

Upgrade! Paris: Art of Failure presents Corpus on the occasion of the “Corpus” exhibition opening :: January 7, 2010; 6:30 pm :: Théatre Molière - Scène d’Aquitaine / OARA, 33 rue du temple, Bordeaux, France.

Corpus is a set-up which uses sound, architecture and multimedia technology to stage objects, furniture, architecture or a place and set them into pulsating vibration. The various elements which compose the inherent identity of place thus become active or ‘living’ and breathe life into sounds specific to their personality. The selected place becomes the instrument on which the duo of musicians play, offering their audience a unique physical experience of place at once richly sensorial and other-worldly. Continue reading

S O U N D L I N E S - a drawing for sound interpretation by Marcus Neustetter, with Joao Orecchia, Murray Turpin, Daniel Stompie Selebi, Ziza Mhlongo, Zubz :: November 25, 2009; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: Sound and Motion Studios / CaityVarsity (Old Carfax Space), Newtown.

After drawing the city skyline of Johannesburg as sheet music, sound artists and musicians were invited to interpret and respond to these images. Recording sessions for improvisation and collaboration were held in Johannesburg’s Sound and Motion Studios. The resulting sound-scapes are presented by Marcus Neustetter in an unabridged (20m15s) and a shorter (2m52s) version. Continue reading

Undo - Redo with Tarek Atoui (Lebanon), Dima Hourani (Palestine), Hanne Sabier (Morocco), Roy Samaha (Lebanon), Aya Tarek (Egypt), Sara Elias (Egypt) :: November 15-30, 2009 :: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt.

The Exhibition will present the result of the Undo-Redo workshop conducted by Lebanese media artist and sound performer Tarek Atoui in an attempt to introduce its participants to the diverse and multiple uses of technology in the field of interdisciplinary, visual and sound art. Over the span of 8 days participants are invited to work with Tarek Atoui on developing and exhibiting an art project for which they will receive the necessary software and hardware equipment. Continue reading

Chapter 1 - The Discovery by Félix Luque :: November 13-29, 2009 :: Opening: November 12; 6:00 pm :: iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, 30 quai des Charbonnages, 1080 Brussels.

Chapter I - The Discovery invites us to to discover an unidentified artificial entity emitting a code of light and sound. Its shape is a pure platonic solid, a dodecahedron, a geometry often associated with philosophical theories, esoterism and sci-fi culture. After visioning a series of videos staging the discovery of this alien object in several places, we end up in an encounter with a physical interactive object which co-opts information flows, sound and light transmission. Continue reading

[Image: Cover of Brian Eno's 1974 album "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)"] Brian Eno, Peter Schmidt, and Cybernetics by Geeta Dayal, Rhizome.org:

Cybernetics is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts. The word itself seems sinister and futuristic, but the term has ancient roots – the Greek word kybernetes, meaning steersman. Cybernetics was famously defined in more recent times by Norbert Wiener in 1948, as the science of “control and communication, in the animal and the machine.” Words like “control” may seem to have creepy overtones, but at its heart, cybernetics is simply the study of systems. “Cybernetics is the discipline of whole systems thinking… a whole system is a living system is a learning system,” as Stewart Brand put it in 1980. Continue reading

WHITE NOISE III: Pandora’s Sound Box curated by Lara Pan for PERFORMA 09 :: November 2 - 22, 2009 :: Opening: November 2, 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: White Box, 329 Broome St., New York City.

Pandora’s Sound Box is an interactive multimedia exhibition conceived to destabilize and reactivate our vision of the current global political landscape through performance, sound, video and site-specific installations. The exhibition demonstrates a kind of experiment of the associative imagination by which the viewer may explore other dimensions of experience while simultaneously becoming a performer. The title of the exhibition was inspired by Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s controversial 1929 film Pandora’s Box, which exposed and explored the fear of female sexuality. Continue reading

Third edition of Enel Contemporanea — Doug Aitken: Frontier (curated by Francesco Bonami) :: October 23 - November 23, 2009 :: Tiber Island, Rome (after @ MACRO museum of Rome (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma).

Frontier is an open-air video installation in which the artist uses an amazing crescendo of sounds and images to depict a visionary journey in the modern world, blurring the line between fiction and reality. It is a narrative work that takes place over the course of a day, featuring the famous American painter Ed Ruscha. Its images emanate from a series of multiple screens set within a minimal, white, architectural structure with no roof, punctuated by numerous small windows that emit a glow of energy towards the exterior. A sort of modern “micro-Coliseum” with a powerful emotional and multi-sensory impact, showing a video shot in Rome, Los Angeles, Israel and South Africa - a story of everywhere and, at the same time, of nowhere. Continue reading