Video, Interview: ATOM by Robert Henke, Christoph Bauder – Musical Balloon Sculpture by Peter Kirn — Inside a computer, digital music is entirely unseen. But translate it into the tangible world, and it can be anything you imagine – not limited by acoustic reality or practicality, music can become three-dimensional sculpture.

For artist Christoph Bauder and composer Robert Henke, ATOM’s light and sound sculpture found a three-dimensional matrix of balloons as its medium. Flashing in hypnotic patterns and moving into different configurations, accompanied by live laptop music from Henke (aka Monolake), music and visuals become an inseparable fusion.

ATOM received its North American premiere at Montreal’s MUTEK in May. That turned out to be perfect programming, as it placed ATOM in a week that featured complementary work from artists Artificiel. Continue reading

A10lab, Area10, Apo33, Noise=Noise, Beyond Signal, Fibrr Records & Sound Research Practice, Goldsmiths presents: Rainforest IV - David Tudor — “a collaborative environmental work, spatially mixing the live sounds of suspended sculptures and found objects, with their transformed reflections in an audio system” :: July 3-4, 2009; 2:00 - 11:00 pm :: AREA10 PROJECT SPACE, Eagle Wharf, Peckham Hill Street, London.

“In 1973 I made Rainforest IV where the objects that the sounds are sent through are very large so that they have their own presence in space. I mean, they actually sound locally in the space where they are hanging as well as being supplemented by a loudspeaker system. Continue reading

SPECTRUM: multi-channel sound and video installations by DRAW :: June 6, 13, 20 and 27; 2:00 - 8:00 p.m. :: at Diapason Gallery, 882 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

“A sound spectrum is a representation of a sound…in terms of the amount of vibration at each individual frequency. It is usually presented as a graph of either power or pressure as a function of frequency.”

SPECTRUM is a sound and image sculpture utilizing multiple (number to be determined) audio and video channels across both of Diapason’s exhibition spaces. The process at the core of SPECTRUM is the visualization of sound through spectrographic analysis, which breaks up a complex wave into its constituent parts and displays them on a 2 or 3 dimensional grid. These analyses and their corresponding sounds form the basis for several complex, layered compositions. Continue reading

AC [Institute Direct Chapel] presents: Sawako :: June 11, 2009; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: AC [Institute Direct Chapel], 547 West 27th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY.

The AC is pleased to present Sawako as part of it’s live performance series. In an intersection and interaction between virtual, luminescent, digital, sonic and organic networks, Sawako performs in situ among Christine Sciulli’s dynamic installation planeSPACE currently occupying the AC [Direct] I gallery space.

Tokyo/ Brooklyn-based Sawako is a sound sculptor, a composer and improviser, a timeline-based artist and a signal alchemist. She is a multi-faceted artist in the urban life environment who understands the value of dynamics and the power of silence. Continue reading

Independent Film Festival of Boston presents TRIMPIN: The Sound of Invention :: April 23, 2009; 10:15 pm and April 26, 2009; 8:00 pm. :: Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, Somerville, MA.

Trimpin is an artist, inventor, composer, and MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient who designs, builds, programs, and composes for outrageous automatic ensembles of musical instruments. Working out of a studio that resembles both Frankenstein’s lab and Santa’s workshop, Trimpin has devised unique ways of playing everything from whistles, generators, and giant marimbas to stacks of electric guitars via home-grown computer programs. Trimpin himself, along with producer/director Peter Esmonde, will be on hand for discussions with audience members after each screening.

Dream Sweepers by APO33 (led by Jenny Pickett & Julien Ottavi) :: February 3 - 20, 2009 :: Art School Gallery of Amiens.

Dream Sweepers is a sound sculpture using speech (narration) and sound related to concepts of memory and experience. The audio souvenirs, perceived ambiances and the received sonic life of the city delivers its unconscious impressions / expressions and simultaneously transmits those via remote telephonic narratives and resounding cut ups echoing across different cityscapes (London, Marseille, Nantes, Amiens…etc).

APO33 — as an interdisciplinary laboratory drawing on the artistic and technological fields — fosters various collective projects associating research, experimentation and social intervention. Continue reading

NAISA Workshops :: December 2008 and January 2009 :: All workshops @ the NAISA space (equipment provided), Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street, Studio #252, Toronto :: Pre-registration required :: Call 416 652 5115 or email naisa [at] naisa.ca to register.

Dec 7th, 1-4pm, $25: INTRODUCTION to LINUX and Open Source Software for sound production with Hector Centeno — Open Source software is available to anyone for free. This workshop is directed to anyone using computers for sound art, electroacoustic music or any other digital music/sound creation giving participants a walk through some of the available Open Source options for digital music and audio production. Continue reading

Going Public ‘08 - Port City Safari: The Sound of the City by Zafos Xagoraris, Piazza Garibaldi, Sassuolo :: until December 21, 2008 :: aMAZElab Via Cola Montano 8, 20159 Milano, Italy.

Starting from the text by the famous writer Italo Calvino ‘Le città invisibili/The invisibile cities’, The Sound of the City intends to map the city through a collection of sounds / silence / noises which are typical of specific areas: the suburbs, schools, markets, squares. The project intends to create spatial and functional surveys for the definition of an idea of architecture and space referring to today’s acoustic ecology and sociology. Zafos Xagoraris’ work can be seen both as an architecture and a sculpture in the public space. His sound installation will be presented in the main square of the city Piazza Garibaldi with a transmission of sounds from different port cities. Continue reading

Timo Kahlen: TRESPASSING - New Sound Works presented his studio :: November 1, 2 and 8, 2008 (11:00 - 17:00) and by appointment (mail [at] timo-kahlen.de) :: RUINE DER KUENSTE BERLIN, Hittorfstr. 5, 14195 Berlin – Dahlem / U3 Thielplatz.

Timo Kahlen is also currently at MANIFESTA 7 with SWARM. Swarm is an eight-channel sound installation based on the manipulated sound of bees in a large scale steel structure. It is located at Fortezza / Franzensfeste fortress until November 2, 2008.

For Manifesta 7, Timo Kahlen will realize a prominent, site-specific sound installation, entitled SWARM (2008) for the main courtyard of Franzensfeste / Fortezza fortress, one of the four main venues of Manifesta 7, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Trentino, Italy from July 19 - November 2, 2008.

“The sound sculpture SWARM emits an altered, abstracted, recomposed sound of bees, encased within a metal construction. Humming calmly, then becoming distorted, slightly agitated, progressively more aggressive, the installation creates acoustic chaos and even a perceptible vibration from inside the encasement, before returning to a softly buzzing hum. The military function of the fortress is mirrored in the exact positioning and the construction of the sculpture. Continue reading