Some Sounds and Some Fury




With this year’s concert evening, Ars Electronica is, in a certain respect, formally establishing as an ongoing Festival feature the multi-year derivational phase of an intermedial practice of music that represents a fusion of primarily visual and tonal elements and that, in the form of exemplary reproductions of the classics of sound art as well as current manifestations of this genre in various configurations, has found an ideal stage setting at the Brucknerhaus since 2003. Principles of Indeterminism (2003), L’Espace Temporel (2004) and Listening between the Lines (2005) have been presented heretofore. In this series’ fourth installment, the work’s format and the stage itself determine the theme. This is a format that, due to its particular constellation of personnel—conductor Dennis Russell Davies, the Bruckner Orchester under his direction, and pianist Maki Namekawa—has made it possible to put on a consistently high-quality program of performances that have continually explored and expanded the realm of interplay, on the one hand, at the nexus of orchestral music and digital practices of composition and distribution, as well as, on the other hand, in the zone of interaction where tonal and visual forms of expression come together. What have established themselves thereby are a format and a setting for new developments that are representative of media/digital art both as a source of inspiration and as a partner of traditional disciplines.(1)

Some Sounds and Some Fury once again spotlights examples of this interplay, which it turns into a leitmotif whose comprehensive principle is to consider the past protagonists who have done much to expand the boundaries of this discipline as coexistent contemporaries and, in the tradition of an excursion through a border region, to establish communion between them and those currently engaged in similar activities. The point of this is to take lines of tradition—those having to do not only with aesthetic substance, but also with concepts and techniques as well—and to weave them into a sort of network in which tearing down borders and interdisciplinarity are endowed with a stable cultural foundation even in a branch of the cultural industry in which traditions are normally deemed to be mostly unfounded.

One outstanding composer who immediately comes to mind in connection with this intention is Philippe Manoury who, during his many years at IRCAM, worked together with Miller S. Puckette on the development of MAX, the granddaddy of all software for live interactive musical performance. Charles Amirkhanian is another individual who absolutely epitomizes the artist as crosser of borders between disciplines in acoustic art. And, of course, when the subject of co-existence and derivation comes up in connection with media music, the name that is inevitably mentioned is John Cage, whose efforts to break down the hierarchies involving composer, musical interpreter and listener anticipated today’s strategies of interactivity.

David Behrman has been creating electronic components for his work as a composer and sound artist since the 1970s. Ludgar Brümmer makes use of physics parameters in the synthesis of notation, sound and visuals. Ryoichi Kurokawa’s work, on the other hand, is an example of the synonymity of image and sound in production and presentation. This is also the area of activity of Naut Humon, artist and head of the Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco, who has also acted as co-curator since the beginning of this concert series.

Text: Heimo Ranzenbacher
Translated from German by Mel Greenwald

(1)
Another fascinating line of development to emerge from this context includes the projects that have presented large-format, real-time visualizations of operas and symphonies. These are discussed at length on page 290 of this catalog.
Some Sounds and Some Furys is a further step in an ongoing collaboration between Brucknerhaus Linz and Ars Electronica that attempts to create new experimental fusions between music and visual art. back


Some Sounds and Some Furys is a further step in an ongoing collaboration between Brucknerhaus Linz and Ars Electronica that attempts to create new experimental fusions between music and visual art.
Some Sounds and Some Furys ist ein weiterer Schritt in der Zusammenarbeit von Brucknerhaus Linz und Ars Electronica mit dem Ziel, neue Konzepte der Verbindung von Musik und neuen visuellen Ausdrucksformen zu erproben.

Some Sounds and Some Furys – Program

Loudspeakers (for Morton Feldmann), 1990, by Charles Armikhanian

Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, 1951, by John Cage. Performed by
Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies, Maki Namekawa: Piano, Visuals
by Jorn Ebner.

Sound and Fury, pour grand orchestre, 1999, by Philippe Manoury. Performed
by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies. Visuals by 1n0ut (Robert
Praxmarer / Reinhold Bidner).

Move—For Piano, Live Electronics and Video, Premiere, by Ludger Brümmer.
Performed by Maki Namekawa – Piano and Ludger Brümmer – Computer and
Visuals.

Audiovisual Crossmedia Concert by Ryoichi Kurokawa. Performed by
Ryoichi Kurokawa. Visuals by Ryoichi Kurokawa.

Image-Sound Interaction Performance by Naut Humon.

Klangpark Intervention: Music with Melody-Driven Electronics, by David Behrman

Curators: Dennis Russell Davies, Naut Humon, Gerfried Stocker.