Lentos Kunstmuseum, Brucknerhaus, Donaupark

“Pursuit of the Unheard”

Supported by the Max Brand Archive

The Ars Electronica Festival is celebrating its 30^th anniversary in 2009. Looking back on the festival’s musical history, we’re immediately struck by its extraordinary diversity: early electronic rock, play-along concerts featuring home-brew instruments, the Steel Symphony and the Steel Opera … Music is at the heart of this festival. The urge to discover new musics, to pioneer the exploration of fresh musical realms, to undertake daring tonal experiments is still undiminished. The pursuit of yet unheard music is ongoing.

This concert evening will be the seventh such expedition in quest of innovation. The separate concert staged in prior years to showcase current trends in digital music with performances by Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners is being integrated into the 2009 big evening concert; the result is a lineup dedicated to both the past and the present. During the first half of the evening, new technologies will share center stage with traditional genres and instruments: an “opera” performed by a tiny wireless-controlled plastic bunny, and a violin ensemble combined with 1-bit music. Audiences will then be treated to orchestral pieces by Arvo Pärt, Alan Hovhaness and Norbert Zehm visualized in ways that bring out never-before-discovered ways of seeing these sounds. The Klangpark will be filled with Bill Fontana’s sound sculptures that translate the chiming of Big Ben from the Thames to the Danube in ways that are as surreal as they are impressive. No less striking is the sound of the Max Brand synthesizer, which would actually qualify as an object in a historical exhibit but Elisabeth Schimana is still able to coax new sounds out of the old machine. The innovative acoustic combinations of Christian Fennesz paired with Lillevan’s fascinating visualizations wrap up the pursuit of the unheard for the time being …

Program

7:30 PM, Lentos
Antoine Schmitt, Jean-Jaques Birgé: NABAZ’MOB
Prix Ars Electronica 2009, Digital Musics, Award of Distinction

8:00 PM, Lentos
Tristan Perich: „Active Field“ for ten violins and ten-channel 1-bit music
Prix Ars Electronica 2009, Digital Musics, Award of Distinction

Performed by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies (US/AT)
Space in Lentos is limited.

8:40 PM, Brucknerhaus, Foyer
Arvo Pärt: Arbos für 8 Blechbläser und Schlagzeug (1977/1986)

Performed by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies

8:45 PM, Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
Arvo Pärt: Concerto piccolo über B-A-C-H, für Trompete, Streichorchester, Cembalo und Klavier (1964/1994)

Performed by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies

Cembalo: Maki Namekawa (JP/AT)
Trompete: Gerhard Fluch (AT)
Visuals by: Nanook feat. System Jaquelinde

8:55 PM, Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
Alan Hovhaness: Lousadzak (Coming of Light), für Klavier und Streichorchester op. 48

Performed by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies; Klavier: Maki Namekawa; Visuals by Kenneth Huff (UK)

9:20 PM, Klangpark, Donaupark
Bill Fontana: Speeds of Time
Prix Ars Electronica 2009, Digital Musics, Golden Nica

9:55 PM, Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
Norbert Zehm: Symphonie „GAMES“ op. 45
Performed by Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies
Synthesizer/Electronics: Norbert Zehm
Visuals by Roland Schrettl

10:40 PM, Brucknerhaus, Foyer
Max Neuhaus: Radio Net (Ausschnitte)

10:50 PM, Brucknerhaus, Mittlerer Saal
Elisabeth Schimana: Höllenmaschine (Komposition für den Max Brand Synthesizer)
OperatorInnen: Manon Liu Winter, Gregor Ladenhauf

11:30 PM, Brucknerhaus, Foyer
Max Neuhaus: Radio Net (Ausschnitte)

11:40 PM, Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
Christian Fennesz: fennesz with lillevan visuals
Visuals by Lillevan

Pursuit of the Unheard ist ein weiterer Schritt in der erfolgreichen Zusammenarbeit des Brucknerorchester Linz unter Dennis Russel Davies, dem Brucknerhaus Linz und Ars Electronica mit dem Ziel, neue Konzepte der Verbindung von Musik und neuen visuellen Ausdrucksformen zu erproben.

Curators: Dennis Russell Davies, Wolfgang Winkler, Heribert Schröder, Gerfried Stocker, Bianca Petscher

Project Management: Bianca Petscher

David Rokeby: Very Nervous System, 1983-94, Version 1991

Opening hours:
August 28th 2009 – January 10th 2010
daily 10.00 AM – 6.00 PM, Thu 10.00 AM – 9.00 PM

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz
www.see-this-sound.at

Promises in Sound and Vision

There are sounds and noises all over the museum, as artists today take an engagement with the sound of this world for granted. The former predominance of the visual has meanwhile been replaced by a multifaceted interplay of image and sound. See this Sound documents this development from the perspective of visual art and refers to the respective contemporary discussions and promises.

In eight sections the exhibition focuses on important milestones and historical-social points of reference, but without imposing a linear development. Starting from the filmic sound visualizations of the 1920s – so-called Eye Music – it traces the topos of traversing genre boundaries in the 1960s and questions psychedelic trance machines and multimedia sound environments about their social-political potential. The illusion of a “natural” interplay of image and sound, for instance in Hollywood movies, is countered by works that disclose the discrepancies of this purported synthesis, all the way to the loss of sound and the power of speech. In addition, there is a special focus on the local production conditions of sounds (industrial cities and industrial sounds), and on sound as a medium of institutional critique.

Collaboration with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research has also enabled the scholarly treatment of specific media history issues presented within the framework of a web archive and in the exhibition.

Artistic and Scientific Lead: Stella Rollig and Dieter Daniels
Curator: Cosima Rainer
Assistant Curator: Manuela Ammer
Project Coordination: Veronika Floch
Scientific Collaboration LBI: Sandra Naumann

We 2.9. – Thu 3.9. 2009

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz

Organizer: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research
Concept: Dieter Daniels & Sandra Naumann
www.see-this-sound.at

Overall Director of the Conference: Dieter Daniels and Sandra Naumann
An event in conjunction with SEE THIS SOUND
A cooperation between the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. and the Lentos Art Museum Linz with Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture

See this Sound – Sound-Image Relations in Art, Media and Perception

The project SEE THIS SOUND explores the past and present of the link between image and sound in art, media and perception. The starting point is the fact that our world of experience today is marked by an omnipresence of audiovisual products and structures, in which the cultural production of image and sound is closely intertwined artistically, and in terms of media technology and market strategy. SEE THIS SOUND reacts to this by presenting and discussing different realizations of contemporary art and art studies. The current fields of reference range here from pop culture to the theory of perception and media technology.

The goal of the international symposium is an interdisciplinary exchange among the theoretical and aesthetic thematic fields of the project. At the intersection of different academic disciplines the conference touches, among others, on art and music studies, media and art theory, media archeology, and the history of media technology. Artistic presentations are integrated in the course of the conference to stimulate the dialogue between art and science.

Wed 2.9.  7:30 PM  Starting Performance
Branden W. Joseph in conversation with Tony Conrad, artist / University of Buffalo, Department of Media Study (US), followed by a performance by Tony Conrad

Thu 3.9.
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM Introduction
Dieter Daniels, Leiter Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, Linz
Sandra Naumann, Academic Staff Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, Linz

10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Panel 1: Media Art – Visual Art: Divergence or Dialogue?
Chris Salter, Assistant Professor of Digital Media Concordia University, Montreal
Christian Höller, author, curator, editor and co-publisher springerin, Vienna
David Rokeby, Artist, Toronto

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Panel 2: Art, Science and Technology: Instruments or Artworks?
Birgit Schneider, Dilthey Scholarship of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, University of Potsdam, Institute  of Arts and Media
Yvonne Spielmann, Chair of New Media, University of the West of Scotland, School of Creative Industries, Glasgow
Golan Levin, Artist / Associate Professor of Electronic Art and Director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
“On the creation, experience and research of audiovisual interactive art” a conversation with Katja Kwastek, Vice-Director Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research., Linz,

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Panel 3: Art and Music: Intermediality – Intermodality – Interdisciplinarity?
Branden W. Joseph, Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Columbia University, New York, Department of Art History and Archaeology
Helga de la Motte-Haber, Technical University Berlin, Institute of Language and Communication, Department Musicology
Winner Media.Art.Research. Award 2009 for “Eye hEar: Music, Art, Film & the Culture of Synesthesia”:
Simon Shaw-Miller, Senior Lecturer and Head of School, School of History of Art, Film & Visual Media
Birkbeck College, University of London

7:00 PM Closing Performance
Mikomikona (Birgit Schneider & Andreas Eberlein, Berlin)
„Fouriertransformation I + II“ (Fourier Transformation I + II)
Sound-Vision performance with two overhead projectors