LENTOS – ORIGIN

OPENING Linz R2

Michael Knoll — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:08:49 +0000

Linz R2 is a real-time resonance work, a sound installation in a public space—the long, open courtyard area adjacent to the Lentos Art Museum’s entrance. Auinger and Odland’s work is an acoustic transformation experience: two resonance pipes perform a real-time transformation of the surrounding urban soundscape

Musicians & Machines – Big Concert Night

Michael Knoll — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:57:10 +0000

Schedule

Lentos, Auditorium
19:30: Winfried Ritsch (AT): Heptaklavier
Peter Ablinger (AT): Portrait meiner Eltern

Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
20:30: Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dante Anzolini (Dirigent / AR)
Edgar Varèse: Arcana für großes Orchester
Alessandro Bavari (IT): Metachaos
Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dante Anzolini (Dirigent / AR)
Friedrich Cerha: Monumentum für Karl Prantl für großes Orchester

Donaupark
21:15 Edgar Varèse: Diverse elektroakustische Arbeiten

Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
21:40: Open Reel Ensemble (JP)
22:40: Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dante Anzolini (Dirigent / AR)
Dante Anzolini: Principio Passionis

Brucknerhaus, Mittlerer Saal
22:50: Martin Messier (CA), Nicolas Bernier (CA): La chambre des machines

Brucknerhaus, Großer Saal
23:20: Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT), Dante Anzolini (Dirigent / AR)
Alan Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountain op. 132

The ninth edition of the big concert evening will be a return to the origins – those of electronic music – and a look ahead to the new musical spaces being carved out by the pioneers of the present. Heptapiano is an installation and composition by Winfried Ritsch (AT) for seven robotically played pianos centrally controlled via ethernet. Peter Ablinger (AT) will then also make use of two of Ritsch’s self-playing pianos in his very personal work entitled Portrait meiner Eltern. The sound material transferred to the twin concert grands is based on a recording of the voices of Ablinger’s parents as they prayed their daily rosary. Under the direction of Argentine conductor and composer Dante Anzolini – whose tribute to his musical roots entitled Principio Passionis is on the program – the Bruckner Orchestra Linz will play works by such great musical innovators as Edgar Varèse (1883–1965), Friedrich Cerha (born 1926) and Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000). Alessandro Bavari (IT), a 2011 Prix Ars Electronica 2011 prizewinner, will present his work Metachaos. For this performance well worth seeing and hearing, Japan’s Open Reel Ensemble has converted an analog recording device into a sound-producing instrument, and plays on (or with) magnetic tape machines salvaged from technological retirement. Nicolas Bernier (CA) and Martin Messier (CA) have created a machine house: La chambre des machines (Prix Ars Electronica 2011, Honorary Mention, Digital Musics & Sound Art). It mechanically-electronically interprets the intonarumoris noise machine thought up by Italian futurist Luigi Russolo. The music performed in this big concert evening will once again be accompanied by extraordinary visualizations: Rainer Kohlberger (AT) will visualize Arcana by Edgar Varèse; Sebastian Neitsch (DE), Refik Anadol (TR), Woeishi Lean (AT) and Efe Mert Kaya (TR) the music of Friedrich Cerha; LIA (AT) optically interprets Dante Anzolini; and Daito Manabe (JP) will collaborate with Motoi Ishibashi (JP) and Satoru Higa (JP) on visualizing Alan Hovhaness’ composition.

The work of Peter Ablinger and Winfried Ritsch is being supported by Klavierhaus Fiedler & Sohn, Am Eisernen Tor 2, 8010 Graz

Linz R2

Michael Knoll — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:11:56 +0000

MY EYES … MY EARS …

Michael Knoll — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:17:43 +0000

Featured artist Sam Auinger (AT) and his long-time artistic partner Bruce Odland (US) will give a performance-lecture that takes New York as an illustration of the dissonance of visual and acoustic perception.

Ralo Mayer – Obviously a major malfunction

Michael Knoll — Mon, 16 May 2011 08:43:16 +0000

During the Ars Electronica Festival, Ralo Meyer is going to present a history from 1986 to 2003, from the crash of the Challenger to the crash of the Columbia, raising questions on how we perceive our world. This installation will be in the Lentos’ 1st Underground Level.

4.56-billion-year-old meteorites, a painting from the collection of the LENTOS, a closed eco system and a checklist that travelled to the moon and back with the astronauts on board Apollo: four highly diverse objects that are used by Ralo Mayer (b. 1976, lives/works in Vienna) in the first part of his exhibition to throw light on his own work from the last few years. Space, the history of its exploration and utopias that tried (in the past) to predict what the world would look like in the future form the thematic backdrop for these works. Like all science fiction that deserves the name, they are deeply rooted in present-day reality and transfer social and economic facts into multifaceted stories.

In the second part of the exhibition Mayer presents a new large-scale installation. It continues his exemplary exploration of objects in time and space, focusing on “the most complex piece of machinery of all times”. This title rightfully belongs to the United States Space Shuttle, which is said to consist of more than 2.5 million individual components.
Two space shuttles broke apart in mid-air, one in 1986 and the other in 2003. When Challenger disintegrated into plumes of white smoke, a NASA commentator famously informed the tens of millions of horror-stricken viewers following the catastrophe on TV that “obviously a major malfunction” had occurred.

What about the period whose beginning and end are marked by space shuttle disasters? What events does it owe its specific flavour to? Mayer’s reconstruction features not only charred remains of the space shuttles but also fragments of the reactor in Chernobyl, the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers. His presentation of these reliques takes its cue from an emancipatory interpretation of the so-called Cargo Cults, with which Melanesian and other tribal societies tried to cope with their traumatic encounters with colonial powers. The “cargo bay”, a storage space for all kinds of freight, is also an important feature of
the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle was conceived in the late 1960s as a reliable vehicle able to commute between the earth and the space colonies then in the pipeline. The Vietnam War and the
United States’ economic woes subsequently caused NASA’s budget to shrink and the Space Colonies remained science fiction. The Shuttle was built nevertheless, and for a vehicle whose original purpose had all but dissolved into thin air its 30-year record of service is impressive. The Space Shuttle will complete its last mission in the summer of this year.

LENTOS

Michael Knoll — Mon, 16 May 2011 07:40:10 +0000

The Lentos is another highlight of Linz’s riverside cityscape. Set immediately adjacent to the Brucknerhaus and the Danube Park, this architecturally striking museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art opened in 2003. The facility is extraordinary in numerous respects—for instance, the 2,500-m2 main exhibition hall, the largest of its kind in Austria, was conceived to display works of art in just the right light to do justice to them.

Lentos, credit Tourismusverband Linz/Presseamt

http://www.lentos.at/de/