Video installation

As is evident from the title, this symphony was composed as a homage to Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki.
Gorecki’s 3rd symphony adds a soprano voice to slow orchestral music while my slow symphony removes a soprano voice from my song cycle I sonetti lussuriosi for soprano and orchestra (2007) and redisposes the vocal part orchestrally.
The texts were taken from a collection of erotic poetry by Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) and I found it curious that Gorecki was happy to have his music, even the ‘sacred’ 3rd symphony, used as film scores – as long as it was not used in sex scenes. As a film composer myself, working with Peter Greenaway, Patrice Leconte, Neil Jordan and Jane Campion, amongst others, it was always a certainty that my music would ONLY be used in sex scenes!
I first met Gorecki at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1985, after he heard the Arditti Quartet perform my String Quartet No.1. I gave him a copy of my most recently-released album – The Kiss and Other Movements – and some weeks later he wrote asking me to send him the score of The Kiss. What he did with it I do not know but in the 38 years I have been writing music, he is the only composer who has ever had the curiosity to want to look at my scores.
My film The Art of Fugue which consists of a single 28 minute sequence shot in May 2012 in Plaza Luis Cabrera, a square near my house in Colonia Roma, Mexico City, will be screened simultaneously with the symphony.

Michael Nyman

The grand finale of the elaborate Opening Parcours is the official opening event of the 2014 Ars Electronica Festival, a not so ceremonious and rather more playful-sensorial form of entertainment in St. Mary’s Cathedral and on the plaza in front of it. Magistratsmusik Linz leads off with a rendition of Mysteries of Antartika. Archifon III and OscFluctuation then transform the huge façade of Austria’s largest church into an audiovisual playground for festivalgoers. Leading-edge media art from Taiwan is represented in the form of Smashing Karaoke vs.Brass Band and Long Live. An unprecedented augmented reality experience is offered by Mirage, and a new wrinkle has even been added to the playbook of the church’s venerable Rudigierorgel: harmonious visualizations accompanying the musical artistry of cathedral organist Wolfgang Kreuzhuber.

Program

8:30 PM
Mysteries of Antarctica
Magistratsmusik Linz (AT)
Domplatz

8:40 PM
Smashing Karaoke vs. Brass Band
Dawang Huang (TW)
Domplatz

9 PM
Archifon III
Tomáš Dvořák (CZ), Dan Gregor (CZ)
Domplatz

9 PM
OscFluctuation
Robert Praxmarer (At), Gerlinde Emsenhuber (At), Robert Sommeregger (AT), Steven Stojanovic (AT), Thomas Wagner (AT)
Domplatz

9:15 PM-9:45 PM
Mirage
Grinder-man (JP)
Mariendom

9:45 PM-10 PM
Long Live
Jui-Chung Yao (TW)
Mariendom

from 10 PM
Rudigierorgel visualized
Wolfgang Kreuzhuber (AT), Ars Electronica (AT)
Mariendom

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THU September 4-SUN September 7, 2014, 8:30 PM-11 PM
Domplatz next to the Mariendom

When it gets dark in the evening, the large square in front of the Mariendom turns into a stage for luminous interactive media art projects.

For two years now, the Mariendom is the scene of acoustic installations and performances that will be presented during the festival: It was Sam Auinger in 2012 and Rupert Huber in 2013 who brought the dome to sound. This year the Diocese of Linz and the Ars Electronica go one step further and transform the Mariendom to an unique exhibition scene throughout the festival. A number of artistic installations can be experienced in the nave, the crypt and Rudiger hall.

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In comparison to Archifon III, the major installation he produced with his artistic partner Tomáš Dvořák, Dan Gregor’s second spatial-optical encounter with the Mariendom comes across like a whimsical art historical footnote. Netykavka is a minimalist installation in which Gregor pays homage to avant-garde artist Anthony McCall by reconstructing McCall’s works that consist of beams of light—though not without expanding the works with an additional facet: Netykavka reacts to being touched by installation visitors.

As different as the Ars Electronica Center and Linz’s St. Mary’s Cathedral may be in every imaginable respect, they’ll have something in common during Ars Electronica 2014: festivalgoers will be able to employ the façades of both buildings as projection surfaces.

Living Architecture

Archifon III, an audiovisual and architectural installation by Tomáš Dvořák and Dan Gregor, turns Mariendom’s windows and walls into a virtual musical instrument. It can be played with laser pointers, which activate acoustic and optical elements mounted at various stops on the façade. Suddenly, the church’s stone walls seem to come alive, to react like a resonating body.

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Saccade is a technical term used by opticians and ophthalmologists to describe a certain type of eye movement: so-called visual target movements that include both spontaneous and deliberate eye movements. They’re among the fastest motions the human body makes, and are the basis of a display developed by Junji Watanabe (whereby the term display is somewhat misleading here, since this array doesn’t contain a monitor in a conventional sense).

Looking lengthwise and diagonally

It makes use of saccade to display images. When the eye makes a horizontal movement to perceive the rapid-fire flashing of LEDs on a vertical line, the impression of a two-dimensional image forms on the retina as what might be called an afterimage. The subsequently perceptible traces of a person’s own viewing movements are what provide the visual impression.

Ghost images

In the case of Watanabe’s display, there’s something ghostly about this, since the “projection” appearing in midair and thus without need for a physical screen. Technically, it’s already possible to present landscapes and portraits on the Saccade Based Display. Nevertheless, each individual viewer perceives the respective image differently, since it depends on the speed and direction of the movements of the particular person’s eyeballs.

In “tour en l’air,” Berlin-based artist Ursula Neugebauer evokes an unforgettable childhood experience: the thrill she felt when she got her first long skirt and the wonderful new feeling of twirling while wearing it. This was her introduction to a new form of stability amidst rotation.

Dancing Clothes

“tour en l’air” is an impressive installation at the nexus of fashion, art and architecture. Each of several deco busts slips into a floor-length red taffeta dress and is then brought to life by a computer-controlled electric motor. Although the individual elements are merely machines and pieces of fabric, the overall composition seems to amount to a poetic expression of something quintessentially human: an enchanting dance.

A sponge, brush or water pistol and some water—that’s all it takes to conjure up Water Light Graffiti on a wall studded with thousands of water-sensitive LEDs. The principle is simple; the results are a feast for the eyes.

Water Makes Light

The water produces an electrical bridge that enables current to flow between the LEDs mounted in a wall panel. The quantity of water also determines how intensively the respective LEDs light up—the more liquid that comes into play, the brighter the rapidly blinking graffito is illuminated.

Read more about this on our Ars Electronica Blog!