Space and sound will transport you to distant spheres, so enjoy the trip as the 2017 Ars Electronica Opening in POSTCITY Linz takes its inimitable course. First of all, amid the breathtaking setting of St. Mary’s Cathedral, festivalgoers’ initial encounter is with L’Enfant, a four-part performance from Taiwan that uses sophisticated technology to deal with the subject of becoming an adult and dispatches a drone-mounted camera to capture the audience reactions to these developments. That followed, the festival opening’s performances and concerts begin at 7:30 PM in POSTCITY.
No less impressive is cellF, Guy Ben-Ary’s neuronal synthesizer that enables musicians to perform with neurons. From New Zealand we have Singularity, skillfully blending data, dance, music and architecture into a spectacular show for this year’s Ars Electronica Opening. On the main stage an interactive sound performance entitled Breaking the Wall, under the direction of Oliver Hödl and Peter Purgathofer, invites attendees to get actively involved with state-of-the-art technology and some cutting-edge artists. L’Etude, a project by Vibert Thio and Duanger Du, compiles a live set from melodies specially created via app by former victims of the “Formosa Fun Coast – Explosion.” Then, while still reeling from these unconventional sounds, the audience will be transported into unprecedented terpsichorean realms by _nybble_ from Paris and Kyoka from the Raster-Noton label. Finally, patten, a Warp Records live act will conclude the night.
7:30 PM / Mariendom
First performance of the Taiwanese dance performance L’Enfant (Derjk Wu)
7:30 PM / POSTCITY
The sound artists Ei Wada (JP), Megumi Takei (JP), Rinichi Washimi (JP) and Keisuke Tanaka (JP) present the Sempookin Quartette (Electric Fan Quartette), an electronic musical instrument of the Electronicos Fantasticos! project.
8 PM / POSTCITY (Upper Level)
Entropy
8 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
cellF
8:30 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
Breaking the Wall
9 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
Étude
9:35 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
_nybble_
10:20 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
Kyoka (JP)
11:20 PM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
SINØ (PT)
12:05 AM / POSTCITY (Train Hall)
patten, Wrap Records (UK)
There is always a child living inside our mind. Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have called the child Émile or Sophie. This child has eternally coexisted with us and always gazed back at our heart. How do we define growing up? Or have we never grown older?
cellF is Guy Ben-Ary’s self-portrait but also the world’s first neural synthesizer. cellF’s “brain” is made of a living neural network that grows in a Petri dish and controls analog synthesizers that work in synergy with the neural network in real time.
The Tokyo-based artist and musician Ei Wada started the “Electronicos Fantasticos!“ project, where he revives old domestic electronic devices and turns them into electronic musical instruments, in 2015. Among the various instruments the project has created is the “Sempookin“ (literally, “electric fan harp”).
Through this project the artists aim to bring back a colorful future to young victims of the Formosa Fun Coast explosion through music, art and technology.
Breaking The Wall invites the audience to participate in the interplay of artifacts, artists, audience and technology. The interactive performance focuses on the technological and dramaturgical connection of audience, sound, light and room and triggers questions of digital surveillance and technological authority.
SINGULARITY blends data, dance, music and architecture in an immersive performance that transports audiences into spaces of awe and delight. Large 3D holographic constructions appear interactively in space. The set-up combines a live-render program with motion-tracking cameras and triangulated projectors illuminating haze particles.
I.M. FREE is a program based on the free improvisation, using the non-harmonic music materials for its sound base. Noise produced by various sonic operations through the speakers mixes freely with saxophone sounds, transformed—rough and unleashed!
ENTROPY is an international, transdisciplinary research project on entropic processes. In the course of a two-year discourse process, artists and scientists have followed the traces of the famous “H-Theorem” of thermodynamic theory in collaborative settings.
_nybble_ is an audiovisual, formal and spatial performance in which the media fluctuate between minimal and organic digital aesthetics. Two poles on the same continuum.
Linz reclaims its slot at the epicenter of contemporary electronic music as international acts and performers convene for the Ars Electronica Nightline.
| 8:15 PM-8:35 PM | I.M. FREE / SpectroDuo (PL/IR) |
| 8:35 PM-9:30 PM | Interface Cultures Sound Performances |
| 9:40 PM-11:00 PM | Koenig (AT) |
| 11:10 PM-11:30 PM | Battle-ax (AU) |
| 11:40 PM-00:40 AM | Dorian Concept (AT) |
| 00:50 AM-01:35 AM | Darkstar (UK) |
| 01:45 AM-02:30 AM | Lorenzo Senni (Warp, IT) |
* Due to illness of the artist Throwing Shade (Ninja Tune, UK) we have slightly modified the timetable. We ask for your understanding!
| 10 PM-10:36 PM | Trans-reality, Bhoomesh Tak (AT) |
| 10:45 PM-11:35 PM | Morast (AT) |
| 11:35 PM-11:55 PM | The Liberation of the Feet: DEMAKING the High Heeled Shoe for Theatrical Audio Visual Expression, Alexandra Murray-Leslie (Chicks on Speed) (AU), Krõõt Juurak (EE/AT) |
| 12 noon-4 AM | DJ Marcelle / Another Nice Mess (NL/JAHMONI) |
Getting the party started is Kœnig, the drum and vocals soloist who garnered fame in the Austrian neo-Dada project königleopold, with its intoxicating performance just skirting the edge of insanity. Battle-ax, a native of Australia who has made a home for herself in Vienna, opens the Main Stage with a loud, droning sound performance whipped up with viola and electronics. Spectro Duo’s live multimedia performance segues into the world of microsounds. Students in Linz Art University’s Interface Cultures master’s program once again confront various contexts of media art.
Kœnig
Photo: Paul Gärtner
Dorian Concept
Photo: Philippe Levy
Next up is Nabihah Iqbal aka Throwing Shade (Ninja Tune), who will perform her eclectic mixture of contemporary electronic music, pop and Internet aesthetic. Her local Ninja Tune colleague, Dorian Concept, then steps up to do a melodic, beat-heavy set featuring material from his soon-to-be-released album. He will be followed by Darkstar, Englishmen known for their energetic live performances and an inimitable mix of techno sounds, minimalism, grime and left-field pop. Lorenzo Senni, who got his start as a drummer but whose latest album on the Warp label is 100 percent percussion-free, concludes these proceedings on the Main Stage with melodic, driving trance set-pieces.
Lorenzo Senni
Throwing Shade
Photo: Miya Shen
The night owls among us will be happy to learn that, parallel to the Main Stage lineup, the Salon Stage will feature local Linzer live acts working in the experimental electronic music genre beginning at 11 p.m. At 1:30 a.m., legendary Dutch DJ Marcelle / Another Nice Mess serves up one of her fabled obscure-sample-studded sets—just the stuff for people who need to keep on dancing.
When a ray of white light enters a prism, it exits split into its constituent elements. Each resulting color’s unique character is brought out and demonstrated through its interaction with the prism, thanks to the qualities of the light, as an active element, and those of the prism, as the passive element.
The Liberation of the Feet is a performance with fashionable sounding foot based appendages attempts to demake the physical high-heeled shoe and its associated stereotype meanings. An experimental taxonomy of motions is performed by the feet coupled with machine learning, FM sound synthesis, rapid mixing motion control, expressive lighting technology and pop attitude.
This performance is an electroacoustic and video piece reflecting on the current political climate in the Philippines.
It attempts to translate the current climate of demagogy, terror and disdain for the democratic institutions of this Southeast Asian country into sound and visuals. It is based on field recordings, synthetic sounds and visuals and will receive its world premiere at the Big Concert Night.
C-drík will present a live performance based on a selection of recordings essentially made at the Observatory Studio in Singapore as well as in his studio in Berlin. Cymbals, gongs, metallophones (gamelan), various metallic objects and voices have been selected and electronically processed to form the core of the track. The result is an introspective electroacoustic piece that blends drones and gentle percussions.
In contrast to the noisy soundscapes of most parts of South Asia, which tend to become a massive wall of sounds, the composition’s minimalist approach plunges the listener into various meditative states (or let’s hope so!).
The piece emphasizes the contrast between sounds of Southeast Asian instruments, which are usually made to be performed in a collective ensemble, and the isolationism of the listeners (and performer), an unusual concept in Southeast Asian societies, in which social and cultural activities are usually made or attended collectively.
The OK Night, much appreciated by music enthusiasts and night-owls, is the place to be on the Festival Saturday for everyone who wants to crank it up after the Electronic Theatre or the Klangwolke.
Program
from 09 PM
OK Platz, Solaris
B.Ranks (BLVZE/Klub Sir3ne, AT)
k:sun (BLVZE/Tiefentanz, AT)
from 10 PM
OK Deck
Ziúr (Infinite Machine, DE)
Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2017
Gonçalo F. Cardoso & Ruben Pater (Discrepant, PT/NL):
A Study into 21st Century Drone Acoustics /PT
Award of Distinction, Prix Ars Electronica 2017
Mischmeister M (SHASH RECORDS, AT)
Heap (Neubau, AT)
AT-AT-AT (AT)
Visual design dasgegenlicht & Leonardo (Backlab/ La´Do, AT)
Curated by Markus Reindl
Admission free!
CyberArts exhibition open till 9 PM.