Spatial Z by John Bowers, Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof Hellström :: February 17, 2008 2:00 pm :: Fylkingen, Torkel Knutssonsgatan 2, Münchenbryggeriet, Stockholm, Sweden :: Part of the Stockholm Music Festival.

Spatial Z is a collaborative composition, jointly written and performed by experimental instrument maker John Bowers, sound artist Ann Rosén and composer Sten-Olof Hellström. The piece explores the spatiality of sound and problematises music as a physical and perceptual phenomenon. What is the connection between music and space? Between instruments and the environments they find themselves in? Between the spaces in which performers interact with their instruments and each other and the audience’s listening space? How wide and high is an abstract sound? What is the relationship between the concert (architectural) space and the (imaginary) spaces suggested in the music itself?

Spatial Z is a composition both in time and space. Sound from the performers will be disseminated through a variety of spaces both real and virtual at varying levels of scale from miniature to the largest imaginable. The concert hall itself becomes a feedback instrument which the audience can engage with by moving around throughout the duration of the piece. By using various unorthodox self-made instruments and techniques such as live coding and circuit bending (where, respectively, hardware and software are manipulated in the performance itself), Bowers, Hellström and Rosén begin to map the ambiguous sonic spaces of Spatial Z.

Ann Rosén: Sound, space, people, meetings, processes and collaborations are all important factors in Ann Roséns art. In her recent works such as Deputy Silences, Schhh and Spatial Silences she explores different aspects of sound and the social context in which it is encountered. As a composer Ann works mainly with EAM (Electr-Acoustic Music) utilizing different surround techniques such as in Surr, IC - first movement, Stress etc. When performing Ann uses a variety of sensor based controllers that she develops and builds herself. In her solo work Ann prefers to work with compositions but together with others such as Hellström and Bowers she often but not always takes on the role as an improviser.

John Bowers is currently a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Music, University of East Anglia, UK. As an improvising musician, John is part of Tonesucker, an improvising noise metal electric guitar duo (CD Slaughterhouse available on Onoma Research), the Gentlemen of Circuitry, a quartet who play antique and homemade electronic instruments, and the electro-acoustic improvisors The Zapruda Trio (CD Live at Smallfish available on vision-of-sound), amongst other collaborations. Solo work includes The Dial: Have you been to Hilversum? (broadcast by Resonance FM, London), Do It Yourself Silence and Silence Silenced (contributed to the CD A Call for Silence, Sonic Arts Network), and Atonement for Violin Quartet (Norwich Gallery, UK), a four day long performance - installation - webcast revisiting the instrument destruction preoccupations of Fluxus artists. John is co-founder of the Onoma Research music label. A monograph specifying John’s characteristic approach to music, social science research and technical affairs, Improvising Machines, is available here.

Sten-Olof Hellström has been active as a professional composer since 1984 and gained a Masters of Music in composition at University of East Anglia, England 1990. He has been employed as a researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) since 1997. As a researcher Sten-Olof has mainly worked in the fields of Human Computer Interaction and sonification (representing data with sound). One example of current work is the construction and development of a computer interface for the visually impaired. Sten-Olof’s main occupation and profession is as a composer working with electro-acoustic music. His music has been performed and broadcast around the world . He is also active as a performer playing live electro-acoustic music on his own and with others such as Ann Rosén, John Bowers, Bennett Hogg and Simon Vincent. Sten Olof is also part of Zapruda Trio, the Aspen Duo, Enscharm and others.

[Image: Spatial Silences by Ann Rosén]