[Image: David Dunn] Navigating the Space of the Future - Seminar with presentations by: Yolande Harris, David Dunn and Atau Tanaka:: April 15, 2008; 8:30 pm :: Netherlands Media Art Institute, Keizersgracht 264, 1016 EV Amsterdam :: LIVE STREAM.

What does it mean to navigate? What is the importance of location specificity? What does it mean to get lost? The increasing accuracy of satellite navigation strives to eliminate the possibility of human error, but it also produces a sense of dislocation from one’s immediate environment by abstracting location as the coordinates of longitude and latitude. What place is there for one’s body, one’s senses, one’s conscious and unconscious awareness of space, if this knowledge is so apparently made redundant by GPS? Continue reading

Schwelle II at Festival EXIT, Maison des Arts, Creteil (Paris) France :: March 28 - 29, 2008.

Schwelle is a three part new media and performance project using cutting edge acoustic and interactive technologies to explore the extreme threshold states of consciousness that constitute human experience. Schwelle II is a live performance in which the audience confronts a lone single performer Michael Schumacher, master improviser and former dancer with William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet, experiencing the traumatic transition period between death and rebirth. Continue reading

[Image: Icon attached to the railing] Touched Echo, a performative installation by Markus Kison, can be experienced at Brühlsche Terrasse, Dresden until October 31, 2008. The installation takes visitors back to the night of February 13, 1945 when Dresden’s Old Town was almost completely destroyed.

An icon on the balustrade instructs participants to adopt a contemplative position - one must lay ones elbows onto the balustrade, cover ones ears, and look at the Old Town. While in this position, they hear the sounds of bombers and explosions, which travel through their arms directly into their inner ears via bone conduction. Continue reading

Stéphan Barron developed the concept of Technoromanticism between 1991 and 1996 for his doctoral thesis at the University Paris VIII. He also developed the concept of Earth Art in his essay Poetry of Earth Art, reproduced here:

“Earth Art uses the planetary dimension of the earth as an artistic medium and was developed in this century as a corollary to the telecommunications revolution and to the globalization of all spheres of human activity. Earth art uses planet Earth as the raw material for emotional and introspective expression. Continue reading

People are used to the sound of skin played by percussion instruments. Most of them consist of at least one membrane (skin) that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with parts of a player’s body, or with some sort of implement, to produce sound. But what if the skin is human? Percussion denotes the collision of two bodies producing sound. Then what if both the two colliding bodies are human? This scenario is not a morbid fantasy but the core of the latest Daan Birkmann’s creation: Skinstrument. It’s a musical instrument that can be played by two or more people. Continue reading

Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation is a comprehensive exhibition and conference project planned for July 2008. The project searches for a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic through the facilitation of dialog between the discourses of sound art, architecture and urban planning as well as the commissioning and exhibition of several site-specific works in various locations around the city of Berlin.

Tuned City presents artistic work and theoretical approaches derived from a critical preoccupation with sound in the context of urban and architectonic situations and their socio-political implications. Continue reading

Orobouros by Robin Parmar :: January 24, 2008; 7:30 pm :: premiering at Excursions 2008 Performance Art Festival, Belltable, 69 O’Connell Street, Limerick, Ireland.

The piece takes its name from the snake which forever eats its own tail. It is most often seen as the principle of eternity and indeed of the universe itself. But it also represents a feedback loop, and hence the mind of the subject viewing it. In the centre of the Belltable gallery is a microphone, standing alone. A hum of energy fills the space, textured noise emanating from a number of radios scattered throughout. Continue reading

Designing for the 21st Century Design Challenge 5 - Embodiment of a Live Music Algorithm by Tim Blackwell: Nature-inspired algorithms for autonomous music generation have been developed which have been used in performances. This software has many of the abilities of a live improvising musician, it can create, suggest and respond to those around it. However, it only has presence as software. In this design challenge we are interested in embodiment. How do we imbue the software with a meaningful physical presence?

If we assume that this will have a positive effect on the experience of the listener and off the performer, possibly increasing the space of possible interactions for example, the question comes: Continue reading

Bodycoder - Voice :: November 22, 2007; 7.45 pm :: Watermans, 40 High Street, Brentford, London.

This unique solo-show is a multi-media revelation of the human voice and its unimaginable intensity. Ten years research into human body movement, multi-sensory perception environments and digital processing has brought about this exceptional show performed by Julie Wilson-Bokowiec. Bodycoder - Voice is part of an ongoing experiment in connecting body movements with sound, intertwining the sensual with the sonic. The experiments render the voice multidimensional and examine how the natural movement vocabulary of the body can become an expressive medium and create and manipulate sound. Continue reading

Living Electronic Music by Simon Emmerson - Drawing on recent ideas that explore new environments and the changing situations of composition and performance, Simon Emmerson provides a significant contribution to the study of contemporary music, bridging history, aesthetics and the ideas behind evolving performance practices. Whether created in a studio or performed on stage, how does electronic music reflect what is live and living? What is it to perform ‘live’ in the age of the laptop?

Many performer-composers draw upon a ‘library’ of materials, some created beforehand in a studio, some coded ‘on the fly’, others ‘plundered’ from the widest possible range of sources. But others refuse to abandon traditionally ‘created and structured’ electroacoustic work. Continue reading