IMATRONIC extended | Festival of Electronic Music

The IMATRONIC Festival of the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics (IMA) is the largest festival of electronic music in Germany to present and award contemporary developments in the field of electronic music. The focus of this year’s event is the Giga- Hertz award presentations, the concert series, Piano+, the GRM Acusmonium, the Symposium on Neuroesthetics, which seeks to provide greater insights on the experience and creation of music. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place as part of a public event on November 24, 2012 at 7 p.m. in the ZKM | Karlsruhe.

This year, the Giga-Hertz Prize is to be awarded in three categories:
* Giga-Hertz Prize for Electronic Music
* Giga-Hertz Prize for Sound Art
* Giga-Hertz Prize for Dance and Media

The Prize for Electronic Music was first awarded in 2007 together with the Freiburg SWR EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO. Here, the main prize is presented to renowned composers for their life’s work; composers may apply for one of the four prizes for production. The 2012 program is directed particularly at artists whose work emphasizes audio-visual art. Following the large number of high quality submissions, the number of awards this year was raised from five to seven. In addition to the jury members Peter Weibel (Chairman of the ZKM | Karlsruhe), Ludger Brümmer (Director of the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics) and Detlef Heusinger (Director of the SWR EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO), this year Frank Madlener (Director of the IRCAM | Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique Paris), Heike Hoffmann (Artistic Director of the Salzburg Biennale) and Robert Normandeau (Composer, Professor Université de Montréal) could be won as distinguished guests.

Giga-Hertz Prize 2012 Award Winners
In the category “Supporting Prize”, the Giga-Hertz Prize for Electronic Music this year goes to Douglas Henderson (*1960, USA) for his work “In Order” as well as to Kumiko Omura (*1970, Japan) for her composition “Double-Contour Infinite”. The prizes were both awarded to Brice Pauset (*1965, France) for "Schwarzmärkte”, Lara Morciano (*1968, Italy) for “Raggi di stringhe”, and Valerio Sannicandro (*1971, Italy) for “Forces Motrices”. For their life work, Emmanuel Nunes (1941–2012, Portugal) and Pauline Oliveros (*1932, USA) were both awarded with the main prize.
A novelty this year is the Giga-Hertz Prize for Dance and Media emerging from ZKM’s Walter-Fink Prize is to be awarded to Kasper T.
Toeplitz (*1960, Poland) and Myriam Gourfink (*1968, Fance). Similarly, the nomination for the Giga-Hertz Prize for Sound Art, with which Ryoji
Ikeda (*1966, Japan) and Carsten Nicolai (*1965, Germany) are to be honored for their joint publication "cyclo.id" is to be presented for the first time this year.

The name Concert Series Piano+ already indicates the core theme: the fusion of piano and electronic sounds. The concert series “Piano+” in four concerts and curated by pianist Catherine Vickers presents central positions and most recent developments in contemporary piano literature, which go beyond the limits of the instrument extending it medially, theatrically or electroacoustically.

The Symposium on Neuroaesthetics, which is to take place in collaboration with the Hertie Foundation, illustrates current tendencies in neuroaesthetics with the focus on music. International experts will discuss reciprocal effects in the experience and creation of music, and the activities and functionalities of the human brain. Thematically related concerts will held and complete the program.

As part of the project “Composing With Sounds” financed by the European Commission, the Akusmonium of the GRM Paris is once again guest at the ZKM. The Akusmonium is a unique orchestra of loudspeakers, an arrangement of 80 acoustically distinct as well as tonal and visually different loudspeakers attuned in a special way to the interpretation of acousmatic music. Here, the public itself experiences a live interpretation of electro-acoustic works in an impressive range of
sound. With the ZKM Sound Dome concerts, an ellipse-formed installation comprising 43 loudspeakers in the ZKM_Cube is placed opposite to the Akusmonium as another high-tech instrument.

The Festival closes with the installation TBA21 Sound Space, which adopts the arrangement of the loudspeakers in “The Morning Line”, a large-format steel-sounding architecture, which can presently be experienced in Vienna. Since April, about 50 loudspeakers as installation “TBA21” are mounted in the ZKM Foyer, now conceived as a theme day. The program of this day comprises lectures on the theme of spatial music, premier performances of newly commissioned works with loudspeaker music and live concerts.