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SCREEN MUSIC 2
Mechanical cinema-verite, circuit bending, electric/electronic audio-video
Festival della Creativita
25 - 28 October 2007
Fortezza da Basso - Teatrino Lorenese
Florence
Free entrance
Screen Music is a project born from an idea of Gianni De Simone and curated
by Marco Mancuso founder and director of Digicult (www.digicult.it) and
Andrea Mi, director of Videominuto (www.videominuto.it)
Screen Music belongs to the program of the Creativity Festival, a new and
innovating event promoted in Tuscany to affirm its role of "netpoint" in the
global creativity net, a "pop" event with a high communicative profile that
has the declared purpose of becoming an interactive window for the monsters
of the different fields of creativity, innovation and research. In the wide
fields of contemporary experimentation, within the new mixedmedia
disciplines/subjects, chapter number two of the Screen Music review,
presents a multishaped group of artists (performers, videoartists, musicians
and designers) protagonists of the most advanced electronic audiovisual
research, in the many of its possible declinations, considering this ear
also the possible means of dialogue between "digital" and "material"
aesthetics.
Therefore of the first edition of Screen Music had focused on the analysis
and description of the most modern forms of electronic audiovisual
interaction in terms of projections and live performances, the second
edition of this review in the location of the Teatrino Lorenese, wants to
point out the need of a reflection on the audiovisual aesthetics of
tangible, of effectiveness, of manual character and analogic mechanicalness,
in a period of excessive digital over-stimulation and exasperate
techno-fetishism. A step backwards, a moment to reflect and stop, a return
to physicalness of action, to underline the possible alternative ways of
audiovisual creativity that, operating by now for many years, assume a
reason and a creative and operative value thanks indeed to the deep
antithesis that they keep in opposition to the reigning digitalization of
artistic instruments and creative aesthetics.
It's above all the part of Screen Music 2 followed by Marco
Mancuso/Digicult, Saturday 27/10 and Sunday 28/10 that focuses on these
dynamics, thanks to some audiovisual performances where synaesthesia within
music and video is realized through the dialogue between the sound produced
with mechanical instruments and electrical and physical processes and the
image that visualizes what happens on the stage, staging a direct relation
in between the resonant source and the visual perception of the audience.
In this direction moves also the last project Popular Mechanics of the
pioneering musician Pierre Bastien produced by Aphex Twin's Rephlex Label,
Italian absolute preview, where a system of motors, filters, paper
instruments, pulleys and Mecano pieces build up the rhythmic and hypnotic
base of an audiovisual concert in the form of cinema-verite unique in the
whole world. And more, the where the electromagnetic camp produced by the
two projectors creates the audio backstage when it interacts with the
graphical patterns designed by the same artists on special projected slides,
for an audiovisual performance in real time completely improvised and
absolutely genial. The Americans Lou Objects are instead within the most
important representatives on an international level of the circuit bending
aesthetics, art of improvising audiovisual situationist performances through
circuiting in real time electric and electronic elements, whose screen
visualization constitutes a hypnotic element of fascination for the present
audience.
The Italian school is represented in Screen Music 2 by Mylicon/En, who
characterize themselves visualizing the processes deriving from a set of
analogical and mechanical instruments, able to produce sounds digitally
sampled and edited in real time. The club part of the two nights is in the
end entrusted to two completely different but at the same time fascinating
projects: on one side the 8 bit aesthetics of the collective from New York
8BitPeoples, present with its representatives Bit Shifter and Nullsleep with
the visuals of the French Otro, that thanks to a wise manual work of
hackering and circuiting of Game Boys and old Commodore, Atari and Amiga
consoles, will lead the audience to an irreverent dance audiovisual delirium
on the sounds and images typical of modern micromusic. On the other side the
icon, body art performer and dj Franko B, will measure himself with the
software artist and vj Sanch Tv in a live audiovisual set astride between
techno music and generative art.
Finally, the opening night of Screen music 2, on Thursday 25/10, followed by
Abdrea Mi/Videominute together with the staff of RE::LIFE, will be a night
totally dedicated to join and weld the audiovisual connections between the
best "old school" of hip hop and dj culture (represented by the sampling
percussionist Steinski) and the most promising guard of the electronic scene
(excellently represented by the Swiss Dimlite and by our Costa) visualized
live by the graphic evolutions of the Spanish Iglesias Heras. Tommy Boy,
Antidote, Ninja Tune, Stones Throw , Sonar Kollectiv are just some of the
basic labels with whom the artists involved in this project have recorded
and this will also be the occasion to verify the creative path that begins
in the end of the 70s and arrives to the next future, twining styles an
sounds in between cymbals and samplers, laptops and videomixers. From the
Hip Hop Old School to the Abstract Hip.
PROGRAM::
THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER - cured by Andrea Mi/Videominuto
23.30-00.15 - Costa (Ita) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
00-30-01.15 - Dimlite (Svi) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
01.30-03.00 - Steinski (USA) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
SATURDAY 27 OCTOBER - cured by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00-30-01.30 - Mylicon/En (Ita)
23.30-00.30 - Loud Objects (Usa)
01.30-03.00 - Franko B (UK) + Sanch Tv (Fra)
SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER - cured by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00.30-01.30 - Pierre Bastien (Fra)
23.30-00.30 - Mikomikona (Ger)
01.30-03.00 - 8 Bit Peoples: Bit Shifter & Nullsleep (Usa) + Otro (Fra)
BIO::
PIERRE BASTIEN
Composer and multi-instrumentalist with transalpine origins, Pierre Bastien
creates electro-acoustic sounds using mechanical toy-musicians in strange
conglomerations of pulleys and BONGOLETTI, rough spring-loaded gears and
little motors, near to the tradition of surrealist bricolage. The final
results lead back to improvisation music and to ethnic traditional
musicality: click and bass drum, electronic melodies and mutant trumpets as
contour to the many micro-percussions, elaborations quite free and released
from the usual stylistic standards at the point to thrill also Squarepusher
and Aphex Twin that wanted Pierre Bastien with them in the respective
English and Italian tours. It is a unique combination of experimentalism,
melody and sound-art that even though keeps a happy and suggestive
pleasantness in listening. With the new project the cinema-verite of Pierre
Bastien is characterized by paper drums, paper organ and by sheets of paper
that alternate with the usual Meccano pieces and circuits, for the
audiovisual portrayal exalted by the sweet and romantic intervention of the
jazz trumpet played live by the same musician.
http://www.pierrebastien.com/
MIKOMIKONA
Mikomona is a Berlinese duo composed of Andreas Eberlein and Birgit
Schneider. Their audiovisual performances, imprinted towards a strict
minimalist aesthetic harshness, are real sessions of experimental laboratory
during which the duo concentrates on the physical transformations of sound
to image and vice versa. Driven experimentalism, liveness and strong scene
impact are the uprising characteristics of their works, designed in the
balance between deepened theoretic consciousness and technologic research.
The instruments that they use in live shows can be overhead projectors
equipped with home-built analogical devices that read and transform into
audio signals the bedding of optical layers of the slides, or strange
machineries with the 16mm.
http://www.digicult.it/2007/www.zuviel.tv/mikomikona.html
FRANKO B
Franko B, born in Milan and living in London since 1979, has created
projects using languages such as video, photography, performances, painting,
installations, sculpture and mixed media since 1990. his performances have
been hosted in spaces such as the Tate Modern, ICA, South London Gallery and
Palais des Beaux-Artes, Brussels, while he held lessons at the St. Martins
School of Art, DasArt, New York University and the Courtauld Institute of
Art. Already two biographies have been written on his artistic career:
'Franko B' (Black Dog Publishing 1998) e 'Oh Lover Boy' (2001). The most
recent publications of the artist are a photographic book titled 'Still Life'
(2003) and the monograph Blinded by Love while his latest projects are on
the web: www.franko-b-mentoring.co.uk, www.de-mentored.blogspot.com. Since
2004 Franko B works as dj.
http://www.digicult.it/2007/www.franko-b.com
BIT SHIFTER
Bit Shifter explores the energy of low definition music composed and
performed on a Nintendo Game Boy. The result is an enjoying and evocative
sound performed on a platform that everyone thinks technically limited. Bit
Shifter's music, whose realization is allowed by software designed by
Oliver Wittchow and Johan Kotlinski (nanoloop and Little Sound Dj), defines
a low budget aesthetic where a minimal hardware equipment is pushed further
to the limit of its expressive potentialities. Based in New York, Bit
Shifter has produced music for 8bitpeoples, 555 Recordings, Mirex, Ketacore
e Astralwerks, performing in many live sets around the world.
http://bit.shifter.net/
NULLSLEEP
Co-founder of the collective 8bitpeoples, Nullsleep creates a pop and
romantic sound using old electronic devices trying to avoid their technical
limits. Sweet melodies and intense rhythmic pulses are produced and lead
through small plastic instruments in an evocative audiovisual research but
never nostalgic. His recordings with 8bitpeoples, Astralwerks e Aniplex have
made of him one of the most famous artists on the international stage.
Based in New York, Nullsleep has performed in live shows between America,
Europe and Asia, participating also to the dates of the International
Chiptune Resistance World Tour in 2006.
http://www.nullsleep.com/
OTRO
Otromatic is a vj that creates visuals using old amiga computers and mobile
consoles. His artistic research moves in between the 8bit experimentation,
science fiction of low cost kind and influences from the historical
vanguards to create dynamic and evocative visual catalogue. Very active as a
graphic designer, realizes musical covers and projects of coordinate image
for many labels.
http://it.youtube.com/otromatic
MYLICON/EN
Mylicon/EN is a duo that rises from the collaboration between the vieomaker
Lino Greco and the musician Daniela Cattivelli. Since 2002 the duo has
started a route leading to experimentation of new ways of interaction
between live images and sounds inside a device in the balance between
digital dematerialization (referring with it also to the whole
experimentation of the last years around the phenomena of VJs and livemedia)
and the return to action physicality. Live exhibitions characterizes itself
for the use of "analogical" and mechanical sources and instruments of
various kinds ad origin. A kind of work that touches different fields and
subjects, Mylicon/EN finds space in festivals and reviews of various kinds:
from contexts essentially tied up with electronic music to vjing festivals,
from art galleries to performatory and theatrical arts. Moreover Mylicon/EN
has realized various video that appeared in many international festivals and
different videoinstallations.
http://www.myliconen.it/
SANCH TV
Sanch Tv is David Dessens a French freelance designer who creates software
for meso.net: instruments for video synthesis in real time that use physical
interfaces and full-developed instruments between motion graphics and audio
scores. His live visuals surprisingly react to the music they visualize, and
since it generate patterns and sequences of images that adapt themselves to
the space and location. His scientific and mathematic studiesproduced
performances that play with 3dabstraction in creating fluid and unexpected
shapes.
http://sanchtv.com/
LOUD OBJECTS
Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta e Katie Shima are Loud Objects, electronic noise
group of musicians, artists and architects that build digital circuits on
the stage with welding and microchips. The action takes place directly on an
old projector, that makes the assembling smoky and transparent, that runs
hand in hand with low level circuits that create the music. The first five
minutes of their set are usually characterized by complete silence due to
the building of the starting circuit, that explodes in the end in a dens a
real sound. But don't think that these small circuits create light sounds.
noise is hard and heavy, modelled and modulated each time with the addition
of new chips to the low-fi system.
http://www.loudobjects.com/
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DIGICULT is a cultural project involved in digital culture and electronic
arts. DigiCult project is directed by Marco Mancuso and based on the active
participation of 40 professional people about, who represent the first wide
Italian network of journalists, curators, artists and critics in the field
of electronic culture. And on a multitude of updated strategies around new
media communication and networking activities. DigiCult is a web portal but
is also the editor of the monthly magazine DigiMag, discussing with a critic
and journalistic approach, about net art, hacktivism, video art,
electronica, audio video, interaction design, artificial intelligence, new
media, software art, performing art. DigiCult produce an electronic music
and audiovisual podcast and the newsletter international service DigiNews.
DigiCult is involved in side-activities like media partnerships and
journalistic/critic reports, consultancy and curatorial activities and
artists international promotion.
http://www.digicult.it/en
http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/index.asp
http://www.digicult.it/podcast/
http://www.digicult.it/en/Credits.asp
Screen_Music_2:_Mechanical_cinema-verite,_circuit_be nding,_electric/electronic_audio-video
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Type: discussion