Fire ulike norske komponister har komponert fire ulike elektroakustiske musikkstykker med temaet Verden i post-antropocen -Er dette slutten eller starten på en ny syklus? Med utgangspunkt i dette utforsker komponistene Kari Telstad Sundet, Martyna Kosecka, Louisa Danielsson og Magdaléna Manderlová bruken av lyd og romlighet som materiale for en kunstnerisk tilnærming til tematikken.
I tillegg til fremføringene av disse verkene vil vi høre tre nye og spennende verk for både video og flerkanals-lyd av Olivia Køppe Christoffersen (urfremføring), Anna Berg og Natasha Barrett.
Alt vil bli fremført i 3D-lyd.
Velkommen til en annerledes og spennende lytteopplevelse!
I samarbeid med nyMusikk Vestfold og Tønsberg og Færder Bibliotek.
Konsert er støttet av Kulturrådet
Lørdag 10. juni kl. 12.00 – 13.00 Gratis inngang, ingen påmelding
Blackboxen Tønsberg og Færder Bibliotek, Storgaten 16, Tønsberg
Program:
Kari Telstad Sundet (NO): All Machines Now Louisa Danielsson (NO/SE): Is it for the Government? Martyna Kosecka ((NO/PL) Still Life Magdaléna Manderlová (CZ/NO): A Forest of Ears Anna Berg(NO): Klucceeckax Olivia Køppe Christoffersen(DK): No input, it might be good for you Natsha Barrett (NO/UK): Impossible Moments from Venice 2
EAU har bestilt nye verk av fire unge komponister med temaet: «Verden i post-antropocenen. Er dette slutten eller starten på en ny syklus?”. EAU spatialiserte verkene for framføring på konserter med mange høyttalere rundt publikum.
Gratis!
Electric Audio Unit er Norges eneste profesjonelle ensemble for formidling av elektroakustisk musikk, med spesielt fokus på flerkanalsverk, 3D-lyd og immersive lytteopplevelser. EAU ønsker å fremme elektroakustisk musikk i hele Norge. EAU består av profilerte kunstnere og utøvere: Natasha Barrett, Ernst van der Loo og Mathieu Lacroix . Ensemblet har siden 2009 gjennomført over 50 konserter med 440 verk på programmet, minst 84 har vært urframføringer, og cirka halvparten er bestilt fra norske komponister.
Verk av:
Kari Telstad Sundet (NO): All Machines Now (urf)
Louisa Danielsen (NO/SE): It’s for the Government (urf)
Martyna Kosecka (NO/PL) Still Life (urf)
Magdaléna Manderlová (CZ/NO): A Forest of Ears (urf)
Ernst van der Loo (NO/NL): Kýkloi Alpha & Beta
Mathieu Lacroix (NO/CA): Demiurge
Natasha Barrett (NO/UK): Pockets of Space (akusmatisk og video)
Kari Telstad Sundet (NO): All Machines Now (urf)
Is post apocalyptic dystopia and mass extinction leaving you stressed and sleepless? Don’t worry. Your friendly AI can help. Nothing like a nice soundscape to soothe those frazzled nerves.
Kari Telstad Sundet is a Norwegian composer whose artistic focus is on the visual nature of music and sound, and on the way music can trigger our common associations and memories. She mainly writes chamber music with electronics. Kari makes extensive use of field recordings and archive materials in much of her work. Her music has been performed at festivals such as Borealis,UNM, Bergen Assembly and Sound of Stockholm.
Louisa Danielsen (NO/SE): It’s for the Government (urf)
Is it for the Government? (4:03) is a piece reflecting on our relation to material progress and development. The material used in the piece was recorded at different building sites around Gothenburg. It narrates a dialogue between machines and humans and how this relationship might develop over time.
Louisa PaImi (b.1995) is a composer, musician and sound artist from Tromsø, Norway . In her work, she combines electronics, electroacoustics and 3D sound technology with dance and live performance. She is interested in how the feeling of space can be transformed by manipulating and spatializing sound. Her music is often based on field recordings and she often investigates social phenomena through the Arctic gaze. She has a Bachelor from the Academy of Music and Drama in Göteborg and has studied under Natasha Barrett and Arve Henriksen. In short time her work has gained recognition and has been presented several places in Europe such as Inkonst (Malmö), Palace of the Grand Dukes (Vilnius), Sentralen (Oslo) Insomnia Festival (Tromsø), 3:e Våningen (Göteborg) and Verona Resona (Verona). She has collaborated with several established artists such as Per Martinsen (Mental Overdrive) and Toby Kassell (Dancer and choreographer). In 2023 she got the title Emerging Artist from the Arctic Arts Festival.
Martyna Kosecka (NO/PL) Still Life (urf)
Still life is a work of art that usually presents an inanimate object and tries to catch its immobilized essence. My composition is trying to capture the nature of the world after the ecological disaster that might occur quite fast if we do not take specific actions to stop this process. I describe three elements as the bitter symbols of the post-apocalypse: our decomposition and fall as human beings (corpse), global warming consequence (grains of sand and dry soil), and overtaking pollution (plastic). The only sounds incorporated in this composition create a still life of a new inanimate world: electronically transformed human breath, sounds of soil and sand, and finally, sounds of raw prerecorded plastic objects.
Martyna Kosecka’s music grows out of her interest in philosophy, physics, linguistics and the mythologies and fables of the world. She is a Polish composer, performer, conductor, curator and researcher in new music. In her projects she works with narratives, microtonality, symbolism and ritualism, by using multidisciplinary solutions. She emphasises the richness of transcultural relationships in art, drawing from the cultures of Iran, Poland and Norway, the countries she has connected through her life. Martyna currently lives and works in Oslo, where she is involved in the curatorial activities of VoxLAB, the Periferien contemporary music concert series and the Norwegian Society of Composers. Since 2018, her compositions have been published by Donemus Holland. Her music is performed at festivals and concerts around the world, including the International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn, rainy days festival, OstravaDays Festival or Music Biennale Zagreb.
Magdaléna Manderlová (CZ/NO): A Forest of Ears (urf)
In «A Forest of Ears», Manderlová worked with field recordings, studio recordings of plastic materials and hydrophone recordings. A Forest of Ears is an imagined soundscape where everything tingles, sounds and listens.
Magdaléna Manderlová is a multidisciplinary artist based in Trondheim. In her practice, she likes to think, feel and dream through sound and explores listening as a tool to engage with the world. Inspired by acoustic ecology, she seeks reciprocal ways of relating and often engages with places and environments by walking and spending time with them. Her works in the form of sonic essays, field recordings, participatory soundwalks, site-specific projects, performances, and writings, have been presented internationally. Manderlová is educated in the art academies in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and Trondheim, Norway. She co-runs Røst Artist in Residence program at Skomvær lighthouse, Sápmi-Northern Norway.
Ernst van der Loo (NO/NL): Kýkloi Alpha & Beta
Ideen er basert på bruken av lydsyntesealgoritmer som Xenakis brukte i hans elektroniske stykker Gendy 3 og S.709 sent i sin karriere. Spatialiseringen av lydene vil bli gjort ved hjelp av sanntidsanalyser av data fra lydsyntesen. Dermed blir amplituden, klangfargen og andre parametre og kvaliteter til disse lydene grunnlaget for deres bevegelse i fremføringsrommet.
Ernst van der Loo (1974) is a Dutch composer/performer based in Norway. He studied sound engineering and electroacoustic composition & performance. He obtained a bachelor degree from the institute of Sonology in The Hague, The Netherlands and a master degree at the Norwegian Music Academy in Oslo, Norway. He studied with Kees Tazelaar, Richard Barrett, Konrad Boehmer and Natasha Barrett. He has been active as a performer in the free improvisation scene but his current work mainly focuses on fixed media spatial audio composition. He also worked in the theater sector as sound engineer and sound designer. In 2020 and 2021 he collaborated with writer/director Rudolf Terland Bjørnerem on the “Flettverk” audio walks.
Mathieu Lacroix (NO/CA): Demiurge
Stykket mitt er inspirert av volden i gestene i stykker som Jonchaies (1977) og Pithoprakta (1955-56). Jeg dekonstruere og dekontekstualisere flere av disse gestene for å utforske deres indre spektromorfologi. Disse bevegelsene deretter bli forsterket, forvrengt, strukket, osv. på diverse måter rundt publikum. Spatialisering er inspirert av Xenakis’ ulike akustiske rombruk i perkusjonsstykkene hans. I hovedsak kan komposisjonen beskrives som å gjenskape akustiske klangfarger i elektroakustisk musikk for å forsterke det fysiske og det tunge i Xenakis’ oeuvre.
Mathieu Lacroix er en fransk kanadisk komponist, produsent, musiker og programmerer bosatt i Norge siden 2010. I sin musikk prøver han å sidestille elektroakustiske og akustiske tradisjoner, med mål om å skape relevant samtidsmusikk. Han er interessert i hvordan man kan få musikere og datamaskiner til å kunne tolke hverandre innenfor den klassiske tradisjonen. Han jobber med Trondheim Sinfonietta, Elektroakustisk Trondheim og Electric Audio Unit. I 2021 fullførte han en doktorgrad om synkroniseringsstrategier i mixed music. Musikken hans har blitt spilt i over 10 land verden over.
Natasha Barrett (NO/UK): Pockets of Space (akusmatisk og video)
Music: Natasha Barrett / Video: Open Ended Group
Pockets of Space is a collaboration between composer Natasha Barrett (NO/UK) and visual artists Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser, known collectively as OpenEndedGroup (USA). The original work was for 7th order 3D ambisonics (high resolution 3D sound for a 64-loudspeaker hemisphere), 3D video and interactive 3D VR. This concert is performed with 2D video projection. Pockets of Space is an intricate interplay between our consciousness, computational systems, and our physical environment. Everywhere we look and hear, points and lines of light and sound form tangled networks that continually reshape themselves. Sound and images gather into masses, scamper into noise and then invert into purer tones, before coalescing to reconfigure space. These otherworldly computer visions are all somehow conjured up from close readings of the real world; a connection revealed when on reaching the end, we see the work materialize in reality. The work was commissioned by IRCAM and premiered at the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Natasha Barrett is a composer specialising in acousmatic and live electroacoustic concert works, sound-art, installations and interactive music. Her work is often created by exploring cutting-edge audio technologies, yet strives for the music and not the technology to take centre stage. She has produced internationally acclaimed music and research in fields of 3-D sound, sonification and geoscience, and collaborates with performers, visual artists, architects and scientists. Recent collaborations include 3-D video artists OpenEndedGroup (USA), vocal ensemble Nordic Voices (NO), soloists Karin Hellqvist (SE) and Nils Henrik Asheim (NO), and geoscientists at the University of Oslo. She has received 26 prizes in international competitions, notably the Nordic Council Music Prize and the Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique Bourges ‘Euphonie D’Or’. Beside her work as an independent composer, she is active in performance and education.
Electric Audio Unit (EAU) and the Swedish Audiorama present our biggest Norwegian PULS-IV concert weekend to date, at the renowned Henie Onstad Arts Center, 3rd-4th December 2022, followed by a double concert evening at Fylkingen, Stockholm on the 12th December 2022.
Over a full 3D 32 channel loudspeaker array, the first day at HOK features a homage to the late Tor Halmrast where EAU performs world-premiers of his last trilogy for live electronics and 3D sound, with the pianist Sanae Yoshida, the second version of Natasha Barrett’s ‘Transformer’ for real-time AI performance with live electronics, 3D sound and 3D digital graphics and soprano Silje Aker Johnsen, a new live set from Hilde Marie Holsen (trumpet, live electronics and 3D sound) and a premier from the Danish composer Lola Ajima.
On the second day EAU presents two splitting new commissions from Mathieu Lacroix and Ernst van der Loo and our collaboration with the Swedish performance group Audiorama playing works from Nordic composers, including premiers by Magnus Bunnskog, Marcus Wrangö, Kajsa Lindgren and Maria W Horn.
On the 12th December, Audiorama also installs a full 3D 32 channel loudspeaker array, this time at Fylkingen in Stockholm, and to the program we add the video work ‘Portrait of Mrs Alwing’ by Tine Surel Lange.
Created with support from NorskKulturrådet, Norsk Komponistforeningen, Nordic PULS, Henie Onstad Arts Centre, Music Norway and Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere.
Tickets: www.hok.no/arrangementer/electric-edge
www.audiorama.se/events/2022/puls-fylkingen
Programs
Saturday 3rd December, 15.00-16.00.
Natasha Barrett (NO): “The Transformer #2”. Live electronics, 3D sound, real-time 3D digital graphics, with soprano Silje Aker Johnsen.
Lola Ajima (DK): “Ejection chain reaction”. Acousmatic, 3D sound. World-premier.
Hilde Marie Holsen: “Enjnj’kvestra astra” (rev. 2022). Trumpet, live electronics.
Tor Halmrast (NO): “FLUTR” (version 2022), “POLINES I” and “POLINES II” (2022). Live spatialisation and work interpretation by EAU, with pianist Sanae Yoshida. World-premiers.
Sunday 4th December, 15.00-16.00:
Magnus Bunnskog (SE): “Agens”. Video and acousmatic 3D sound. World-premier.
Marcus Wrangö (SE): “Structerm Array”. Analogue synths, live electronics. World-premier.
Kajsa Lindgren (SE): “Macrocosm”, Acousmatic 3D sound.
Mathieu Lacroix (CA/NO): “Demiurge – Xenakis’ 100 year celebration”, acousmatic 3D sound. World-premier.
Ernst van der Loo (NO): “Kýkloi Alpha & Beta – Xenakis’ 100 year celebration”, acousmatic 3D sound. World-premier.
Maria W Horn (SE): “CD-R/Cyanide”, acousmatic 3D sound. World-premier.
Monday 12 December, 18.00-20.30.
Natasha Barrett (NO): “The Transformer #2”. Live electronics, 3D sound, real-time 3D digital graphics, with soprano Silje Aker Johnsen.
Lola Ajima (DK): “Ejection chain reaction”. Acousmatic, 3D sound.
Mathieu Lacroix (CA/NO): “Demiurge – Xenakis’ 100 year celebration”, acousmatic 3D sound.
Ernst van der Loo (NO): “Kýkloi Alpha & Beta – Xenakis’ 100 year celebration”, acousmatic 3D sound.
Tine Surel Lange (NO): “Portrait of Mrs Alwing”, video and acousmatic sound.
Magnus Bunnskog (SE): “Agens”. Video and acousmatic 3D sound.
Marcus Wrangö (SE): “Structerm Array”. Analogue synths, live electronics.
Kajsa Lindgren (SE): “Macrocosm”, Acousmatic 3D sound.
Maria W Horn (SE): “CD-R/Cyanide”, acousmatic 3D sound.
Program notes and composer biogs
About the pieces: Program 1
Natasha Barrett (NO): The Transformer #2. Live electronics, 3D sound and video, with soprano Silje Aker Johnsen. 23-25 mins.
“The Transformer #2” is the second version of an audio-visual performance instrument created by Natasha Barrett using the latest in computer vision, sound analysis and AI. “The Transformer #2” begins by listening and seeing in ways similar to our own senses. It then creates its own real-time video and immersive 3D sound as a controlled hallucination trained on the voice and movement of Silje Aker Johnsen. The work is supported by the Fond for Lyd og Bilde and the The Composers’ Remuneration Fund (Komponistenes Vederlagsfonds).
Natasha Barrett is a composer exploring new technologies and experimental approaches to sound in a broad range of contemporary music, including concert works, public space sound-art installations and multimedia interactive music. She is internationally renowned for her electroacoustic and acousmatic music, and use of 3D sound technology in composition. Her work is commissioned and performed throughout the world and has received over 20 international awards including the Nordic Council Music Prize and most recently the Thomas Seelig Fixed Media Award for 2023. She is also active in performance, education and research.
Silje Aker Johnsen is a soprano and dancer. She holds a PhD in Artistic Research from the Opera Academy, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, with the project «A search for an extended physical interpretation of contemporary vocal music and of opera». She is also educated at the Grieg Academy, Bergen, Universität der Künste, Berlin and the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. Silje made her debut with the Berliner Kammeroper in 2006.
She has guested the Norwegian National Opera in “Ballerina” by Synne Skouen, with “Her” by Erik Dæhlin and Silje Aker Johnsen and in several other works. She has worked as a dancer in the Polish Dance Theatre, where she amongst other pieces danced in Minus 2 by Ohad Naharin. She is a member of Ensemble Neon, who won Spellemannspris for their debut album in 2016. Silje was awarded Performer of the Year 2013 by The Norwegian Society of Composers.
The microscopic size of fungi spores means they might only travel a few millimeters if ejected individually. Instead, the fungi synchronize spore ejections, creating a small, localized air stream. External cues can trigger the ejection of pioneer spores, causing mechanical changes in the surrounding tissue that trigger more ejections – An ejection chain reaction has started.
The piece takes inspiration from these chain reactions and investigates masses of sound particles, frequencies, densities and movements in space.
Lola Ajima /aka Boe Przemyslak (DK) is an electroacoustique composer and live looper. She studied under Christine Groult, Marco Marine and Jonathan Prager at Conservatoire de Pantin in Paris. In 2018 she co-founded XYZ Sound Collective situated in Copenhagen (DK) that challenges the spatial experience of sound art.
Hilde Marie Holsen (trumpet, live electronics). “Enjnj’kvestra astra” Improvisation-composition. 10 mins. EAU on spatialisation.
«Enjnj’kvestra astra» er gammalt jølstramål, og betyr «et annet sted». Hvor både forflyttinger av lydkilder og manipulasjoner av lyden til å bli noe annet tar lytteren rett og slett «Enjnj’kvestra astra».
Norwegian Hilde Marie Holsen processes her trumpet in the electronic realm, she blends the mournful tone of the brass instrument with the explorative field of electronic music to make music that sways somewhere between jazz, contemporary and drone music.
Tor Halmrast (NO): POLINES for piano (2022). Sanae Yoshida sythesiser.
Tor Halmrast (NO): FLUTR (version 2022). Live spatialisation and work interpretation by EAU, plus possibly pianist (on synth).
Tor Halmrast (NO): POLINES for synthesiser (2022). Sanae Yoshida synthesiser. EAU live spatialisation and work interpretation.
Tor Halmrast skriver om sitt nye verk: «You wave your hands like fluttering wings,…but you cannot fly!».
“The piece is inspired by all aspects of fluttering: abnormal heartbeats, The world´s fluttering drive into disorder, rapid permutations of something that might be a melody trying to reach the sky but is trapped like a Flutter Echo between two parallel, reflecting surfaces common in many rooms. The major sound effect is the extensive use of an algorithm simulating not only the rhythmic and directional aspects of flutter echoes, but more important: the rapid, gradual change of timbre, (which in real rooms is due to diffraction and the transformation of spherical waves into plane waves), giving the mid-/high frequency “tail” typical of flutter echoes. This material is then manipulated further, with extreme settings that of course do not appear in real rooms. In order to perceive the “reflections between the “walls”, the piece is a mixture of two layers: a quadrophonic layer and a more overall layer incorporating all loudspeakers.
total 15 mins. Live spatialisation and work interpretation by EAU, plus possibly pianist (on synth).
Tor Halmrast died early and suddenly in the summer of 2022 after a period of illness. These three works are a memorial to a fantastic person and composer that will be greatly missed.
Tor Halmrast was educated as a civil engineer in acoustics at NTNU in Trondheim, and for almost his entire professional career, over 40 years, he was chief acoustician at Statsbygg. In 2020, Halmrast started a new job at COWI. In 1992 he composed the music for the Norwegian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Seville and won the award for best composition/sound design. Together with the poet Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen, he created the radio opera “Alfa og Romeo”, which was awarded both the Prix Italia and the Edvard Prize in 1999. As recently as last year, his composition “Flutr” was nominated for Work of the Year by the Norwegian Composers Association.
EAU are part of Vitensenteret’s programme for Kulturnatt 2022 in Trondheim.
This concert features a premier of Magnus Bugge’s “None”, which was spatialized by EAU’s Ernst van der Loo.
There will be two concerts on Friday the 16th of September 2022. The first concert is at 7pm, and the second is at 8pm. The second concert will include a short Q&A with Magnus Bugge. Both concerts are free.
23 AUGUST 2022. 19.30-21:30. KULTURKIRKEN JAKOB, OSLO.
Welcome to Electric Audio Unit’s first collaboration concert after the summer hols!
This concert, in collaboration with VoxLab features premiers by Mariam Gviniashvili and Natasha Barrett, along with other works for voice and electronics. See you there!
Program:
PART 1:
‘The Transformer #1’ – Natasha Barrett (NO). Med sopran Silje Aker Johnsen (NO). Real-time 3D graphics, real-time multichannel sound. Composed using the new audio-visual performance instrument ‘The Transformer’. Premier!
‘Speak up before you have no voice’ – Mariam Gviniashvili (GE). Stereo sound with video. Premier!
PART 2:
‘Imaginary Real’: a program of theatrical works for voice, electronics and multichannel sound by Arsalan Abedian (IR/DE), Afshin Motlaghfard(IR), Joachim Heintz (DE), Martyna Kosecka(PL/NO), med sopran Sophia Körber (DE)
Supported by Norsk Kulturrådet, Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Komponistenes Vederlagsfond og Norsk Komponistforening.
EAU’s last event in the PULS-III Audiorama collaboration: PULS III: Ljudbänken @ Skeppsholmen. Playing from April 8th to May 6th. Many thanks to Audiorama and their fabulous invention!
Audiorama in collaboration with Electric Audio Unit present a concert with acousmatic music in 3D by Ernst van der Loo, Else Marie Pade, Tine Surel Lange, Giuseppe Pisano, Mariam Gviniashvili & Matas Šablauskis.
The concert is curated by EAU guest composer and curator Giuseppe Pisano.
This PULS concert is presented by Audiorama in collaboration with Electric Audio Unit and EMS, as part of the Swedish Music Spring festival. Audiorama and EAU’s PUL project 2021/2022 are financed with support from the Nordic Culture Fund and Arts Council Norway.
EAU presents four world premiers of 3D electroacoustic music. Works by Norwegian composers Anders Tveit, Ernst van der Loo and Mariam Gviniashvili commissioned by EAU, the debut electroacoustic concert for Swedish Louisa Danielsson, and a Norwegian premier from Canadian composer Robert Normandeau.
Mariam Gviniashvili – Daydreaming (world premier)
Anders Tveit – Oni Mono (world premier)
Louisa Palmi – Blocks (world premier)
Ernst van der Loo (world premier)
Robert Noramdeau – Tunnel azur (Norwegian premier)
The concert is supported by Arts Council Norway and Norsk Komponistforening
