Sonic Light Box performances


The night programme of Sonic Light will take place in Paradiso,
Amsterdam, on February 21st to 23rd.

For this occasion the main auditorium of Paradiso will be transformed into a
'Sonic Light Box', a space designed by Robin Deirkauf. Essential to the concept of the 'Sonic Light Box' is the immersion of audience and particpants in light and sound.

This time the artists responsible for these images and sounds will not be the centre of attention themselves, but it will be their work that directly communicates to the audience. In total 41 performers and collectives producing image and sound will present solo pieces and collaborative works specially prepared for Sonic Light.

The small auditorium of Paradiso will be dominated by Paul Friedlander's kinetic light sculptures 'Wave Equation' and 'Hypersphere'. Students of the Interfaculty Image and Sound from The Hague will present a daily programme of light and sound performances here, DJs Christian Vogel (Friday) and KidGoesting (Saturday) will provide a pleasant setting later in the night. Other light objects and luminous interventions by the students of the Interfaculty Image and Sound will find other places in the building of Paradiso.

In the 'Sonic Light Box' all light performances and projections will take place on a gigantic light-object, as wide as it is high, splitting the main Paradiso auditorium in two. This object can serve as a projection screen but, more importantly, emits light of continuously changing colour and intensity. It will be the sole source of light for all events, together with the luminous and mobile roof hovering above it.

The auditorium will also have no front and no back in terms of sound, only a centre and periphery. Traditionally, all sound comes from the direction of the stage, but during Sonic Light a spatial sound system will be used in which the audience will be surrounded by six independent loudspeakers on the floor and six hanging from the ceiling. In this way it will be possible to compose the spatial experience of both sound and light in the 'Sonic Light Box'.

As has become customary during the Sonic Acts festival, the programme at the start of the evening will be aimed more at an audience interested in the arts and will transform to a more dance-oriented programme after midnight. The evenings will not be simply a succession of performances according to a festival schedule, but will have a modular structure. We have asked the invited artists to give a number of short performances instead of playing one long set. For example, an artist may be giving a short performance of pure sound collage on Friday evening
and play a dance-oriented set on Saturday.

The programme of each evening is designed to provide a maximum of variety and contrast between successive sets. We also asked the artists we invited to engage in various collaborations. We have set these up to promote dialogue between the
different worlds of light art and sound art, and to show a wide variety of approaches to the relationship between image and sound.

The programme offers a wide range of artists, from renowned composers such
as Amacher to young dogs such as Venetian Snares, from projections of films by Oskar Fischinger to improvisations by Golan Levin and Benton Bainbridge.

The exact time schedule of performances can be found two weeks prior to the festival on www.sonicacts.com. There will also be a printed schedule as guide for the evenings. Announcements will be made on special displays in Paradiso.


The Friday evening starts at 23:00h with a programme until 4:00h.
The Saturday programme starts at 20:00h and ends at 4:00h.
The Sunday programme starts at 20:00h and ends at 3:00h.

Presences by:
@c, Maryanne Amacher, Scott Arford, Benton-C Bainbridge, Olivia Block, COH, Sue Costabile, Fred Collopy, Richard Devine, Effekt, Dino Felipe, Hazard, Hecker, Edwin van der Heide, Arnold Hoogerwerf, Naut Humon, KidGoesting, Laminar, Golan Levin, Lia, Francisco Lopez, Lucia di Monocordi, Peter Luining, Christian Marclay, Peter Max, Ikue Mori, Numb, Robert Pravda, pxp, random k, Joost Rekveld, reMI, Seth Riskin, Don Ritter, Otto von Schirach, Sutekh, tcw23, Telco Systems, Yasunao
Tone, Venetian Snares, Christian Vogel

For more information, please select a name from the menu on the left.


 


@c is the Portuguese trio of Pedro Almeida, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais. Three PowerBooks united for experimental new sounds. @c will be presenting a diversity of different collaborations.

http://www.at-c.org


 

Maryanne Amacher's (USA) main concern is with understanding and manipulating the perception of space and duration; with finding ways to make people feel they are in a different and usually more desirable place. Amacher has become a master of controlling sounds that are comparatively ‘faint’, yet produce a new sense of location and orientation.


 


Scott Arford (USA) investigates what happens when image is interpreted as sound and sound as image. Discrete pieces of static, dissected and tuned, are Arford's building blocks: radio static, T.V. static, garbled transmissions, magnetic and electrical interference, ground loops, shorts, and glitches – the technological and cultural by-products of a media- obsessed society.

http://www.7hz.org/scott_arford.html


 


Benton-C Bainbridge Benton-C Bainbridge (USA) draws upon a youth misspent playing with fire, food and electronics to compose moving pictures for stage performance, generative installation and fixed media dissemination. He was a founding member of several video performance collectives in New York, such as 77 Hz, The Poool and NNeng. His collaborations include work with Bill Etra and David Linton's UnityGain.

http://www.benton-c.com



 


Olivia Block (USA) combines field recordings, electronics and acoustic segments. Working primarily with solo recorded media, she makes sound compositions which make you think that you are not listening to sound but rather that you have become part of the sounding object. It is a form of music in which the abstract and the visceral can co-exist.

http://www.cdemusic.org/artists/block.html


 


COH (SE/RU): Ivan Pavlov has more links with the Russian avant-garde than with Western rock-pop tradition. As a qualified acoustic researcher he is involved in developing new possibilities for sound synthesis. He has found a way to compose single tones into an ensemble which provides both lyrical and comic associations.

http://www.post-pop.org


 


Sue Costabile (USA) is a photographer and video artist who often explores the themes of the organic and the inorganic. Her live performances involve various media including photographs, negatives, drawings, watercolours, coloured transparencies and tiny objects, set in motion, digitized and processed in real-time.

http://www.musork.com/


 


Fred Collopy (USA) designed his Imager software to enable himself and other artists to play images as musicians play with sounds. He programmed the first version of it in 1977, since then it has evolved as computers have changed. It is still around today as one of the first real-time animation programs ever.

http://www.rhythmiclight.com


 


Richard Devine's (USA) music makes references to experimental techno but is so masterly that the repetitive nature of this genre is hardly present. He was actually due to appear at Sonic Acts last year but was unable to come. For Sonic Light he has composed a special twelve-speaker piece .

http://www.schematic.net/


 


Effekt (DK/UK): Kaspar Daugaard and Stefan Mylleager won the animation competition instituted by warp records and Squarepusher in 2001, with their stunning video clip 'the exploding psychology'. Together with Lasse Nielsen they formed Effekt. They build their own software to create real-time, improvised graphics for music. For Sonic Light, Effekt will be bringing new video footage from their hometowns, Copenhagen and London, to mix in with their always unpredictable computer-generated imagery.

http://www.effekts.dk



 


Dino Felipe (USA) is one of the schematic label artists present at the festival. He will be playing some of his unreleased newer music. His music moves languidly across the palettes of glitch, microhouse, and electro-pop. At the same time the music delineates between digital and analogue, the real and the imagined. The performance at Sonic Light is part of his first ever European tour.

http://www.schematic.net/


 


Hazard (SE): Benny Nilsen started operating under the name Hazard in 1996. He focuses on the perception of time and space as experienced through sound. His source material mostly comes from field recordings. However, for Sonic Light he will be giving several short performances with source material taken from the various sounds produced by a church organ.



 

Hecker (D): Florian Hecker is an independent artist in the field of computer music. He has been doing research on mobile performance tools, and using laptop computers since the first wave of MEGO related concerts in 1996. During his performance he will not only produce sound, but he will also control the lights in the Sonic Light Box in relation to his music.


 


Edwin van der Heide (NL) is one of the curators of Sonic Light. He will be presenting a short solo performance in which sound is used to control the movements of a strong laser. The result is a complex shape transforming space.

http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/heide/


 


Arnold Hoogerwerf (NL) studied at the Interfaculty Image and Sound and makes kinetic sound and image installations. As member of the artist pool DAC~ , he initiated and realized various performances and installations which deal with the perception of space. At Sonic Light he will be programming part of the light sequences in the Sonic Light Box.


 


Naut Humon (USA) is the director of Recombinant Media labs in San Francisco. For over 25 years, Surround Traffic Control creator, curator and conductor, Naut Humon has been staging Recombinant events which have orchestrated a spatialized cinesonic network based on project residencies created at its treatment plant. Besides his active collaborative work with Sonic Light, Naut Humon will be presenting two remixes. 'Persepolis remixed' is his remix of the Persepolis cd recently released by Asphodel. The cd contains the original INA-GRM mix of Iannis Xenakis's composition and remixes by renowned artists. The photographic still imagery that accompanies the music comes from the actual photo documentation of the live night-time event at the Persepolis ruins in southern Iran during 1971. The second work by Naut Humon is a remix of Granular Synthesis's 'Noisegate’ produced in collaboration with Tim Digulla.

http://www.asphodel.com/


 


KidGoesting (NL) has become one of the regular presenters at Sonic Acts. For the last five years he has been active on the Amsterdam electro scene. He is a resident DJ at the Mazzo and organizes a monthly evening in Paradiso. KidGoesting will be playing in the small auditorium on Saturday night.

http://www.kidgoesting.com/


 



Laminar (USA): Fred Szymanski is using the name Laminar for his audiovisual installations. He has made a custom twelve-speaker version of his video installation 'Retentions' for Sonic Light at the Recombinant Media Labs. Retentions is very powerful because of its original colourful imagery.


 


Golan Levin (USA) will give a number of performances with his 'Audiovisual Environment Suite'. This is a collection of self-written software tools which he can use to generate highly articulate images and sounds in real-time. With gestures he can draw and animate visual patterns which are then interpreted as sounds.

http://www.flong.com/


 


Lia (AT/PT) makes very beautiful interactive applets for the web and also works as a graphic designer. She has a very pure and organic style within the digital domain. Lia will be presenting different multiple collaborations.

http://www.re-move.org


 


Francisco Lopez (ES) bases his performances on his own sound recordings. In his recordings he is not so much concerned with the recognizability of the sound but rather the sonic nature of the sound in itself. He will be presenting three twelve-speaker modules and a performance which will take place in the dark. People will be given blindfolds: Sonic no Light.

http://www.franciscolopez.net/

 


Peter Luining (NL) first received international recognition with this work 'Clickclub' which he presented at the Transmediale in Berlin in 1999. His use of sound in this work earned him the unofficial title of 'next generation Superbad'. Since 1997 his work has evolved towards an increasing minimalism while continuing his earlier research on the dynamics of the net. Following one of Luining's presentations, Remko Scha, Dutch professor in computer arts remarked "If Mondrian were still alive, this is what he would do."

http://www.lfoundation.org

 


Christian Marclay (USA) has explored the intimate relationship between the visual record and recorded sound through cutting, collage, and juxtaposition since the beginning of the seventies. He has made a twelve-speaker module which will be played at Sonic Light, without his presence.

 


Peter Max (DK) is creating simple universes by simple means and composes and improvises his way to an interdisciplinary result. Peter Max will present a light and sound improvisation in which image and sound influence each other directly.

 


Ikue Mori (USA/JP) is active in the area between improvised music and pure sound. She gained renown with the group DNA and later with Tohban Djan. She also often gives solo performances. At Sonic Light she will also be presenting a twelve-speaker composition.

http://www.ikuemori.com/

 


Numb (JP): Takashi Kizawa is very active in the techno scene in Japan. He has been developing futuristic breakbeats which are not comparable to developments happening in Europe and the United States. He makes true club music which he sees as a reply from Japan to Autechre, Boards of Canada, Pole and Kit Clayton. It will be his first performance in Holland.

 


Robert Pravda (NL,YU), 5x5x5, is a three dimensional matrix of ordinary household bulbs with attached speakers,powered by 220 Volts. Movement and intensity of light and sound in the limited universe of the object are the input parameters for the controlling algorithm of the installation.

 


pxp (D/AT) stands for the department for penetration and perversion. Think of equations which create anarchy instead of assert order, and you've only begun to approximate the experience of what it's like to see and hear pxp. pxp will be giving two different audiovisual performances.

http://xdv.org/

 


Random k (NL) does live video improvisations, mainly using basic videomixer and feedback signals. Random k generates layers with a series of mixers. He is looking for a more complex interaction with sound or music.


 


Joost Rekveld (NL) is one of the curators of Sonic Light. He will be making his vj-debut using a combination of ancient television oscillators and the kind of optical set-up that he has been using to make some of his abstract films.

http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld

 


reMI (AT) is a duo consisting of Renate Oblak, visuals, and Michael Pinter, sound. Their work has been called 'music videos for the knowledgeable' and is very radical in the way it combines the nature of the material, using the gaps in between signals. It is the directness of its effect which creates its iconic power. reMI has developed and adapted work especially for Sonic Light.

http://remi.mur.at

 


Seth Riskin (USA) will be presenting a number of short 'Light Dance' performances. These are soundless, "space-defining performances of light phenomena articulated by body movements". Riskin attaches his own custom-designed light instruments and projectors to his body. The light and projections he produces interact with the architecture of the space.

http://web.mit.edu/cavs/people/riskin/riskin.html

 


Don Ritter (USA) will, among other things, be performing his audiovisual piece 'digestion', in which organic imagery, originating as boiling water, is interactively transformed into a series of mechanical movements with synchronized sound, creating the impression that the sounds are being produced by the imagery.

http://www.aesthetic-machinery.com/

 


Otto von Schirach (USA) makes experimental neo-techno music for musical intellectuals. He extends into the realm of cartoons, you may hear hints of thrash and hardcore, and heavy, hip-hop-influenced beats, an amalgamation of burbles, bleeps, screeches and burps. He has made a special twelve-speaker composition for Sonic Light.

http://www.betabodega.com/

 


Sutekh (USA): Seth Horvitz has released consistently inconsistent electronic music on labels such as Force Inc./Mille Plateaux, Source, Minus, Orthlorng Musork, Cytrax, and his own Context label since 1997. Manipulating computers, samplers, synthesizers, and found sounds, he has created everything from deep, minimal house and techno to dense, dissonant noise collage.

http://www.context.fm/sutekh.html

 


tcw23 (NL) a.k.a Arthur Ivens makes digitalfilms, mostly a mix of classic cinema and new live cinema, relating to sound, the space in which it is being performed, as well as the screens it is projected on.

http://www.tcw23.co-inc.com/

 


Telco Systems (NL) was set up in 2001 to explore new modes of audiovisual expression. Their research focuses on digital audiovisual input and output for which they build dedicated collaborative systems. The hallmark of Telco's work is its lucid and restrained aestheticism, which is closely related to the computer technology they use.

http://www.telcosystems.net

 


Yasunao Tone (USA/JP) will perform 'Molecular Music' at Sonic Light. The performance will make use of light sensors attached to the projection screen. The amount of light falling on the sensors determines the pitch of various tone generators. Traditional Chinese and Japanese writing will be translated into sound.

Yasunao Tone will also be presenting a special collaborative work at the festival.

 


Venetian Snares (CAN): Aaron Funk of Venetian Snares makes an extremely complex form of hardcore jungle/noise. He takes what was drum 'n' bass & breakcore totally to another level. The music does not remain the same for one moment. You are constantly caught off-guard. It will be one long dance over the multi-speakers of the 'Sonic Light Box'.

http://www.isolaterecords.com/venetian.html

 


unfortunately Christian Vogel cancelled his show.

Christian Vogel (UK/D) started to create abstract techno soundscapes while he was studying 20th century music at Brighton University. Later he founded his own Mosquito label and started the utopic management company No Future. He established himself through his rich, varied and unique take on techno. Further more he represents one halve of the Super_Collider duo.

 



klen (NL) Man behind the FrustratedFunk label and working for the Clone company. Also working as a disigner for various record labels. Playing electro, technobass, hi-tech funk and is strongly influenced by the traditional Detroit electro sound..