Sonic Acts has been invited to curate a showcase with dutch artists for the Romaeuropa festival held in Rome this month. The showcase takes place at Brancaleone on the 29th of November 2008.
More information can be found here: www.romaeuropa.net

Finally the 2008 publication, The Cinematic Experience, is now available as POD, and can be ordered online at amazon.com and at Createspace.com.

Digicult reports in their march issue of Digimag on Sonic Acts XII here: www.digicult.it/digimag
Furthermore they wrote a lengthy article on Ken Jacobs.

  It seems quite odd for a sound art festival to focus on cinema. The ‘cinematic experience’ is not a (literal) flat out departure from the sonic realm however: the topic was explored far beyond the screen, from the wires and electrodes of the recorder/projector to the nervous system and sensory complexities of the human body, which of course include the experience of hearing. The Sonic Acts conference offered a chance to reflect on new challenges in the field of science and technology, and to exchange ideas.In order to grasp the wide definition of cinema the conference consisted of both historical and scientific research and artist presentations. I missed two of the presentations (Jacobs and Rekveld), but will give a summary of most of the event. The conference started with the historical research (also referred to as media archeology) of critic Erkii Huhtamo. This lecture has been thoroughly described elsewhere on this site, so I will only mention that another speaker at the conference, media art critic and theorist Timothy Druckrey, asked Huhtamo after his presentation why he had not mentioned the phantasmagoria at all. The phantasmagoria was a popular ‘multimedia’ show at the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century that was mostly used to mimic or represent occult experiences. Huhtamo’s reply was that he simply limited himself for time and discursive reasons, but that he actually also wondered which influenced which the most: the phantasmagoria or the diorama. Druckrey’s question seemed relevant however, as the phantasmagoria with its strong emphatic and sensory experience seems to connect to the Sonic Acts exhibition and performance program more then the diorama does.Druckrey himself presented a long series of rare movie clips, all dealing with the history of digital media. What he tried to do was escape “the frenzy of the visual”, the tendency to give most importance to visual media in art criticism and cultural discourses. In order to illustrate his thoughts Druckrey started by showing two very amusing video interview clips, one of philosopher Slavoj Zizek criticizing The Matrix and the the other of Heinz von Foerster, cybernetician and constructivist, describing the limits of science. Unfortunately Druckrey went on to present only film clips, whereas it would have been very interesting to hear more of his own criticism of the emphasis on the visual in cultural discourses. He did show some nice films on the history of computing though, like a talk of Grace Hopper, who wrote the first software (?) and the background of the ‘Leo’ computer in the British pastry industry. The conclusion of this sequence of film clips seems to be that Druckrey situates the crux in media theory and cultural development in the unstable complexities of new media, their processes and connections to various disciplines, instead of in the popular dwelling on visual media bombardments. He ended his presentation with a long quote by Serge Daney, of which I only copy a part here: “if the visual prevents us from seeing (because it prefers us that we decode, decrypt, in short ‘read’), the image always challenges us to edit it with another, with ‘the other’. Because in the image - there is always something at stake, something incomplete.”Two other theorists were to follow the third day. In a well-filled conference room for a Sunday morning session Arjen Mulder gave his view of what he called ‘filmic space’, a space he also called an “absolute space”. Mulder’s view seemed a little contradictory, as he emphasized that the experience of the filmic he tried to describe was “extra-medial”, yet at the same time he described it to be hidden in visual details or experiences that were simply difficult to pinpoint. Mulder tried to put his finger on what Barthes had also tried to call the “punctum” in a photograph: a specific, yet unpredictable detail that gives the image its emotional or psychological value. Arjen Mulder was the only one at the conference to bluntly state that the visual simply is the dominant form of media, and the most important one in his point of view. Mulder could not imagine the filmic could also be found in sound.Douglas Kahn, a well-known sound art theorist and critic, closed the conference with a rather academic lecture on ‘live cinema’, a concept that changed from live music accompaniment of silent movies to sound and visuals generated live in a performance setting. He gave a rather vague description of what live cinema should be like in his point of view, whereby he criticized the practices currently being described as ‘live cinema’, which are mostly like DJ/VJ set ups. Kahn is looking for exactly this kind of one (wo)man show, in which one person clearly controls the flow of events in a live performance setting, but he dislikes what he has seen so far. This dislike causes him to denounce the existence of contemporary live cinema. It seems a bit strange to say something does not exist simply because what is presented is not up to your taste though. In a rather elaborate way Kahn tried to tell us what exactly he was looking for in live cinema instead.For Kahn, the bottleneck for ‘live cinema’ was the aspect of postproduction in film. A thing he eluded to a few times was Eisenstein’s view of cinema as ‘inner speech’. At the beginning of his lecture Douglas Kahn showed part of a movie by Abigail Child, called ‘Mutiny’. He quoted her having said to perceive filmmaking as “choreographing”, as “dancing from frame to frame”. Kahn mentioned how music has changed from the composition of a recording to performing a recording. He quoted Artaud on performance as “an affect of athletics”. The whole of live cinema seems to revolve around one this for Kahn: the physical performance of composing/editing pre-recorded film fragments with sound samples in real time in front of an audience. It was a pity that he was not able to clarify how exactly this should look or feel. What was clear however is that Kahn is not a fan of live generated digital visuals in ‘live cinema’. What contemporary ‘live cinema’ and Douglas Kahn’s ideal in ‘live cinema’ seem to have in common though is a strong relationship to sound performance and an “embodiment of control”.  Josephine Bosma 

A partly Chinese report can be found here: shutenochdownx2.wordpress.com

Several individuals posted Sonic Acts photo’s on Flickr.
All tagged with “Sonic Acts” can be found here: www.flickr.com

Virtueel Platform reports on Sonic Acts here: www.virtueelplatform.nl

Neural reports on Sonic Acts here: www.neural.it

Mat Tierney’s blog posts on Sonic Acts can be found here:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

The Sonic Acts Team would like to thank everyone who made The Cinematic Experience a fantastic and very memorable one!

To our audience, speakers, artists, board and funders,to all who contributed their time and energy;
to our partner organisations, bloggers, photographers, infodeskers, technicians and everyone else involved: thank you so much.

Annet Dekker
Alex Myers
Anthony van Zijl
Ayako Nishibori
Beer Damen
Benoit Espinola
Cigdem Turek
Daphne Holthuizen
Dave Emanuelson
Diane (Business Taxi Amsterdam)
Elvie Rienstra
Enoch Cheung
Eric Kluitenberg
Eric Lacroix
Esther Molenaar
Femke Herregraven
Floor Bijkersma
Floor Spapens
Hans Lenz
Ian van Riel
Jan Dietvorst
Jantien Ekkels
Jasper van Loenen
Jeanine Albronda
Jon Heemsbergen
Josephine Bosma
Klaas Melenhorst
Marieke Istha
Marius Hofstede
Marjolein Kassenaar
Mark den Hoed
Michael Huisman
Mirjam Dissel
Nicky Assmann
Noot van Sanden
Omar Munoz-Cremers
Pascal Petzinger
Paulien Dresscher
Peter van Vught
Petra Heck
Petra Valdimarsdottir
Ronald Linger
Roos Menkman
Sami Kallinen
Silvia Janoskova
Stoffel Debuysere
Taavet Jansen
Tiers Bakker
Tim Heijmans
Twan Eikelenboom

Thank you!

De Volkskrant reviews on monday February 25 the musical programme of Sonic Acts.
Read it here: www.volkskrant.nl

by Rosa Menkman

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In the foyer of the Balie, Julien Maire performed his live piece “Digit”; the writer sits at his desk with a glass of wine and a pile of paper. There are no writing tools, no pen, no typewriter, no computer. The writer uses only his hands. While stroking his paper gently, words appear out of nowhere, leaving the spectator surprised, lost and somewhat disturbed.

The texts he composes make me think of a mix between Dada, Concrete Poetry and a new form of écriture automatique. As a spectator I don’t know if what Julien is writing has any meaning, but I can see him constructing cubes, drawing twirling sentences and destroying single words. It is a beautiful puzzling sight.

On his website, Julien Maire describes his relation with Burroughs’ cut up method and his concept of the soft machine. Julien refers to his own piece as soft cinema. I wonder if there is any connection to the concept of soft cinema Lev Manovich developed.

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23rd of february, day 2 of sonic acts

by nicky  

Starting the day with following lectures by Ulf Langheinrich regarding his works opposed to a hard science input by Frank Kooi, it gave a nice opposition between the artistic approach of experimenting and trusting on your own senses and the hard science way of researching and depending on the outcome of numerous people senses.

After seeing Langheinrich’s ‘Drift’ during the performances in Paradiso later that evening I realized that this piece by Ulf was actually meeting the research done at TNO halfway. While Drift’s aim was to abstractive a realistic image into nothingness, one of the researches done at TNO was the opposite, namely to make interfaces that for instance allowed blind people to come out of a visual nothingness into a vaguely contoured more realistic image.

A nice conclusion of Frank Kooi after hearing Ulf’s approach: TNO should invest money in artists who make multi sensorial art, which resulted in a loud clapping by the audience

On to the next lecture by Timothy Druckrey; which immediately had the atmosphere of a warm and “gezellige” gathering of people. His story consisted of showing lots of interesting film clips that showed the history of computing. The clip of Heinz von Forester was most enjoyable and definitely recommendable.

Heinz von Forester

Then the self acclaimed renowned mumbler Joost Rekveld gave a lecture on ‘Mechanization of the Magical Sign’. Following an illuminating presentation which consisted of images of works by Rekveld’s heroes, we’ve got a clear idea of what it is that tickles Joost Rekveld. Images that struck me were the nave ceiling of the Church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome made by Andrea Pozzo and the images from ‘Lapis’ by James Whitney, one of the great masters of visual music.’

ceiling of the Church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome by Andrea Pozzo

Joost Rekveld also tipped on the on the fact that Brakhage who saw his films as documentaries rather than abstract films because of his attempt of recreating the visuals like afterimage and phosphenes (the inner cinema that appears when rubbing your closed eyes). ‘Feld’ by Granular Synthesis, which was shown later that evening, came for me also very close to this phenomenon.

Showing us examples of beautiful swarms of birds and constellations of points from stills of the film ‘Lapis’ by James Whitney, this theme would later return in the film programme ‘Absolute Time’ as swarms of fishes were swimming through the reef in ‘Careless Reef’ by Gerard Holthuis, which created at a certain point the optical illusion in which my friend saw an Escher like drawing. But also in ‘Drift’, which at times seemed a glance through a microscope looking at millions of germs or tons of illuminating algae in the deep sea where no sunlight ever reaches.

still from Lapis by James Whitney

After lately having been surrounded by interactive artworks the film programme and the performances today were a warm return to the womb of the cinematic experience in which I was reduced to being a passive spectator again, trapped in the gaze of flickering images. I felt like a night creature that is frozen by the blinding headlights of a car, while dozing of into fractal like patterns.

I think it’s fair to say that after experiencing this day filled with films like ‘The Flicker’ by Tony Conrad and the performance PV868 by TeZ that I’m now officially declared flickerproof of epileptic seizures.

door Omar.

Hieronder stelt Alex over het werk van Ken Jacobs: “zulke intense gevoelens worden door zijn films opgeroepen.” En ik moet hem daar in gelijk geven al was het, voor iemand zoals ondergetekende die zijn films voor het eerst ziet, vaak een gevoel van verwondering. Deze ochtend was ontmoeting waarin Ken Jacobs een prettige mix vond tussen gesproken essay en film, relaxed en met passie. Er brandt in Jacobs nog een vuur over esthetisch en politiek onrecht dat in de jaren zestig is aangestoken. Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer kreeg ik bijna oogpijn van, al is het intrigerend om het een keer te ondergaan, het afsluitende Window Water Baby Moving van Stan Brakhage was dan een balsem voor de ogen. Zijn eigen films die vertoond werden hebben meestal een ontregelend effect, ze trekken als het ware “het blik” van de realiteit open en geven de kijker een kans om op zoek te gaan naar andere betekenissen. Wie zijn die personen langs de rails waarbij de film steeds vertraagt in Let There Be Whistle Blowers? Waarom eigenlijk die vertraging? Welke sinistere lagen van betekenis ontsluit het onweer boven New York aan een scene tussen Cary Grant en Irene Dunne? Vooral Window uit 1963, door Jacobs tussen neus en lippen door omschreven als een soort jazzimprovisatie, roept talloze vragen op die onmogelijk zijn te beantwoorden. De implosies, verschuivingen, scheuren, vouwen van realiteit die Windows presenteert maken het tot een unieke artefact ergens gelegen tussen schilderij en sciencefiction in. Jacobs liet ook zijn eerste film Orchard Street uit 1955 zien. Een geluidloze aaneenschakeling van een middag op een marktstraat in New York. Het is een inderdaad een voorbeeld van Jacobs stelling dat de camera niet het verleden maar het levende moment opneemt.Al vroeg ik me af of dat voor mij alleen in dit geval, een wereld waar ik nog niet in bestond…onbewust haast een artificiële wereld, geldt. Ik stel me voor dat een zelfde film gesitueerd in Amsterdam 1973 wel degelijk een explosie van nostalgie veroorzaakt, ook zonder geluid of muziek. Het bewustzijn dat het beeld induikt en aan de randen verlaat op zoek naar een jongere dubbelganger kan overmand worden door een vreemde nostalgie (met een potentieel van ontelbare vertakkingen). Het doet je afvragen welke filmer eigenlijk op het moment van filmen denkt voorbij het levende moment, denkt aan de blik uit de toekomst.

Moderated by Arie Altena, this part of the session the media artists Jeffrey Shaw from Australia and the Dutch Marnix de Nijs talked about their work with video, ambient screens and immersive techniques. The session took off with a quote from Paul Ruiz, from the Poetics of Cinema:

“In the cinema it is the type of image produced that determines the narrative, not the reverse. No one will miss the implication that the system of film production, invention and realization must be radically modified. It also means that a new kind of cinema and new poetics of cinema are still possible.”

This last part is certainly what we saw here. Jeffrey Shaw started with a few works he has been developing over the last years at the iCinema Research Centre in Sidney. Shaw is a creator of keyworks in the history of interactive art and has been working on the field of relations between development of techniques, representation technologies and visualization in order to find a new definition for the narrrative experience.

Shaw is building environments with interactive moving video as surrounding where the spectator is the center. One of the first things he shows us is the installation THE CAVE (1996). The Cave has contiguous projections on three walls and the floor. The user interface is a near life-size wooden puppet that is formed like the prosaic artists’ mannequin; by handling this figure the viewers cause real time transformations of the computer generated imagery and the acoustic rendering. By closing the puppets eyes, it gets dark, when opening again, the viewer enters a new space. The images are on the walls and the floor, but they do make these walls disappear at the same time: Infinity in all directions, cinematic space in all surroundings. It looked like a visual impressive installation but it made me giggle at the same time: Moving the arms and legs of the puppet, and therefore creating this serious immersive worlds seems like a funny contradiction. But, besides the overwhelming techniques, I could not help wondering what was the general message or feeling I should get while ‘playing’ this installation.

Another technique Shaw showed us was a remarkable recording machine consisting of multiple cameras. This camera can film in 360 degrees and consequently is projected on a cylinder screen of 12 meters wide and 4 meters high with 12 projectors. This modern re-invention of the -bullettime- Muybridge pictures, makes sure once you are inside this installation, you are no longer focusing on the screen but more like in infinity. Very much like the Cave installion indeed.
Remarkable enough, the camera’s and projection situations developed by Shaw are not just made for one piece, they can be see as some sort of a structure, appliable by other artists for other pieces as well. This gives an interesting insight on how different concepts are being developed within these same techniques.

An example of this is THERE IS STILL TIME . . BROTHER(2007) from the performance collective The Wooster Group developed for Shaw’s Interactive Panoramic Cinema.
While recording this project the camera is the center of the tale and the set is build around the camera. Different stories are evolving around this camera. They make use of the parallax of the camera: This overlapping disappears after 5 meters, but The Wooster Group films everything close to the camera so they use this parallax in their work. Shaw mentions how interesting it is to see how different people use the same techniques in different ways. The project is operated from a single place in the middle where just the part right in front of you is in focus. The viewer needs to discover a narrative path by zooming into the mindset of the characters.

Jeffrey Shaw’s work is hard to fully comprehend in this 2 dimensional documentation. This is partly caused by the fact his installations are merely based on a physical immersion: The individual is the center of the projection and the piece is best perceived from his point of view. From here we can fully experience the effects of the constructions. With all the things he showed us, I was awed by the technical efforts and possibilities, but unsure about the conceptual or narrative intentions and consequences.

This was different with the work of Marnix de Nijs. Though his field of work and research is also the overlap between the real and the virtual, his basic questions seem more philosophical than technical. Off course he uses technique as his tool (hardware, software) but while doing this he is adressing different non-technical issues. Every piece he showed had a quite clear conceptual foundation.

For example the piece RUN MOTHERFUCKER RUN is a sort of speed up version of Shaw’s THE LEGIBLE CITY. In the Shaw piece you could ride calmly a stationary bicycle through a simulated representation of a city that is constituted by computer-generated three-dimensional letters that form words and sentences along the sides of the streets. In RUN MOTHERFUCKER RUN you were not on a bike but on a treadmill and had the opportunity to feel an adrenaline rush while running through a sort of scary Rotterdam by night. While running on the belt, moving your body to the left or the right, you could navigate through the 8 x 4 meter screen in front of you. By quickening your pace, the speed of the belt as well as the speed of the image increases and depending on your running behavior and the directional choices you make, the progress of the film is determined. It is a film with an atmosphere somewhere between a thriller chase and urban horror. At the same time, you had to stay in the middle of the belt; If not, it would accelerate so much you would end up in the middle again. If you were getting at the back of the belt, it would get slower in order to get you back in place.

The other piece shown by de Nijs is the BEIJING ACCELERATOR (2006) with as basic principle that the participant sits down in a racing-chair on a motorized structure equipped with a joystick facing a 160×120 cm screen. The user controls the direction and the speed of the chair; rotating panoramic images are projected on the screen before them. The aim is to synchronize the moving image with the rotation of the chair. If you don’t do this quickly enough, you will get dizzy. Once this is achieved, the participant is able to view the images properly and the disorientation associated with the uncoordinated spinning is blocked. The Beijing Accelerator is in fact a remake of the Panoramic Accelerator and works with a 3D world based on pictures. Therefore the image-quality is quite high. The Beijing Accelerator is playing with the senses of the person; you have to fight the nauseated and need to get control over the machine in order to feel well.

The last piece de Nijs showed was EXERCIZE IN IMMERSION (2007). This piece is still in progress and is developed in cooperation with the V2 lab in Rotterdam. The subject here is the shift between the existing space and the 3D environment you see on your headset. The headset has a sensorsystem that connects the position of the player with previously modeled visuals. While wearing a crash-suit you could walk around in an empty warehouse. Objects in the virtual world correspond with objects in the existing world; on the display both are mixed visually. While wearing your headset, you loose your sense of your own physical presence. The game is modeled roughly around the Pacman system: you have to collect things. In this case, by walking around, you have to collect liquid balls who cling to your body once cathed. This way you slowly build up a new physical representation, meanwhile, the virtual world is gradually taking over the physical one (here you do need the crash-suit!). So level one sounds like: Collect a self-representation in this virtual space. A player who does not move, sees the physical reality that he confides in, but the more he moves the more that existing space is visually taken over by an unknown virtual world. Next year this project will be taken into phase two.

Core subject to both the work of Shaw and de Nijs is the way cinematic interactivity can enhance the immersive experience. Important seems to be the two sides of movement; On the one hand there is the movement and the perception of the viewer and on the other hand there is the movement of that what is happening on the screen. Within the work of de Nijs we try to synchronize those two by using our bodies, almost in a natural way. With Shaw, we can adjust by choosing perspective and therfore gain narrative influence. This feeling of being non-sync with the world is, strangely enough, not giving discomfort but people seem to find it pleasurable; It is not sickening but interesting.

…they record the sound of light. It is quite rare to see an exhibition so well balanced as the one organized by Sonic Acts in collaboration with the Netherlands Media Art Institute. The theme of this year’s festival, ‘the cinematic experience’, is presented through a careful choice of works that avoid the new media art film clichés of random database projections and other miseries. If you wondered whether sound and image could ever truly merge with screen ‘based’ works, go see this exhibition.

The exhibition could be said to consist of two parts. Highly immersive spaces involving rather synesthetic experiences, in which one looses track of the sensual boundaries between sound and visual spaces almost completely, each individually fill the first four exhibition rooms. These are the works of Ulf Langheinrich, Boris Debackere and Kurt Hentschlaeger. The last room, situated at the end of a long corridor like in a strange dream, is inhabited by two works of one artist: the French ‘magician’ Julien Maire.

Granular Synthesis artist Ulf Langheinrich has two quite different works in this exhibition. The first, oddly called ‘Soil’, consists of four screens showing a composition in blue. The room feels like it is in a different universe. The screens are windows onto an unreal sky. Embraced by the sound the audience is compelled to sit down on the bench in the middle of the room and feel itself slip away into something like a meditation. This ‘altered state of mind’ experience is actually re-enforced all through the rest of the exhibition. Langheinrich’s second work ‘OSC’ is nothing less then spectacular. It uses the ‘flicker’ phenomenon to bombard the audience with sound waves and light pulses that evoke faux visions and involuntary physical responses. This is the type of work that could provoke a seizure. This does not mean the experience of ‘OSC’ is unpleasant, on the contrary. It reminded me very much of Carsten Holler’s work ‘Licht Ecke’, an also overpowering and spectacular work in which pulsating light in combination with (in that case) the heat it radiates makes the work impossible to escape.

The Belgian artist Boris Debackere’s work ‘probe’ unfortunately handicapped by its set up. The room has been darkened with black curtains that obviously have been used for a party one too many times. The stench in the room is so penetrating it makes it difficult to stay there long. It is possible to watch the work from the corridor, but of course it is not ideal. As far as I could tell Debackere’s work is a subtle, maybe rather decorative work. It shows an animation of a thin lined drawing that moves and changes in a way that reminds of the works of the Austrian Turux group (Dextro and Lia).

Langheinrich’s ‘other half’ in Granular Synthesis Kurt Hentschlaeger presents an intriguing work called ‘scape’. It is intriguing because it is quite simple. A practically black and white still image, an image moving barely, is accompanied by a soundscape creating a contemplative installation. The work is pleasant and beautiful. Before seeing this work I heard the interview with the artist, in which he explained this work was a result of re-exploring his old interest in photography. ‘Scape’ can be seen as a merging of photography and cinema, in which the cinematic experience is stretched in time, in extreme slow motion.

Last but not least we enter the wondrous world of Julien Maire. His works are not about engaging the body by drawing it in ‘from the outside’. His interaction with the audience is created through opening up the camera, the projector and the processes of their production. There is no distinction between the inner processes of the machine and the projection. Inner environment of the camera and projector have merged with the projection or installation space. This is the cinematic experience imploded.Even if the exhibition is a 15-minute walk away from the rest of the Sonic Acts venues it is definitely worth while to take the time to visit it.
  Josephine Bosma  

by alex

Such intense feelings are evoked by his films. “Let There Be Whistleblowers” was an 18 minute wandering through b&w found footage of a railyard and the people in the the trains and in the yard that ends in a starkly contrasted tunnel that flashes and pulses while the whole movie is scored to minimalistic drum beats by Steve Reich. It becomes so surreal and aggressive that I started thinking of it in terms of life and death.

I can’t give summaries of his films, you just have to see them. all I can say is that each and everyone of them as left my stomach clenched and twisted, my eyes sore, my mind numbed, but I felt pushed through all of this to come into some inarticulate synthesis of feeling and thought.

some excerpts from the essay he handed out at the beginning:

“We don’t need all sense to be called on to enjoy any of them, and there’s nothing strange in not wishing to divide attention between them. the 3-ring circus was a terrible idea, a scattering of attention and a perfect example of more is less.”

“…many people can close their eyes and visulaize music, see abstractions or changing landscapes…the music video is something else, not a synesthetic elaboration but a mini-movie blotting out such felt connection; a manhandling forcing correspondance with musician’s faces and bodies and antics, telling a story to the beat and contour of the music. Celebrity worship, promos for the bands.”

“…as someone involved in painting I should have come to the silent image sooner…these days I wouldn’t ask the imagery of ORCHARD STREET to move over and make way for sound.”

“I watch films without sound to better pick up on what there is to see, foregoing story-justification for the things that happen. I like that they happen just because they do, as in real life, whenever the rationalizing mind is thwarted in its need to justify the strangeness of…real life. It’s a child’s vision, I suppose, when one miracle after the other passes in revue.”

He ended with Brakhage’s “Window Water Baby Moving” and I felt just like that baby.

by Rosa Menkman

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Some low-fi registrations of the concerts of the 2nd night:

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Van de vrijdagavond in Paradiso wil ik inzoomen op de optredens van Cluster en Leafcutter John die, zeker gezien wat hun muzikaal omsingeld, onmiskenbare overeenkomsten kennen. We hebben het dan over de naïviteit van electronica, al is naïviteit een te negatieve term met zijn associaties van goedgelovigheid en ontkenning. De twee heren van respectabele leeftijd die al decennia lang Cluster vormen hoeven niets te bewijzen, sinds ze hun meer kosmische wensdromen begin jaren zeventig achter zich lieten hebben ze steevast voor eenvoud gekozen. Een eenvoud die doorwerkt in hun melodieën, en toch zijn het, ook al ben je ervan overtuigd dat je ze zelf zo zou kunnen verzinnen, onmiskenbaar Cluster melodieën. Vanavond is hun kaleidosonische trip, die overigens compleet tegen de tijdgeest in de oren streelt in plaats van geselt, een prettige ervaring die pas zoiets als grootsheid in zich draagt wanneer die melodieën klinken, traag en melancholisch, zowel als notenreeks die op een piano hetzelfde effect zou teweeg brengen maar ook in een dubbele laag van melancholie omdat het geluid van de synthesizers zelf uit het verleden klinkt. Een geluid van synthesizers als sterrenverlangen, hoop van rechtvaardigere werelden en kinderlijke perceptie.De filmprojectie achter Cluster laat een continu shot zien van een boerderij en onvermijdelijk doet het je denken dat zowel hun muziek als die van Leafcutter John eigenlijk niet thuishoort in het midden van een stad. Het kinderlijke hoort bij het pastorale en zo is Clusters Sowiesoso (1976) eigenlijk de eerste pastorale techno plaat. Leafcutter John stel je ook zo voor bij een kampvuur met zijn akoestische gitaar, zijn laptop misschien op de laatste accukracht in staat om een ritselend ritme opgebouwd uit samples van knetterend hout te produceren. Samen met zijn muzikale partner zoekt Leafcutter John in het begin van zijn optreden naar een andersoortig kinderlijkheid, die van de ontdekkingstocht, het aftasten van objecten, de muziek die overal in schuilt. Dat er echte liedjes volgen betekent de intrede van een andere levensperiode. Dan is Leafcutter John een tiener, zijn teksten worden dan nog wel bevolkt door kinderlijke observaties en verwijzingen maar het lijkt door het klagerige van zijn stem meer op de typische nostalgie die je als tiener kan hebben naar je kindertijd als paradijs van zorgeloosheid. Vervolgens komen er drie heren in witte pakken het podium op, de muzikant als naïeve wetenschapper? De hoge druk electronica van Signal blaast de hoop van een thematische continuïteit deze avond resoluut weg.[door Omar Muñoz Cremers]

by Rosa Menkman

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Joachim Nordwall and C. Spencer Yeh

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BJ Nilsen and Mika Vainio

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Carl Michael von Hausswolff

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Hildur Gudnadöttir

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