[spectre] Screen Music 2: Mechanical cinema-veritè, circuit bending, electric/electronic audio-video

[Redazione Digicult]

Sorry for any crossposting

SCREEN MUSIC 2
Mechanical cinema-veritè, circuit bending, electric/electronic audio-video

Festival della Creatività
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-verité 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-verité 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.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.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/

----------------

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