Gary Schultz
Gary Schultz was born in Birch Run, Michigan, in 1982. He studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2000-5), the Center for the Creation of Music: Iannis Xenakis in Paris (2005-6), and the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles (2008-10), where he received an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices. Schultz’s work combines elements of music, conceptual art and curating. It draws on a range of materials—including economics, distribution, intonation, writing, sound and video—in order to foster a dialogue between the experimental and the popular. He was a research scholar at the University of Art’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Berlin from 2011-13, during which time he founded the label Care Of Editions. He lives and works in Berlin.
Juniper Foam is an album released as a background noise app. Drawing from a collection of audio tracks, the default playback mode is performed on auto pilot: shuffling between different combinations of sounds without a strict sense of pattern. This creates a perpetual mix between a range of background sounds, from various shades of noise and field recordings to more tonal textures, as well as some musical figures that are like reminders of the album format. The installation form is a mockup where the album’s use and listenability can be previewed. Listeners are able to make minor adjustments to the overall flow by pausing the automatic shuffle, muting certain voices or triggering new, random ones. This means each track can be heard as a fragment or a self-standing composition.
By coding the app in HTML 5, the album’s distribution and configuration are voiced in the same language as the internet. It also shortcuts an inevitable process by which the playlist or shuffle functions that are now included in nearly all digital formats can cast any release in a background role. Given the potential turn towards presence, away from specific sounds, Juniper Foam proposes to flesh out these types of listening.
www.careof.co
Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due & Tonje Alice Madsen
Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due (1984-Oslo, Norway). Lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. Performance artist, musician and composer, educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Music with classical accordeon as her main instrument. She is currently a student at MA program for sound art at The University of the Arts in Berlin. She works both with her own performances and as a composer with experience from a wide range film, theatre- and dance performances around Europe and Scandinavia.
Tonje Alice Madsen (1983- Bodo, Norway). Lives and works in Oslo. She received an MA from the Department for Time Based Media at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, in 2011. She works independently and collaborative, mainly with the field of video art. Her recent works explore new forms of documentary and narration, often based on varieties of found footage. Her videos have been shown at international film- and video art festivals and exhibitions, among them lnternational Film Film Festival Rotterdam, lmages Festival and Transmediale.
To be, to do is a silent movie performance consisting of three main elements; a silent movie based on stills, a live performance of accordion music, and a prologue read out loud. The project takes its starting point and performative cues from a private family album. The aim is to create an experience of intimacy – analogous to the documentation of lived life as it is transcribed in a private family photo album.
Original title: Å være, å gjøre | Duration: 30 minutes | Concept: Tonje Alice Madsen and Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due | Music and composition: Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due | Film and prologue: Tonje Alice Madsen
www.camillabarrattdue.com
Edu Comelles
PhD in Fine Arts, MSc in Sound Design (Edinburgh University) MA in Visual and Media Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He is currently involved in several individual and collective artistic projects that come into direct relationship with the sound and composition.
His works have been published by labels such as Resting Bell (Berlin), Test Tube (Portugal), Impulsive Habitat (Portugal) or Audiotalaia (Spain). He has participated in festivals in Stockholm, Vienna, Madrid, Bristol, London, Valencia, including Sonar Festival in Barcelona and Radar UNAM in Mexico City. He is the founder and director of Audiotalaia a platform dedicated to the dissemination and production of experimental music in Spain.
Now a days, Comelles is developing a research project focused on means to show, display and exhibit Sound Art in a architectural context. This is happening at the Valencia Arts School.
Mourvèdre, or the inevitable drowsiness after a glass of wine.
Live performance / concert. Duration: 30-35 minutes (aprox.)
This concert take a very simple idea and expands it into a whole sonic universe. Mourvèdre its a sound work based in one single 1-minute sound file. The recording gathers the sound of rubbing the edge of a glass of wine. This short recording serves as the basis for a extensive compositional and improvisational work that explores musicality through slight pitch-shifting and sampling of the 1-minute sound file described. The approach despite being very minimalistic suddenly reveals a whole horizon of sonic encounters that through free improvisation expands in time creating a compositional web of symphonic proportions.
Finally Mourvèdre is gentle piece of music that seeks to explore the boundaries between sound art and ambient music and free improvisation squeezing the capabilities of a very short sound file and a very limited set of rules.
www.educomelles.com
Mikel R. Nieto
Born in Donostia, San Sebastián, Mikel studied art in San Sebastian, Madrid and Barcelona. For years has been immersed in the phonographic practice and theory that aims from it. He has taught workshops in different cultural centers and universities focused on sound art, field recordings, phonography, soundscape, improvisation and listening with different sound artist (Jean Luc-Guionnet, Slavek Kwi, Francisco López, Jana Winderen…). He is part of the team of sound map of the Basque Country,soinumapa.net, he co-coordinates Hots! Radio, and is a co-editor of the mediateletipos.net platform.
About, listening.
(or 14 interviews with 14 sound artists).
About, listening is a sound installation about listening. 14 speakers are distributed in a empty room as an Acousmonium. Each speaker reproduce different excerpts from 14 interviews made to 14 sound artists. The answers reflects diverse opinions when we speak about listening, sound, sound art or noise. This sound installation doesn’t try to create an answer, it’s not a choir, it’s just different voices talking about, listening.
Interviews with (in alphabetical order): Oren Ambarchi (Australia), Gilles Aubry (Switzerland), Xabier Erkizia (Spain), Christian Galarreta (Perú), Rubén García (Spain), John Gzrinich (Estonia), Carl Michael von Hausswolff (Sweden), Zbigniew Karkowski (Poland), Francisco López (Spain), Álex Medizabal (Spain), Israel Martínez (Mexico), Lee Patterson (England), Rodrigo Sigal (Mexico), Rafael Toral (Portugal).
mikelrnieto.net