BEAM Festival main venue

BEAM was organized by Sarah Nicolls and her team at Brunel University. BEAM (consistently) stands for Brunel electronic and analog music, and the event was pretty much about it. Curiously enough the main venue was a building named after Antonin Artaud.
Whereas the hospitality of the organization was very good and informal (and I do appreciate that, specially for “academic” events), the strongest aspect though was an incredibly heterogeneous, yet top-notch line up.
BEAM managed to bring together some of the most advanced – both aesthetically and technically – live acts around Europe. Me and Christos Michalakos were awarded a bursary for “outstanding work”, respectively for the pieces Music for Flesh II and Frrriction, and got to perform in the main, awesome concert hall along with old and new friends. Among the others, the line up included Stelarc, Atau Tanaka and Adam Parkinson (CultureLab, Newcastle), Ryan Jordan (Noise=Noise, London), Dj Sniff and Alex Nowitz (STEIM, Amsterdam), Ben Knapp and his team (SARC, Ireland), Chikashi Miyama (ZKM, Germany), your writer and my colleague Christos (SLE, Edinburgh).

Stelarc | Prosthetic Head

Atau Tanaka & Adam Parkinson | 4Hands iPhone

Ryan Jordan | Channelling interferences

Dj Sniff

Alex Nowitz

Philip Jeck giving a live solo set just before the sleepover

Chikashi Miyama | Angry Sparrow

Marco Donnarumma | Music for Flesh II

Christos Michalakos | Frrriction

The performances program was complemented by an equally interesting array of audio installations, workshops and hands-on DIY sessions. Some good and original ideas were materialized in the labyrinth-like corridors of the Artaud building – such as the Stroviols project – and I gladly realized that the workshop were actually a pretty important aspect of the event, offering several hours a day of open sessions hosted by the practitioners present at the event.

Audio installation at BEAM

Aleks Kolkowski | A noise of strohviols

DIY workshop session at BEAM

STEIM crackle box

I’m sorry the pictures are not the best, I struggled a bit with the lighting at the main venue, but I hope you can imagine the lovely mood.
I highly recommend to keep an eye on this event, Sarah seems to be already working on the next edition and also accepting proposals… I’m personally very much looking forward to it!

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Piksel11
November 17-20 2011
Bergen, Norway
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Piksel is an international event for artists and developers working with
Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free technologies & art.
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SCREENPLAY represents contemporary audiovisual art with special focus on generative or cinematographic performance as well as performance involving live-camera-feedback.
SCREENPLAY shows an eclectic selection of artists who explore aestetic principles on the frontiers of new technologies, interactive story-telling and the interplay of audio and video.

Donnarumma will present some of his works, all deploying self-designed, Pure Data-based software, eventually focusing on the ongoing research project for biophysical live media ‘Xth Sense’.
http://res.marcodonnarumma.com/projects/xth-sense/

Do Sinusoid dream of electric sweeps | IOhannes Zmoelnig | Liwoli 2010

Knipsu | Welcome

In November I had the great pleasure to take part in the Piksel Festival 2010. I presented the work Golden Shield Music, a sonification of IT censorship technologies during a talk focused on the current state of IT censorship techs.

Piksel “is an international event for artists and developers working with Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free technologies & art.”
I would also outline that Piksel is above all a living community, both on-line and off-line, as in the “real world”; this is probably what most made me feel close to the spirit of the festival because it recalls the same approach we foster at the Live Performers Meeting annual event.

So here you go with a brief and picture-ful report.

At first sight Bergen looks like the perfect Christmas postcard: snow, mountains, frozen lakes and small lovely houses. However once you get in the “pikseler” state of mind, the city start changing too. The reception and communal venue was located at the Knipsu; this was the first meeting point for all artists, the place where you want to go if you wish to get in touch with people, see old friends, buy some very interesting FLOSS gems or have lunch!
Knipsu was also the home of some of the guerrilla, low cost, sound/radio art installation by Julien Ottavi and Jenny Pickett, which nicely dispersed sounds around the city.

Knipsu

Knipsu | Piksel program and stuff

Knipsu | FLOSS gadgets

Dinner time

Sadly I arrived in Bergen only on Friday, so you’ll miss here pictures and words from the first day of the event.
On Saturday at about 11.00 the Exquisite Code team met up at Knipsu to plan their day out, writing, feeling, perceiving space and share their experiences and words.
“For the performance at Piksel 2010″ they executed “a new distributed parallel algorithm where the writers are dispersed around Bergen within and without the festival space. Analog lookup tables dictate the physical routing or dead-drop of text-chunks.” At night, at the end of their exploration “writing is made visible via periodic reading machine interrupt processes which rupture the pedestrian life-program flow” and a bottle of wine (?) helped us celebrating.

Exquisite Code | Live Art

Exquisite Code | Live Art

Pikselers at Knipsu

Pikselers at Knipsu

In the same morning Alexandre Torres Porres hosted a workshop dedicated to Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data.
The workshop was very interesting and stimulating; Alexandre prepared some beautiful patches and examples which nicely led participants through such quite complex topic.
Interesting, well planned and very useful in order to shed some light on a topic which is often not that easy to grasp.

Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data | Alexandre Torres Porres

Spectral Analysis and Processing in Pure Data | Alexandre Torres Porres

Following Alexandre workshop I presented a research about the actual state of IT censorship technologies and a related work of mine Golden Shield Music. Piksel team published a full video of the talk on their blip.tv channel. You might want to check it out here or you might find interesting to dedicate few minutes to the reading of the accurate report of my presentation by Regine Debatty for WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART.
Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths, Marloes de Valk then talked about Naked on Pluto, a brand new multi-player text adventure game they developed for Facebook, and which is spreading right now among our FB profiles. Really worth giving it a try and read more about it.
The first evening performance FRUIT+EMOTION=NOISE, is an audiovisual show by Oscar de Carmen and Victor Mazon which deploys a 3rd generation hardware “capable of processing into sound the energy contained in fruits and vegetables discarded by supermarkets, through an electrochemical reaction.”

Fruit+emotion=noise | Oscar de Carmen and Victor Mazon

At 21.00 Eleonora Oreggia aka Xname opened the formal night event at USF, the venue dedicated to live audiovisual concerts and presentations.
Eleonora performed Phantasmata, concisely described by the author as “Empiric noise-at-a-distance, electronic circuits, pulsating lights.”  A truly scary experience in noise and lights. Inspiring.

USF | Bergen

Phantasmata Setup | Eleonora Oreggia

Phantasmata | Eleonora Oreggia

Last performance hosted by Cristiano Rosa can be described as an orgy of DIY tools, hacked toys and whatever can produce sounds. A nice set supported by Servando Barreiro’s live videos. The night ended with a party, some dancy music, some nice glitchy sounds and lods of people having good times. Live stop-motion animation by Alexandre Quessy’s ToonLoop constitued an interesting highlight of the night party.

ToonLoop | Alexandre Quessy

Sunday, the last day. The schedule was pretty busy, so after a couple of workshop in the morning three different presentations took place. First off one of my favourite artist Alejandra Perez aka El Pueblo de China talked about Cartografia Sonora Antartica, an audiovisual project about a travel to Antartica, underwater field recording and a critical observation about the role of water and its commercialization worldwide.
Next was Claudius Maximus a Pure Data guru among his other manifold skills, as many of you might already know. He presented the amazing RDEX project “an installation and performance piece that explores in an autonomous hyperspace mathematical model, searching for interesting emergent behaviour (life-alike, alife).”

RDEX | Claudius Maximus

The following talk demonstrated the potential of “CHEAP, FAT + OPEN: an open source platform for musical exploration, composition and performance” by Jacob Sikker Remin and Jakob Bak. “A combination of the old and new: the raw 8bit / chip tune approach combined with wireless connectivity, state of the art open source hardware, and expandability – gives us that FAT sound.”
Night performances were great. First was HYLICS by Ryan Jordan and Geraldine McEwan: a blast of noise, distorted violin and strobo light, which I believe deserve to be indicated as the best live act at Piksel along with Slub, a breathtaking live coding performance by Alex McLean and Dave Griffith. Then we had the RDEX performance, the strong and disrespectful poetry/noise concert Degenerative Illetrism by Joachim Montessieus, Dystophonia, a stop-motion audiovisual performance by Quessy and Matthews and finally UKI, a viral performance by Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse and live improvised soniscape by various artists participating to Piksel, including your reporter here; personally the UKI experience has had a strong impact. We performed in a group of 7/8 artists, we didn’t have any rehearsal before the gig and, although we knew each other, not all of us knew perfectly what to expect. Eventually the audience seemed to have really appreciate the piece, which is very satisfying if you think that the whole performance last 70 minutes. More than one hour of noise, drone, cuts, screams and viral videos. Thanks to Shu Lea for organizing such amazing event.

Cheap Fat and Open | Jacob Bak

Hylics | Ryan Jordan and Geraldine McEwan

Hylics | Geraldine McEwan

Degenerative Illetrism | Joachim Montessuis

UKI | Shu Lea Cheang with Martin Howse | Soniscape by various Piksel artists

I think there couldn’t possibly be any better closing for the Piksel Festival. After being submerged by 70′ noise sound wall, we all gathered at the hotel and spent the night over some drinks, saying goodbye to who had to leave and exchanging last ideas and some Brazilian music (Thanks Alexandre!!).
Overall, I have to say I was positively impressed by the quality of contents and projects presented at Piksel. It’s surely one of the place to be if you are one of us geek interested in technological freedom and constructive criticism. Besides Piksel gives a great overview about the current state of the art of the audiovisual and new media field, with a special highlight on all those kind of works which you will never happen to see in any other major festival around.
Thanks so much to Elisabeth and Gisle and all the other people involved in the event.
Next year, get your flight ticket ready for Norway!

Jesus er en venn

I’m forwarding here a message from Netaudio Berlin Festival Staff. They have been putting together a series of publication about the last edition of the festival, including reports, ideas and articles from all participants.
Looks an interesting reading, I also contributed with a report of the event (previously published here) and some personal observations about net-labels’ music and such.
More info below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear friend, musician, netlabelhead, netaudio enthusiast, creative mastermind, visual aesthete and free thinker…

We would like to inform you about a new publication on the website of Netaudio Berlin which is finally ready. (At least the texts… the layout is not perfect yet

This publication has developed from the idea to keep hold of some personal perspectives, interesting anecdotes and developed ideas – alongside with some theoretical thoughts – as an outcome of the festival. And analogue to the colorful mixture of participants in the festival, we were able to tie a turbulent bundle of texts in style, types and perspectives. Most of them are very friendly and full of (personal) enthusiasm, others are meant to increase and develop the content, framework and general setup of the festival.

Read more:

http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/introduction_antina/

Find the table of contents here:

http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/

You might leave comments on the texts if you like – and we would really love to read your remarks, footnotes and opinions. We are curious about any of your comments.
I will answer your Emails – but it can take a while – because of my final episodes in pregnancy… For urgent requirements please contact Raimund ( raimund@netaudioberlin.de ).

We kindly ask you to spread the word on your websites, social networks and where ever you think it’s relevant.

Best greetings,

Antina Michels and the netaudio team

P.S.: If you are still interested to purchase a Netaudio Book (“Netlabels -  Soziale Netze On- & Offline”), please let me know. More info:
http://antinamichels.de/wordpress/?page_id=2

Check the article about the research and outcome in English in this publication:
http://www.netaudioberlin.de/publications/netaudio-scene-article_antina/

–

Netaudio Festival Berlin 2009
Antina Michels
Festival Management

High Spheres - Marco Donnarumma - Re-new Festival 2010

My recent works Golden Shield Music and The Invisible Suns Project were both short-listed at Screengrab New Media Art Award and they are currently being exhibited at eMerge Gallery, Townsville in Australia.
The exhibition is organized by James Cook University, if you’d happen to be in the area the show runs until 18th November.
Tags: Responsive computing systems, generative, autonomous, web, network, censorhip, stock prices.

A brief press release can be found here.
The eMerge Gallery homepage can be visited here.

]]> http://www.thesaddj.com/some-autonomous-systems-short-listed-at-screengrab-new-media-art-award/feed/ 0 http://www.thesaddj.com/live-performers-meeting-2011-rome-and-minsk-belarus/ http://www.thesaddj.com/live-performers-meeting-2011-rome-and-minsk-belarus/#comments Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:22:38 +0000 Marco Donnarumma http://www.thesaddj.com/?p=1760

I’m glad to publicly launch the forthcoming 2011 editions of LPM – Live Performers Meeting, international meeting of live video performers, visual artists and vjs, focused on live video performances and live media.
Next year Rome will host the first event in May, while we’ll move to Minsk, Belarus in September for a second edition with our partners Cinetrip and Vision’r Festival.

Video by our almighty Aira

1st day – Wednesday November 3rd
9h30-12h30 | 14h-18h*
Introduction to the tools and installation.
Discussion about the design brief.
Gathering of ideas and inspirational material.
Definition of the main idea to be communicated with the final design.

* The time will be divided in two phases:
- an individual phase where the participants will work on the project on their own
- and a group phase where the participants will find a common line to move on.

Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Hostile weather | Iceland | 2010

Reykjavik Art Museum | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Servando Barreiro | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Margrét Elisabet Olafsdottir & Aki Asgeirsson | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Pall Thayer | Microcodes | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Servando Barreiro | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Goodiepal | Meta-talk | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Marco Donnarumma | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010 | Photo by Ser_

Linda Hilfling | Radical TV Democracy | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Sky above us | Iceland | 2010

Servando Barreiro entering the Academy of Fine Arts | Iceland | 2010

Artwork? | Academy of Fine Arts | Iceland | 2010

Setting up the venue for the closing night | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Performance | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Mapping projections with FLxER | Pikslaverk Festival | Iceland | 2010

Martin Howse staring at the geysir | Iceland | 2010

On 18th May at 19.30 at Huset i Magstræde, Copenhagen, Denmark, Re-New Digital Arts Festival kicks off prensenting ‘High Spheres’ a participative multi-channel concert for found objects and reactive generative music by Edinburgh based new media and sound artist Marco Donnarumma.

The action takes place open air. No musical instruments are provided, but stones and leaves. Audience can use six microphones and a 6.1 surround system to amplify any kind of sound they wish to produce.
The whole sonic matter is managed by a Pure Data-based software for generative music developed by the author, which interacts with the audience processing sounds in real-time, analyzing the input signals and generating new sounds and textures out of the collected data.

An endless sonic data flow which, once started, will live and grow beyond the time-space of the action. Generative electroacoustic music for non-musicians.
If you’re in the city you’re very welcome to freely join our self-organized orchestra and contribute to the creation of our brand-new collective soundscape.

Further info:
http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/high-spheres/
http://re-new.org/program/

Press contact: http://marcodonnarumma.com/contact/

]]> http://www.thesaddj.com/high-spheres-open-air-multi-channel-participative-concert-re-new-festival-denmark/feed/ 0 http://www.thesaddj.com/i-cntrl-nature-3-0-mapping-festival-2010/ http://www.thesaddj.com/i-cntrl-nature-3-0-mapping-festival-2010/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 13:45:20 +0000 Marco Donnarumma http://www.thesaddj.com/?p=1416

http://flxer.net

All pictures by Joanna M. Stacewicz, thank you!

Berlin. Wonderful as always.

I went there together with Joanna M. Stacewicz for few days and we had the chance to live one of the (probably) last days of full warm sun before the winter.

Probably i just wasn’t considering the complete  spectrum of a “netaudio-only” event. The line-up was almost completely dedicated to dance live acts (or dj sets), dancy electronica, dancy idm, dancy dubstep, techno, and some live pop bands.

Nahh… that’s not for me. Please, feel free to write few lines about your idea of free music and whatever could be related to it. I definitely wish to know your opinion and keep on the conversation.

I was really glad to get to know about my selection since Netaudio festival is the bulwark of free CC-licensed music, so it represents kind of _must_ for me.
Here you are the statement of this Berliner edition – via Netaudio website:

From the 8th to the 11th of October 2009, Netaudio Berlin will be gathering the international netaudio community for a four-day music and conference festival in Berlin, under the title “East meets West”. 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. We recall pictures of hands reaching out to pull people from both sides up onto the Berlin wall. The event will take place at Maria, a venue situated immediately on the former Berlin ‘death strip’ once dividing the city and the world into eastern and western hemispheres.

In recent years a netaudio landscape has emerged in the countries of Eastern Europe. Speakers, artists and netlabel managers from Eastern and Western Europe as well as from the USA are invited to find out more about the needs and possibilities, challenges and chances of netaudio under the various cultural frameworks and to discuss new opportunities for networking and collaboration across borders and cultures.

• Netaudio Fair
• Showcases
• Lectures
• Workshops
• Discussions
• Films

… and a night program too broad to be described in this article. Plenty of artists and genres – electronic, drum’n'bass, dubstep, hip hop, techno. Be sure to check the full program here. The live visuals will be curated by my dear friends Visual Berlin, don’t miss it!

After the performances (including also Byetone who was performing at my same time, I would have loved to attend) everybody has moved to the Link for the last club night of the festival. Nice time in there supporting old good friends Vj Hash and Sapo during their vj set, and around 5am everybody has jumped in the car driving back home.

Once again Sunday has come and I’ve taken the last tour around the city, sitting in a park and enjoying the last rays of sun – because in Milan the rain was waiting for me.
I end the report with this picture: a public park in Bologna dedicated to the 11st September 2001.
I’ve the maximum respect for that event (and also a lot of doubts and anxiety), but could you tell me why in Italy we should dedicate a park to this date???
Sorry but i cannot agree with that.

Festival:http://www.robotfestival.it/2009
tickets: http://www.robotfestival.it/2009/ingressi/

More infos: www.pdcon.org

I definetely love spending days in Germany at experimental music events ’cause i always see things that i’m sure i won’t be able to see anywhere else. Don’t know if it’s all about my “mith” of Germany, but i can assure the”experimental” matter there has really a deep sense and clear imprint. Maybe it’s all about originality and the way to express it…

Coming next we had the DuoB – free, improvisational jazz duet from United States. They provided a huge concert, impossible to describe it, but just imagine 1.5 hour of free improvisation on drums (played in every way you can imagine) and double-bass, supported by impervious and theatrical readings by Pedro Cofrè from Chile.

We didn’t have the time to recover our mind from the intuitional free reading/jazz of DuoB, and Christine Sehnaoui started her solo performance/radical improvisation at saxophone. She’s one of the most professional improvisers i’ve ever seen playing live, i highly suggest to check her work. Great presence on stage and awesome confidence with her instrument.

On the second day of the event, after having a beautiful breakfast with the other artists, we reached again the venue for another session. This time Ezramo opened the night… It has been a lovely experience, from subtle mystic moments to ethnic derivations and electroacoustic breackdowns.

• 20:30 – ANTENNA RESEARCH feat. MOWBLIND (Stuttgart)
  Audiovisuelle Performance
• 21:00 – DUO B. & PEDRO COFRÉ (San Francisco, USA – Concepción, Chile)
  Filmvertonung / Live-Improvisierte Musik / Poesie-Lesung
• 22:00 – CHRISTINE SEHNAOUI (Paris, Frankreich)
  Solo Performance / Radical Improvisation
• 22:45 – ZENIT & NADIR (Stuttgart)
  Multimediale Performance: Quartier Ss – Sinnbild materiellen Prunks

• 21:00 – EZRAMO (Italien / Stuttgart)
  Audiovisuell Solo Performance: Beats Moar Bambus
• 21:45 – OLIVER PRECHTL, PHILIPP GOLM (Stuttgart)
  Experimentelles Musiktheater: „The International Besetztzeichen“
• 22:15 – THE !S.A.D.! (Rom, Italien)
  Pure Data – Performance: „I C::ntr::l Nature”

• 18:00 – JUSTYNA KOEKE & NINA MÜLLER (Stuttgart)
  Rauminstallation
• 22:00 – RAGANI HAAS (Stuttgart)
  Performance

• 22:30 – ANJA ABELE (Stuttgart)
  Performance
• MIRIAM HUSCHENBETH (Stuttgart)
  Performance