“The inter­ac­tion of tone, as though a tone were a being. The tone itself may con­tain a com­plex spec­trum or it may be a more reduced, trans­par­ent, or sin­gu­lar vibra­tion. But it is always influ­enced by what is hap­pen­ing around it, in its periph­ery, and there are always oth­er tonal­i­ties alter­ing its condition.” 

— Catherine Lamb

Tuned Circuits, the 2021 edi­tion of Oscillation Festival, bor­rows its title from Daphne Oram, the ear­ly elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor. In Oram’s work and writ­ing we glimpse the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a par­al­lel between elec­tron­ic and bio­log­i­cal cir­cuits, and a desire to per­ceive phe­nom­e­na simul­ta­ne­ous­ly from var­i­ous sides. More broad­ly, the fes­ti­val looks at prac­tices and phe­nom­e­na of tun­ing. Tuning is a fun­da­ment of music mak­ing. To think in terms of tun­ing is to think in terms of rela­tions; of one thing com­ing into con­so­nance or dis­so­nance with anoth­er, of one thing colour­ing and affect­ing anoth­er. It is also to think in terms of time, since tun­ing requires a process of con­stant cal­i­bra­tion: what is now in tune will not stay that way.

Oscillation — Tuned Circuits takes place over 4 days as a live broad­cast from MILL, Brussels and addi­tion­al loca­tions. The fes­ti­val will mix talks, per­for­mances and works for radio. Each day focuss­es on a sub-the­mat­ic: attun­ing, as a move­ment of con­ver­gence; feed­back, as a cir­cu­lar move­ment which ampli­fies itself; detun­ing, as a move­ment of unlearn­ing and a con­di­tion for regen­er­a­tion. The open­ing evening we ded­i­cate to Daphne Oram, whose research the­mat­ic we take as our own: ​“to fol­low curiosi­ties with­out flinching”.

Oscillation Festival is a project by Q‑O2 werk­plaats. This edi­tion is host­ed by MILL thanks to Needcompany, with the sup­port of Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, City of Brussels, Österreichisches Kulturforum, Nederlandse Ambassade, Ictus.

The Live Audio Stream will be acces­si­ble via this web­site, and dif­fused on sev­er­al inde­pen­dent radio sta­tions: Radio p‑node, The Listening Arts Channel, Radio Lyl, Radio Campus Bruxelles, Radio Helsinki, Colaboradio and Radio Shirley&Spinoza.

Specials

Alongside this year’s broad­cast, you will here find some spe­cial mate­ri­als that did­n’t fit the struc­ture of a radio broad­cast. Please note: These mate­ri­als are only avail­able for the dura­tion of the fes­ti­val, so be sure not to miss out. 

As part of this year’s Oscillation Festival, we pre­pared a read­er of texts that have been inspir­ing to the program’s artists and to our­selves. An paper ver­sion can be ordered via info@q‑o2.be (5€ in Belgium/​8€ in Europe). Find it here:

“We will be enter­ing a strange world where com­posers will be min­gling with capac­i­tors, com­put­ers will be con­trol­ling crotch­ets and, maybe, mem­o­ry, music and mag­net­ism will lead us towards metaphysics.” 

— Daphne Oram (1971).

Conceived as an artist’s film in homage to Daphne Oram, Oramics: Atlantis Anew fea­tures a close-up encounter with Oram’s unique inven­tion, the Oramics Machine, housed at the Science Museum in London. Oram used drawn sound prin­ci­ples to com­pose​“hand­wrought” elec­tron­ic music, and yet the visu­al nature of her work remains large­ly unseen and unsung. The film brings this obso­lete tech­no­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy briefly back to life, enabling the visu­al­iza­tion of the drawn sound mate­r­i­al, re-inter­pret­ing and trans­lat­ing it into new filmic sequences.

The Mirror is a live a/​v per­for­mance which splices togeth­er movie snip­pets with unique sam­­ple-based music explor­ing, the masks that we wear rep­re­sent­ed through the lens, using par­al­lel nar­ra­tives across the screen to depict an ever-chang­ing stream, rather than a sin­gu­lar, fixed being, nar­ra­tive or moment in time.

The Mirror will be avail­able to stream on demand through­out the dura­tion of the festival.

A video per­for­mance of Goodiepal & Pals per­form­ing ​“Bananskolen”

The return of the world in all its vio­lence is always a bit­ter thing. Not that it’s ever real­ly gone – just more or dif­fer­ent­ly naked, & more or less so for each of us in unequal measure.

After a year with­out ​“live” con­cert applause, can we hear into our own din what is already there? – that each clap is always also for the world.
The fol­low­ing 16 record­ings of applause from February 19th, 2020 to April 12th, 2021 should be played back on top of / dur­ing live applause & accom­pa­nied by their cita­tions & this note.

- Audio (.zip)

- Citations (.pdf)

With thanks to K. W.

— Bill Dietz, Florence, April 18th, 2021.

This work­shop starts from the dia­ton­ic har­mon­i­ca and dives into tun­ing and col­lec­tive impro­vi­sa­tion, with inspi­ra­tion from the Sonic Meditation prac­tice of Pauline Oliveros. 

The harmonica’s tech­nique is based on sub­tle rhyth­mic and tim­bral vari­a­tions con­nect­ed to the player’s breath­ing. Using dif­fer­ent har­mon­i­cas, we will inves­ti­gate tex­tures gen­er­at­ed through com­bi­na­tion tones, overblow­ing and over­tones, hand res­o­nance tech­niques, and stag­gered breath­ing rhythms.

There will be atten­tion to the instrument’s dif­fer­ent tun­ings: from equal tem­pera­ment, to 7‑limit Just Intonation, to dif­fer­ent exam­ples of com­pro­mised tun­ings between the two. Should there be inter­est from par­tic­i­pants, cus­tom tun­ing could be an addi­tion­al field of experimentation. 

Instruments will be pro­vid­ed with dif­fer­ent tun­ing and tim­bres, but par­tic­i­pants are also invit­ed to bring their own.

Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place in per­son and is lim­it­ed to 5 par­tic­i­pants. Address: Q‑O2, Koolmijnenkaai/​Quai des Charbonnages 30 – 34, 1080 Brussels. Workshop in English.
Hygiene note: har­mon­i­cas will be cleaned and disinfected. 

Stellan Veloce

Stellan Veloce is a Sardinian com­pos­er, per­former and cel­list liv­ing and work­ing in Berlin. They com­pose pieces for acoustic instru­men­tal ensem­bles as well as work­ing on instal­la­tions or per­for­mance pieces focus­ing on tim­bre, rep­e­ti­tion and sound den­si­ties. Veloce works or has worked with col­lab­o­ra­tors from many dif­fer­ent disciplines.

A work­shop based on col­lec­tive free impro­vi­sa­tion, explor­ing the vocab­u­lar­ies that each per­former brings with them. These vocab­u­lar­ies will form the basis of a set of exer­cis­es for impro­vis­ing togeth­er, explor­ing our inher­ent musi­cal capacities.

Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be (upon reg­is­tra­tion please state your instru­ment of choice)

This work­shop takes place in per­son and is lim­it­ed to 10 par­tic­i­pants. Adresse: Wild Gallery, Avenue du Pont de Luttre 72, 1190 Vorst. Workshop in English & French.
Open for par­tic­i­pants who play any instru­ment (all lev­els wel­come). Prior expe­ri­ence with free impro­vi­sa­tion is not necessary.

Farida amadou ab 1 web
© Laurent Orseau

Farida Amadou is a self-taught, impro­vis­ing bass play­er from Liège, Belgium. Since 2014, she has per­formed with musi­cians includ­ing: Linda Sharrock, Steve Noble, Karl H. Bjora, Jasper Stadhouders, Onno Govaert, Eve Risser, Morgane Carnet, Philippe Lemoine, Timothée Quost, Julien Desprez, Anil Eraslan, Mette Rasmussen, Basile Naudet, Chris Pitsiokos, Alex Ward and Thurston Moore. Since 2018, she is part of the punk-noise group Cocaine Piss.

Sound artist Myriam Van Imschoot and vocal­ist Andreas Halling pro­pose a work­shop inspired by the chirp of crick­ets, the spray of cicadas, and the song of grasshop­pers amongst oth­er mate­ri­als honed from the vibrant sound-world of insects. During this four-hour work­shop, lis­ten­ing exer­cis­es are intro­duced along with dif­fer­ent tech­niques to trans­pose insect stridu­la­tion to the human body. The aim is to togeth­er exer­cise a com­mon ​“lan­guage”, while get­ting a taste of an organ­i­sa­tion sys­tem that encour­ages polyrhythm and hybrid sound com­mu­ni­ca­tion, on the thresh­old of audibility. 

Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place in per­son and is lim­it­ed to 20 par­tic­i­pants. Address: Wild Gallery, Avenue du Pont de Luttre 72, 1190 Vorst. Workshop in English.
No singing skills are required.

Myriam Van Imschoot

Myriam Van Imschoot has a long-stand­ing inter­est in sound-ecol­o­gy in sound instal­la­tions, per­for­mances and films. Through audio-mime­sis she has come to explore extend­ed tech­niques that inter­sect the human and ani­mal world. Her approach com­bines phys­i­cal, audi­to­ry and son­ic sensibilities. 

Andreas Halling is a singer and co-artis­tic direc­tor of Hyoid voic­es, a Brussels-based con­tem­po­rary music ensem­ble known for its trans­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tions. Van Imschoot and HYOID col­lab­o­rat­ed on the vocal performance/​concert new­poly­phonies.

Gentle Spring Roll is an active lis­ten­ing work­shop in the form of a cook­ing broad­cast, with gen­tle steps for prepar­ing and adding ingre­di­ents to make sum­mer rolls. The work­shop will guide par­tic­i­pants through culi­nary aware­ness by tun­ing in to sound and body while mak­ing food. We will focus on expand­ing our lis­ten­ing to food ener­gy, the space’s atmos­phere and com­mu­nal sound mak­ing.

The work­shop will unfold in three parts.
1. pre­pare the actu­al body: we will slow­ly pre­pare our body into a calm and con­scious mode by doing light breath­ing exer­cis­es.
2. med­i­ta­tion on food sound: we will spend time med­i­tat­ing on the sound of food ingre­di­ents we will be using for the recipe.
3. the rolling: we will mind­ful­ly and slow­ly make spring rolls with giv­en instruction.

Time: 19:00 – 22:00 (CET)
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place online and is lim­it­ed to 10 par­tic­i­pants. Workshop in English. Participants will be giv­en a list of ingre­di­ents to source before the work­shop (part of the adven­ture). Be sure to reg­is­ter far enough ahead of time.

Liew Niyomkarn

Liew Niyomkarn is a sound artist with an inter­est in lis­ten­ing prac­tices, alter­na­tive tun­ings, and sound­walk­ing. She explores sub­jects con­nect­ed to the col­lec­tive knowl­edge of humans and non-human, acoustic ecol­o­gy, and cos­mol­o­gy, through the use of sources such as syn­thet­ic sound, field record­ing, and texts. These ele­ments come togeth­er to recon­fig­ure sto­ries into per­for­mances, radio pieces, and installations.

In this work­shop, we will work the voice through the image of a syn­the­siz­er pro­gres­sive­ly shap­ing a sim­ple tone into a com­plex abstract sound.

Here, the body will be revealed as a high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal object. We will use somat­ic tech­nics and body move­ments to approach the vocal sys­tem as a har­mo­niz­er, the con­so­nants as ADSR enve­lope, the pitch as a gen­er­a­tor and so on, until our way of con­ceiv­ing and lis­ten­ing to voice final­ly changes to open new direc­tions in vocal experimentations.

Effects such as reverse, time shift, cut, repeat and fil­ter will become scores for abstract, repet­i­tive and med­i­ta­tive group compositions.

The struc­ture of the work­shop will imply shar­ing of tech­ni­cal tools, guid­ed self explo­ration through impro­vi­sa­tion and group com­po­si­tion. It is a lab­o­ra­to­ry to deep­en our rela­tion to voice, dis­place our con­cep­tion of singing and seek for min­i­mal and abstract aes­thet­ic usu­al­ly attrib­uted to elec­tro-acoustic music.

Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place in per­son and is lim­it­ed to 10 par­tic­i­pants. Address: Wild Gallery, Avenue du Pont de Luttre 72, 1190 Vorst. Workshop in English & French.
Experience in voice and body prac­tices is rec­om­mend­ed but not mandatory.

A pass c sarah oyserman webview 53
© Sarah Oyserman

Aela Royer exper­i­ments with a capel­la singing and vocal syn­the­sis. Rather than using devices to trans­form and fil­ter her voice, she trains it to per­me­ate the sounds of diverse ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers, blur­ring the lim­it between the human and its tech­ni­cal inventions.

Introduction to live cod­ing using the web-based video syn­the­siz­er Hydra. Inspired by ana­log mod­u­lar syn­the­sis, Hydra allows mul­ti­ple visu­al sources (oscil­la­tors, cam­eras, appli­ca­tion win­dows, remote video streams) to be trans­formed, mod­u­lat­ed, and com­pos­it­ed via com­bin­ing sequences of func­tions. The work­shop will be an intro­duc­tion to cre­ative cod­ing and cre­at­ing live visu­als using this flex­i­ble system. 

Time: 19:00 – 22:00 (CET)
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place online and is lim­it­ed to 10 par­tic­i­pants. Workshop in English.
No pri­or expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary! A lap­top or com­put­er and head­phones is required to participate.

Olivia Jack

Olivia Jack is a pro­grammer and artist who works fre­quent­ly with open-source soft­ware, car­tog­ra­phy, live cod­ing, and exper­i­men­tal inter­faces. She is the devel­op­er of var­i­ous brows­er-based cre­ative tools includ­ing Hydra (live-cod­ed video syn­the­siz­er), PIXELSYNTH, Pixeljam (col­lab­o­ra­tive code edi­tor) and LiveLab (peer-to-peer media router). Her live visu­al sets explore algo­rith­mic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of unpre­dictable and chaot­ic sys­tems, and writ­ing soft­ware as a messy and ephemer­al process.

In this work­shop on the rooftop gar­den of Q‑O2 Esther Mugambi, Raoul Carrer and Sarah van Lamsweerde wel­come you to a time­ly end­ing of win­ter hiber­na­tion, lock­down and ill­ness. No pre­vi­ous musi­cal or botan­i­cal expe­ri­ence is required, but come pre­pared to get phys­i­cal and vocal. We will treat our bod­ies to sound and plant heal­ing, tread bare­foot on the moss car­pet, rub hands with leaves and sing in fre­quen­cies that mar­ry urban and nat­ur­al envi­ron­ments, aim­ing to cre­ate the begin­nings of a col­lec­tive Sore Spot Song.

Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place in per­son and is lim­it­ed to 7 par­tic­i­pants. Workshop in English. Address: Q‑O2, Koolmijnenkaai/​Quai des Charbonnages 30 – 34, 1080 Brussels

Sarah v Lamsweerde recht

Sarah van Lamsweerde cre­ates per­for­mances, pub­li­ca­tions and instal­la­tions that explore the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage, the body and visu­al cul­ture. She col­lab­o­rates on a long-term basis with a num­ber of peer groups, and in 2010 found­ed Stichting Tre Tigri, a plat­form for real­is­ing and pro­mot­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary projects, which also includes Esther Mugambi. 

Esther Mugambi is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary mak­er and singer of Australian-Kenyan descent. Esther thinks in images and writes musi­cal­ly. She effort­less­ly cross­es all kinds of bor­ders, whether they be nation­al, eth­nic, social or cul­tur­al. Her tools con­sist of a crys­­tal-clear voice, a crit­i­cal view and a lot of humour.

Raoul Carrer spent most of his life in Africa (Bénin, South Africa, Mali) before mov­ing to France in 2012. Raoul com­bines his dance prac­tice with an artis­tic research around the urban cul­ture that stim­u­lates him to dive fur­ther into music, beat-mak­ing, fash­ion and video. 

Platforms and prac­tices for sound live cod­ing ensembles.

Estuary is a plat­form for col­lab­o­ra­tive live cod­ing includ­ing devel­op­ing for the brows­er using the func­tion­al pro­gram­ming lan­guage Haskell while scal­ing up to a lan­guage-neu­tral or mul­ti-lin­gual approach. The work­shop will cov­er strate­gies for online jam­ming and ensem­bles and will be an intro­duc­tion to Tidalcycles start­ing with CQenze (an eso­teric mini lan­guage on top of Tidal).

Time: 19:00 – 22:00 (CET)
Price: €15
Registration: info@q‑o2.be

This work­shop takes place online and is lim­it­ed to 10 par­tic­i­pants. Workshop in English.
No pri­or expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary. A lap­top or com­put­er and head­phones is required to participate.

Image

Celeste Betancur is a mul­ti-instru­­men­­tal­ist musi­cian with a pro­fes­sion­al degree in gui­tar a Master in Digital Arts. For ITM Medellin, she is a researcher in top­ics such as code and pro­gram­ming didac­tics and HCI for edu­ca­tion­al plat­forms, and she also works devel­op­ing human-machine inter­faces. Celeste is a trans­gen­der woman, mar­ried with two children.

Tuned Visions: The British Electronic Music Pioneer Daphne Oram

Daphne Oram (1925−2003) was a com­pos­er and one of the cen­tral fig­ures of ear­ly British elec­troa­coustic music. She was involved in the found­ing of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1958−1998), devel­oped the pho­to­elec­tric ​“drawn sound” syn­the­siz­er Oramics, and left many impor­tant com­po­si­tions. This talk high­lights her most cre­ative peri­od, from set­ting up her own record­ing stu­dio in Kent in the end of the 1950s, to the con­struc­tion of the Oramics Machine and the pub­lish­ing of her book An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound and Electronics, towards the end of the 1970s.

Talk in English.

Daphne oram oramics 4lp

Anna Steiden works as a musi­col­o­gist and musi­cian. Her cur­rent research focus­es on elec­tron­ic and elec­troa­coustic music, cul­tur­al aspects of music his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and gen­der stud­ies. Since 2010, Anna Steiden has been pro­duc­ing and mod­er­at­ing the month­ly broad­cast of the inter­na­tion­al net­work female:pressure at the inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion Radio Orange 94,0.

“We will be enter­ing a strange world where com­posers will be min­gling with capac­i­tors, com­put­ers will be con­trol­ling crotch­ets and, maybe, mem­o­ry, music and mag­net­ism will lead us towards metaphysics.” 

— Daphne Oram (1971).

Conceived as an artist’s film in homage to Daphne Oram, Oramics: Atlantis Anew fea­tures a close-up encounter with Oram’s unique inven­tion, the Oramics Machine, housed at the Science Museum in London. Oram used drawn sound prin­ci­ples to com­pose ​“hand­wrought” elec­tron­ic music, and yet the visu­al nature of her work remains large­ly unseen and unsung. The film brings this obso­lete tech­no­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy briefly back to life, enabling the visu­al­iza­tion of the drawn sound mate­r­i­al, re-inter­pret­ing and trans­lat­ing it into new filmic sequences.

Aura Satz

Aura Satz is an artist whose work encom­pass­es sound, film, per­for­mance and sculp­ture. Her work cen­tres on the trope of ven­tril­o­quism in order to con­cep­tu­al­ize a dis­trib­uted, expand­ed and dia­log­i­cal notion of voice. Satz has looked at var­i­ous sound tech­nolo­gies in order to explore nota­tion sys­tems, code and encryp­tion, and ways in which these might resist stan­dard­iza­tion, gen­er­at­ing new sound­scapes, and in turn new forms of lis­ten­ing and attend­ing to the other. 

A selec­tion of pieces from Daphne Oram’s diverse musi­cal oeu­vre, pro­duced since her depar­ture from the BBC in January 1959 until her final tape piece in 1977, and pub­lished posthu­mous­ly on the Oramics Compilation (Paradigm Discs). Oram’s music is char­ac­ter­ized by her unique approach, draw­ing on dif­fer­ent tech­niques and aes­thet­ics from musique con­crète, tape music, con­tem­po­rary music and pop music. Spanning immer­sive and spa­tial con­cert pieces, to music for film, the­atre, instal­la­tion and exhi­bi­tions, play­ful inter­ludes, com­mer­cial record­ings and stu­dio exper­i­ments, this con­cert will reflect Oram’s vision­ary son­ic universe.

Live spa­tial­iza­tion by Caroline Profanter.

Playlist:
1. Rockets In Ursa Major (Excerpt 1)
2. Purring Interlude
3. Purple Dust
4. In a Jazz Style
5. Pulse Persephone
6. Four Aspects
7. Episode Metallic
8. Bird of Parallax
9. Rockets in Ursa Major (Excerpt 3)

Daphne Oram1

Daphne Oram (1925 – 2003) was a pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and the inven­tor of Oramics, a means of syn­the­siz­ing sound by draw­ing wave­forms, pitch­es, vol­ume envelopes and oth­er prop­er­ties on film. She was also a writer, edu­ca­tor and keen advo­cate for the recog­ni­tion of elec­tron­ic music as an excit­ing and valu­able art form. She was the co-founder of the high­ly influ­en­tial BBC Radiophonic Workshop, draw­ing up the blue­prints for this pio­neer­ing home of elec­tron­ics and musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ism in 1956, when she detailed how to set up such a stu­dio in a report to BBC managers.

Jessica Ekomane will present an unti­tled musi­cal play with rhythm per­cep­tion in space, using sim­ple wave­forms as the main sound mate­r­i­al. The set explores the per­cep­tion of sep­a­rate ele­ments which form mean­ing as they form a whole, trans­form­ing the addi­tion of sim­ple sta­t­ic sound ele­ments into com­plex rhyth­mic and har­mon­ic structures.

Jessica Ekomane Camille Blake 19
© Camille Blake

Jessica Ekomane is an elec­tron­ic musi­cian and sound artist. Her quadra­phon­ic per­for­mances, char­ac­ter­ized by their phys­i­cal effect, seek a cathar­tic results through the inter­play of psy­choa­coustics, the per­cep­tion of rhyth­mic struc­tures and the inter­change of noise and melody. Her work is ground­ed in ques­tions such as the rela­tion­ship between indi­vid­ual per­cep­tion and col­lec­tive dynam­ics or the inves­ti­ga­tion of lis­ten­ing expec­ta­tions and their soci­etal roots.

The Mirror is a live a/​v per­for­mance which splices togeth­er movie snip­pets with unique sam­ple-based music explor­ing, the masks that we wear rep­re­sent­ed through the lens, using par­al­lel nar­ra­tives across the screen to depict an ever-chang­ing stream, rather than a sin­gu­lar, fixed being, nar­ra­tive or moment in time.

The Mirror will be avail­able to stream on demand through­out the dura­tion of the festival.

Additionally, People Like Us presents a cas­cad­ing live radio mix of pop-cul­ture and exper­i­men­tal sam­ples in response to the the­mat­ics of the fes­ti­val for broad­cast on Thursday evening. 

Peoplelikeus themirror

Since 1991, British artist Vicki Bennett has been work­ing across the field of audio-visu­al col­lage, and is rec­og­nized as a pio­neer­ing fig­ure in the still grow­ing domain of sam­pling, appro­pri­a­tion and cut­ting up of found footage and archives. Working under the name People Like Us, Vicki spe­cial­izes in the manip­u­la­tion and rework­ing of orig­i­nal sources from both the exper­i­men­tal and pop­u­lar worlds of music, film and radio. People Like Us believes in open access to archives for cre­ative use. In 2006 she was the first artist to be giv­en unre­strict­ed access to the entire BBC Archive. 

A Musical Cosmos

Can we hear the cos­mos in music? Would music be its beat­ing heart? 

This talk is an explo­ration of the sur­pris­ing links between the his­to­ry of Western music and the his­to­ry of astron­o­my, all with­in a broad­er ques­tion about of our human ​“need for the cos­mos”. The talk tracks and sam­ples music from ancient rit­u­als to the pop­u­lar music of the moment, includ­ing jazz, ambi­ent and var­i­ous types of so-called ​“clas­si­cal” music.

Talk in French.

Talk attuning

For the past ten years, Pierre Deruisseau has been devel­op­ing the Astrophonie pro­gram — an explo­ration of the mytho­log­i­cal spaces present in music. An excit­ing and sur­pris­ing research, trans­mit­ted in a liv­ing form at the cross­roads of sto­ry­telling, lec­tures and lis­ten­ing ses­sions, Deruisseau has pre­sent­ed these talks on invi­ta­tion, in insti­tu­tions and in the pri­vate homes of friends.

In KAOSS: the singing of a synth, Aela Royer pro­pos­es to lis­ten to the sound of a syn­the­siz­er as if it was the voice of anoth­er being with which one could inter­act and sing. The two voic­es encounter one anoth­er in a duet, as an ongo­ing cal­i­bra­tion and inter­play of their dif­fer­ences and resem­blances. Could one get lost in the nature of a singer, or the nature of one’s own voice when spend­ing time tun­ing in with a machine? 

Cutout

Aela Royer exper­i­ments with a capel­la singing and vocal syn­the­sis. Rather than using devices to trans­form and fil­ter her voice, she trains it to per­me­ate the sounds of diverse ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers, blur­ring the lim­it between the human and its tech­ni­cal inventions. 

a s p e _

How do we lis­ten, how do we scru­ti­nize the inside of a sung note? How does lis­ten­ing to sounds heard inside a note sung by a vocal­ist cre­ate a scale of notes to be sung by oth­er singers? We attempt to sing what we have heard, what we hear, what we are going to hear.

Performed by Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Lane, and Yannick Guédon. Recorded live in Berlin by Adam Asnan. 

Yannick Guedon

Yannick Guédon is a com­pos­er, singer and per­former. His work focus­es on tiny vari­a­tions of tim­bre and sub­jec­tive notions of time and silence. He pays par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the place and con­text in which each musi­cal sit­u­a­tion is displayed.

On Impurities

“The spi­ral is an attempt at con­trol­ling the chaos. It has two direc­tions. Where do you place your­self, at the periph­ery or at the vor­tex? Beginning at the out­side is the fear of los­ing con­trol; the wind­ing in is a tight­en­ing, a retreat­ing, a com­pact­ing to the point of dis­ap­pear­ance. Beginning at the cen­ter is affir­ma­tion, the move out­ward is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of giv­ing, and giv­ing up con­trol; of trust, pos­i­tive ener­gy, of life itself.”

-Louise Bourgeois, Spiral

In this talk, Catherine Lamb will be think­ing through per­spec­tivism as it relates to impu­ri­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regards to individual/​cultural music­ing through iden­ti­fi­able forms in har­mon­ic space. Beauty is some­thing to be both revered and feared, but the pat­terns in which we tra­verse these sen­sa­tions informs our col­lec­tive realities.

Cat Lamb

Catherine Lamb is an active com­pos­er, explor­ing the inter­ac­tion of tone, sum­ma­tions of shapes and shad­ows, phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal expan­sions, the archi­tec­ture of the lim­i­nal (states in between outside/​inside), and the long intro­duc­tion form. She aban­doned the con­ser­va­to­ry in 2003 to study Hindustani music in Pune, India. In 2006, she start­ed to devel­op her research into the inter­ac­tion of tone and con­tin­ues to com­pose, teach, and col­lab­o­rate with musicians.

Piano tuners: the ​“bloom”, the begin­ning moment of the tonal enve­lope where ​“chiff” occurs, the expan­sion of tran­sient sounds through the ini­tial oscil­la­tion to the tonal cor­pus / Juliana Spahr: things of each pos­si­ble rela­tion hash­ing against one anoth­er / Radical Software: an x with­in a cir­cle, the Xerox mark, the antithe­sis of copy­right, which means DO copy. The slow gaze, a touch scroll, a sharp zoom, a jump cut / twin pianos, these inter­vals shim­mer, lock­ing in, tun­ing out.

Usher batard Jean Didier Gazeau
© Jean Didier Gazeau

Charlie Usher is a com­pos­er liv­ing in Brussels, work­ing with heart-on-sleeve cul­tur­al sam­ples, rotary and hand­made speak­er instal­la­tions, live instru­ments, detailed mon­tage pro­to­cols and hor­i­zon­tal time structures.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interviews with Maika Garnica, Farida Amadou

In Audible Change in Air Pressure, Maika Garnica makes the undu­la­tions of her self-build ceram­ic instru­ments rever­ber­ate through touch, using air, flu­ids and gran­u­lar mate­r­i­al. Garnica thinks in res­o­nance; men­tal­ly visu­al­iz­ing waves trav­el­ing, bounc­ing around the cham­ber of her sound ves­sels. The spiked and scaled clay embod­ies per­for­ma­tive poten­tial, whether at rest or at play. 

Maika Garnica
© Pieter Kers

Maika Garnica is sculp­tor and musi­cian who explores the rela­tion­ship between the envi­ron­ment, spec­ta­tor and artist. She uses pro­to­types to com­pre­hend the com­plex rela­tion between form and mat­ter while insti­gat­ing the posi­tion of the body as a vehi­cle for social con­nec­tion. Through var­i­ous con­texts, the nature of the work shifts spon­ta­neous­ly from sculp­ture to util­i­tar­i­an object to sound installation. 

Goodiepal & Pals acts as a refugee organ­i­sa­tion, dis­guised as a con­tem­po­rary Tek-Rock-Band — con­duct­ed by Goodiepal. The band has been active for 2 1/2 year and has toured Europe intensively.

Goodiepal and pals

For almost 30 years now, Goodiepal has been the lead­ing spear­head of greater Scandinavian the­o­ret­i­cal com­put­er music and activist songs. A true artist’s artist, Goodiepal has led rad­i­cal excur­sions into com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy and media art.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interview with Sajjra Xhrs Galarreta, mix by Niels Latomme.

A live solo impro­vi­sa­tion for elec­tric bass.

Farida amadou ab 1 web
© Laurent Orseau

Farida Amadou is a self-taught, impro­vis­ing bass play­er from Liège, Belgium. Since 2014, she has per­formed with musi­cians includ­ing: Linda Sharrock, Steve Noble, Karl H. Bjora, Jasper Stadhouders, Onno Govaert, Eve Risser, Morgane Carnet, Philippe Lemoine, Timothée Quost, Julien Desprez, Anil Eraslan, Mette Rasmussen, Basile Naudet, Chris Pitsiokos, Alex Ward and Thurston Moore. 

Fungal Paths

A talk about Gruska’s dive into mycol­o­gy — his ear­ly years of for­ag­ing for mush­rooms with his grand­par­ents, cook­ing para­sol mush­rooms in the forests of Bratislava, grow­ing oys­ter mush­rooms on waste, lab­o­ra­to­ry work, med­i­c­i­nal mush­rooms and more.

Talk in English.

Jonas Lichen web

Sound enthu­si­ast and avid mycol­o­gist. Jonáš Gruska​’s main focus is chaot­ic and poly­met­ric rhythms, uncon­ven­tion­al tun­ings, explo­ration of psy­choa­coustic prop­er­ties of sound and field record­ing. He has cre­at­ed sev­er­al site-spe­cif­ic sound instal­la­tions, based on res­o­nant prop­er­ties of spaces and mate­ri­als. In 2011 he start­ed LOM — cul­tur­al space, label and hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ing company.

Melismas (voic­es mod­u­lat­ed by Anatolian landscapes)

From the dif­fer­ent minarets of Demre (Antalya), muezzins sing the same ​“Ezan” simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with a spon­ta­neous time lag between the singing of each oth­er. On some hills and roads these time lags can be per­ceived as an out-of-tune and arrhyth­mic canon mod­u­lat­ed by the moun­tain­ous land­scape. The melis­mas seem to be in mor­phic res­o­nance with the move­ment of a sea that accom­pa­nies them, roar­ing from the erod­ed mar­ble stones.

Sajjra Xhrs Galarreta Jogja Noise Bombing Fest 2020 by JNB Team

Sajjra Xhrs Galarreta is a Peruvian musi­cian, com­pos­er and instal­la­tion artist. He research­es and high­lights the acoustic qual­i­ties of bod­ies and spaces, and trans­duces imper­cep­ti­ble phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na to an audi­ble dimen­sion — as elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields, sub-aquat­ic sounds or otoa­coustic emis­sions, among others.

In the Spirit We(‘re) Play(ed)

In USA, in the 1970s a music flour­ish­es, called by ama­teurs ​“spir­i­tu­al jazz”. But what links exist between spirit(s) and music? And the stars in it? Why does the play­ing of side­re­al music become food for the mind?

Addressing many mytholo­gies link­ing these themes, this talk brings African prac­tices into res­o­nance with this spir­i­tu­al jazz from the Americas.

Talk in French.

Talk feedback

For the past ten years, Pierre Deruisseau has been devel­op­ing the Astrophonie pro­gram — an explo­ration of the mytho­log­i­cal spaces present in music. An excit­ing and sur­pris­ing research, trans­mit­ted in a liv­ing form at the cross­roads of sto­ry­telling, lec­tures and lis­ten­ing ses­sions, Deruisseau has pre­sent­ed these talks on invi­ta­tions, in insti­tu­tions and in the pri­vate homes of friends.

The project Agripuncture / Sore Spot Songs is inspired by tra­di­tions of post­war vic­to­ry gar­dens, Vedic mantras, and botan­i­cal heal­ing. During per­for­ma­tive ​“Agripuncture” work­shops, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Esther Mugambi and Raoul Carrer invite local guests to feel the sore spots in our city and think how can we col­lec­tive­ly care for them.

Transposing the neigh­bour­hood map on to the rooftop gar­den of Q‑O2, we’ll talk and sing songs old and new about expe­ri­ences of the Canal zone while walk­ing amongst a sen­so­r­i­al array of ground­cov­ers and med­i­c­i­nal plants.

Crater Garden res
A ‘victory garden’ in a bomb crater, London 1943

Sarah van Lamsweerde cre­ates per­for­mances, pub­li­ca­tions and instal­la­tions that explore the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage, the body and visu­al cul­ture. She col­lab­o­rates on a long-term basis with a num­ber of peer groups, and in 2010 found­ed Stichting Tre Tigri, a plat­form for real­is­ing and pro­mot­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary projects, which also includes Esther Mugambi. 

Esther Mugambi is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary mak­er and singer of Australian-Kenyan descent. Esther thinks in images and writes musi­cal­ly. She effort­less­ly cross­es all kinds of bor­ders, whether they be nation­al, eth­nic, social or cul­tur­al. Her tools con­sist of a crys­tal-clear voice, a crit­i­cal view and a lot of humour.

Raoul Carrer spent most of his life in Africa (Bénin, South Africa, Mali) before mov­ing to France in 2012. Raoul com­bines his dance prac­tice with an artis­tic research around the urban cul­ture that stim­u­lates him to dive fur­ther into music, beat-mak­ing, fash­ion and video. 

In tabling wind and noise sounds from out­side the per­for­mance space are fed in to the space and fil­tered through a col­lec­tion of self-made speak­ers and res­onators made from a vari­ety of mate­ri­als such as met­al, crys­tal, glass and ceram­ics. The sounds from the res­onators are picked up by micro­phones and fed back again to the objects cre­at­ing a con­stant­ly evolv­ing sound­scape of feed­back and resonance. 

P1060318

Jeroen Uyttendaele makes audio-visu­al instru­ments, instal­la­tions and sound com­po­si­tions. His prac­tice often bal­ances between the devel­op­ment of an instru­ment and apply­ing the instru­ment with­in a tem­po­ral and spa­tial arrange­ment. He is co-founder of iiini­tia­tive, an artist run plat­form spe­cial­ized in invent­ing new instru­ments and pre­sen­ta­tion formats

A talk about run­ning an inde­pen­dent rock and roll and tech label in the times of evil reis­sues, evil Discogs and evil inter­net. How to cre­ate feed­back in the world.

Talk in English. 

Screenshot 2021 04 06 at 18 24 51

For almost 30 years now Goodiepal has been the lead­ing spear­head of greater Scandinavian the­o­ret­i­cal com­put­er music and activist songs. A true artist’s artist, Goodiepal has led rad­i­cal excur­sions into com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy and media art.

Many sounds have been for­bid­den dur­ing the last cen­turies, like singing and shout­ing in the streets, motor nois­es, car­pet beat­ings, car hoop­ing and even the bark­ing of the dogs. Klangverordnung (2012) brings these for­bid­den nois­es, that have been silenced by law, back into the city. Evidently, by hav­ing been unable to appear in the city for such a long time, these sound corpses have changed over the years. They will be pro­ject­ed in the city with two orange loud­speak­er horns. By mov­ing the horns in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, a chore­og­ra­phy of sound pro­jec­tions is cre­at­ed in the city space.

Cathy van Eck

Cathy van Eck com­pos­es rela­tion­ships between every­day objects, human per­form­ers, and sound. She is inter­est­ed in set­ting her ges­tures into unusu­al, sur­pris­ing or poet­ic rela­tion­ships with sounds, main­ly by elec­tron­ic means. The result could be called per­for­ma­tive sound art, since it com­bines ele­ments from per­for­mance art, elec­tron­ic music, and visu­al art. 

Unsurrounded XX1

back to the future

black to the future

A col­lec­tion of 20 years of audio­vi­su­al works: sam­pling, loop­ing, mul­ti­lay­ered, con­tra­pun­tal approach, destroy­ing by pro­cess­ing; pro­cess­ing by way of destruc­tion to renew arrhyth­mic AfroCubisme Afrofuturisme, res­o­nant res­o­nance exper­i­ments with drums, elec­tron­ics, field record­ings, pock­et trum­pet, sho, voice, visuals.

The project Unsurrounded, start­ed as a solo per­for­mance project in which sound, move­ment, visu­als and words col­lide. Each pre­sen­ta­tion draws on new inputs and new inter­ac­tions that can extent to col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er per­form­ers, musi­cians, artists and all kind of spaces and indi­vid­u­als (ani­mals included).

Lazara Rossel Albear

Lázara Rosell Albear is a Cuban-Belgian artist with a cross-media prac­tice, rang­ing from the research of sound and per­for­mance to the pro­duc­tion of events and films. She explores move­ment, migra­tion, trans­for­ma­tion, inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and its effects on the human con­di­tion. Rather than choos­ing between dif­fer­ent media, Rossel Albear strives for a con­tra­pun­tal togeth­er­ness and total immer­sion — both on the inside and outside.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interview with Billy Roisz, Olivia Jack & Celeste Betancur, mix by Lendl Barcelos.

Listening Past

What are you lis­ten­ing for? to? ​‘Listening Past’ is a performance<>lecture secret­ly serv­ing as an ali­bi tap­ping those always as-yet-unknown lines to sig­nal that the future leaks. Fixed, homoge­nous time assumes a standard(ized) pro­gres­sive flow where what is next always comes after what is before. But, will there not have been count­less moments of achronic­i­ty when signs of antic­i­pa­tion can be (mis)heard in reverse (à la Pierre Menard & Bayard)?

Performance-lec­ture in English.

A live-streamed pro­gram note in French, Dutch and English will accom­pa­ny this talk.

Lendl Barcelos

Lendl Barcelos (writ: hen/​hens) is a ​‚kat­a­physi­cist, audio archivist and artist often heard laugh­ing. Hens teach­ing & texts focus on aur­al cul­tures and uncochlear lis­ten­ing. |end| DJs, jests with chore­o­g­ra­phers Sanna Blennow & Sandra Lolax, con­jures demons with Deca Mukhtar-Tawheed & Amy Ireland, and side­tracks sense(-making) with Marc Couroux, Valentina Desideri & Myriam Lefkowitz.

Prisma Interius (2016−2018) is a series of nine pieces com­posed by Catherine Lamb, set along­side ​“the sec­ondary rain­bow syn­the­siz­er” — a bridge to the out­side via live micro­phones and res­o­nant band fil­ters that colour what­ev­er is occur­ring direct­ly in the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. The inten­tion is to extend the har­mon­ic space and shapes defined by the acoustic instru­men­tal­ists in the room, to dis­cov­er the edges of our lis­ten­ing per­cep­tions by pulling an infi­nite thread to it. Prisma Interius IV extrap­o­lates all crit­i­cal ele­ments from the series itself in reduced form. Lamb has opened this inti­mate expe­ri­ence to close friends as a small ensem­ble piece (here Rebecca Lane and Bryan Eubanks), con­tin­u­ing to expand the piece fur­ther as it con­tin­ues to be revisited.

Performed by Catherine Lamb, Bryan Eubanks and Rebecca Lane. Recorded live in Berlin by Adam Asnan.

Cat Lamb

Catherine Lamb is an active com­pos­er explor­ing the inter­ac­tion of tone, sum­ma­tions of shapes and shad­ows, phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal expan­sions, the archi­tec­ture of the lim­i­nal (states in between outside/​inside), and the long intro­duc­tion form. She aban­doned the con­ser­va­to­ry in 2003 to study Hindustani music in Pune, India. In 2006, she start­ed to devel­op her research into the inter­ac­tion of tone and con­tin­ues to com­pose, teach, and col­lab­o­rate with musicians.

Bryan Eubanks devel­ops his music through solo work and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Since 1999, he has par­tic­i­pat­ed in many short and long term projects in a vari­ety of con­texts: impro­vi­sa­tion; com­pos­ing elec­tron­ic and acoustic works for small ensem­bles, solo instru­ments, com­put­ers, and elec­tron­ics; orga­niz­ing and curat­ing con­certs for oth­er artists; build­ing elec­tron­ic instruments.

Rebecca Lane is a musi­cian who explores into­na­tion, focus­ing on sound per­cep­tion, but also on phe­nom­e­na that only emerge through spe­cif­ic ways of work­ing togeth­er. Her prac­tice is informed by ongo­ing rela­tion­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions with com­pos­er-per­form­ers, and with­in duos and ensem­bles, using var­i­ous flutes (flutes, quar­ter-tone flutes, recorders) and occa­sion­al­ly voice or objects.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interview with Lucrecia Dalt, ambi­ent live mix.

With the release of Dalt’s sev­enth album No era sól­i­da (2020), anoth­er world is locat­ed in her uni­verse. In an embrace of intro­spec­tion, Dalt sets out to cap­ture the moment when one becomes pure sound. This tran­scen­dent process of cre­ation sum­mons Lia: an appari­tion of the artist as pos­sessed by mimet­ic impuls­es. Language is dis­solved into an evoca­tive col­lec­tion of glos­so­lalia as the record swells with rhyth­mic tremors and the lunar echoes of a law­less organ­ism teth­ered to son­ic hardware. 

Performance record­ed live in Berlin by Adam Asnan.

Lucrecia Dalt Camille Blake 6
© Camille Blake

Lucrecia Dalt​’s metal­lic com­po­si­tions entice us to rethink the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mate­ri­al­i­ty and exis­tence. Age-old ques­tions are chan­neled into a dis­tinct and trans­gres­sive musi­cal lan­guage. Dalt often seeks inspi­ra­tion in the worlds of fic­tion, poet­ry, geol­o­gy and desire, exca­vat­ing nuanced ref­er­ences to untan­gle and respond to in her music. 

Gimme More Noise

Play back. Feed back. Again and again. So on and so on. The feed­back cloud is grow­ing and grow­ing ​’til it’s unload­ing itself into sound rain and elec­tric storms to grow again and so on and so on.

A cath­ode-ray tube TV, an elec­tric bass gui­tar, a dou­ble bass, 2 syn­chrona­tors, video- and audio mix­ing desks, a self-built and pro­grammed com­put­er and a zoo of lit­tle elec­tron­ic devices will feed each oth­er and cel­e­brate a feast of beau­ti­ful noise and mor­ph­ing sound scapes and abstract image shapes.

2017 kluckyland roisz c2017 m sandner
© M. Sandner

Billy Roisz spe­cial­izes in feed­back video and video/​sound inter­ac­tion by using mon­i­tors, cam­eras, video mix­ing desks, syn­chrona­tors, com­put­ers, var­i­ous elec­tron­ics and a bass gui­tar for gen­er­at­ing video and sound.

Flujos is a ​“live web­site” per­for­mance by Celeste Betancur and Olivia Jack, using live cod­ing and mouse ges­tures to cre­ate an evolv­ing (web)site-specific sound­scape. To see and hear the per­for­mance, vis­it the web­site https://ojack.xyz/flujos. The radiostream of this web­site will con­tin­ue to broad­cast the sound of their performance.

Followed by: Live Coding Session with:
daniel mon­salve aka. rodri­go ayala
san­ti­a­go ben­itez aka san­ti­a­go beta
Noisk8
Cr0wl3y
sonati­na­para­or­de­nadores

Image

Olivia Jack is a pro­gramer and artist who works fre­quent­ly with open-source soft­ware, car­tog­ra­phy, live cod­ing, and exper­i­men­tal inter­faces. She is the devel­op­er of var­i­ous brows­er-based cre­ative tools includ­ing Hydra (live-cod­ed video syn­the­siz­er), PIXELSYNTH, Pixeljam (col­lab­o­ra­tive code edi­tor) and LiveLab (peer-to-peer media router). Her live visu­al sets explore algo­rith­mic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of unpre­dictable and chaot­ic sys­tems, and writ­ing soft­ware as a messy and ephemer­al process.

Celeste Betancur is a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist musi­cian with a pro­fes­sion­al degree in gui­tar a Master in Digital Arts. For ITM Medellin, she is a researcher in top­ics such as code and pro­gram­ming didac­tics and HCI for edu­ca­tion­al plat­forms, and she also works devel­op­ing human-machine inter­faces. Celeste is a trans­gen­der woman, mar­ried with two children.

An audios­phere for head­phone lis­ten­ing, com­bin­ing sev­er­al exer­cis­es and son­ic med­i­ta­tions with the impres­sions of mov­ing, trav­el­ling. Echoes of Pauline Oliveros’ Teach Yourself to Fly, ded­i­cat­ed to the pilot Amelia Earhart (“Ear-Heart”).

Unsound Festival2019 Dazzle FOQ Li Edka Jarzabpresent Mother Earths Doom Vibes fot Kacper Michalak3

Edyta Jarząb works with voice and elec­tron­ics, poet­ry, field record­ings and deep lis­ten­ing prac­tice as forms of son­ic activism. Her works embrace com­po­si­tions for exper­i­men­tal the­atre, dance, films, and for the radio. Practicing micro­cast­ing and pirat­ing the fre­quen­cies of fun­da­men­tal­ist catholic radio in Poland, with the sounds of her own body: breath­ing, heart­beats and elec­tro­mag­net­ic field as a source of dis­rup­tion, Jarząb is one of the found­ing mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ty Radio Kapitał in Warsaw, mem­ber of Radia network. 

In Between

The ini­ti­at­ed sound sit­u­a­tion reacts to the spe­cif­ic space. Through immer­sive sound instal­la­tion of 15 small speak­er units and DIY instru­ments Svobodová and Kinernay build a sound sculp­ture — a res­onat­ed shape of the giv­en archi­tec­ture. The atten­tion is focused on audi­tive sen­sa­tion, the listener’s per­cep­tion and the uncov­er­ing of invis­i­ble lay­ers and con­texts of con­crete space. The sound rede­fines the place, it trav­els through its attrib­ut­es, it fills and emp­ties mean­ings, it goes through the body and though time. 

In Between web

Veronika Svobodová is an artist, musi­cian and scenog­ra­ph­er. Her approach to work­ing with sound reveals her rela­tion to stage design, instal­la­tion art and per­for­mance. In her work, she con­nects the aspects of space, time and sit­u­a­tion, often in response to spe­cif­ic places in the land­scape or architecture.

Michal Kindernay is an inter­me­dia artist, cura­tor and per­former. His audio-visu­al instal­la­tions con­nect art, film, tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence. He reflects eco­log­i­cal issues by relat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal approach­es to the nat­ur­al environment.

Untime Therapy (or: The Art of Detuning)

There is a say­ing: ​“Time heals all wounds”, which is not true any­way. But even worse: what if time itself makes you sick? Indeed, there are many time-relat­ed ill­ness­es with a broad spec­trum of symp­toms: from para­noia to trau­ma, from mania to depres­sion, from light ver­ti­go to heavy nau­sea to com­plete break­down under the mas­sive pres­sures of time. So you feel unruly, sleep­less, tired and still breath­less? Or over-excit­ed, stressed and still bored? And/​or com­plete­ly out of sync? Well, this is prob­a­bly due to some unhealthy intake and/​or expe­ri­ence of time.

Perhaps you have already asked your­self: what can I do? Is there any rem­e­dy, a ther­a­py for me? How can I tune in and syn­chro­nize again, to be in time and in har­mo­ny with time? Or are these the wrong ques­tions anyway?

Please note: This lec­ture is not to be con­fused with a ther­a­py ses­sion or any oth­er kind of ther­a­py-relat­ed psy­chic or psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic treat­ment. It deals with alter­nate artis­tic per­spec­tives on the sub­ject matter.

Verena Kuni

Verena Kuni is a schol­ar in the field of art, cul­tur­al and media stud­ies and pro­fes­sor for visu­al cul­ture at Goethe University, Frankfurt a.M. Her research, teach­ing, projects and pub­li­ca­tion focus on e.g. trans­fers between mate­r­i­al and media cul­tures; media of imag­i­na­tion and tech­nolo­gies of trans­for­ma­tion; (in)visibilities; oth­er real­i­ties and and (trans)formations of time. 

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interviews with Maria Komarova, Olli Aarni.

“There are those who con­form and those who con­front and nev­er stop transforming.”

Live impro­vised set. 

Karen Willems II Dominiek Claeys
© Dominiek Claeys

The path of Karen Willems is a jour­ney through a colour­ful world of pos­si­bil­i­ties, a free haven for influ­ences from all over the world. The Belgian drummer/​percussionist is active in var­i­ous fields. With a num­ber of oth­er musi­cians she has built up a tra­di­tion with­in impro­vised music and sound art. From 2020, Willems is search­ing for per­son­al mod­i­fi­ca­tions with­in her play of instru­ments and objects, with a focus on solo per­for­mances and collaborations.

In 555 bugs, Maria Komarova uses found objects and self-made elec­tron­ic devices to cre­ates a land­scape where ele­men­tary objects find new mean­ings in spon­ta­neous con­nec­tions between each oth­er. Objects become some­thing else: spe­cif­ic son­ic crea­tures with their own qual­i­ties. The seem­ing prim­i­tiv­i­ty and repet­i­tive­ness of the sound­scape brings the lis­ten­er into a world of men­thol buzzers, one-eyed sirens, lemon tad­poles, gin­ger tigers, plas­tic bugs and oth­er insects. The com­po­si­tion is made in co-pro­duc­tion with R{A}DIO{CUSTICA}, Czech Radio Vltava (Prague).

555 bugs

Maria Komarova is a Belarusian artist who works in the field of post-dra­mat­ic the­atre, sound and visu­al arts. Most of her works are char­ac­ter­ized by the use of usu­al things in unusu­al con­texts and by an attempt to change one’s per­cep­tions of every­day life. In her sound art prac­tice, Maria most­ly works with the acoustic sounds of non-ampli­fied objects and DIY instruments. 

Seeking not to trav­el unnec­es­sar­i­ly, Olli Aarni’s site-spe­cif­ic per­for­mance piece Siellä, con­structs itself from the artist’s phys­i­cal absence. Siellä rein­ter­prets the envi­ron­men­tal sounds of the broad­cast venue in Brussels, using sounds imag­ined, col­lect­ed and cap­tured near Aarni’s home is Laajasalo, Helsinki. The piece com­bines field record­ings from Brussels with live foley per­formed on objects sent from Helsinki via post. 

Performed by Henry Andersen.

Olli oscillation descriptive pic

Olli Aarni is an artist liv­ing and work­ing in Helsinki, Finland. His prac­tice spans from elec­troa­coustic music to sound poet­ry, and from field record­ing to skate­board tricks. His works have been pub­lished on cas­sette tapes, LPs, CDs and dig­i­tal files, as well as online lit­er­a­ture pub­li­ca­tions and on the Finnish nation­al radio.

The aulos is an ancient dou­ble-reed­ed dou­ble pipe instru­ment. Detached from its for­mer own­ers and their entire cul­ture, the instru­ment remains an enig­ma. In this solo per­for­mance, Bloedneus & de Snuitkever, De Clerck cre­ates a re(co)naissance of the aulos by breath­ing air into an instru­ment that had been silenced for over a millennium.

Lukasde Clerck

Lukas De Clerck is a Brussels-based sound artist and musi­cian. He likes to work with rec­og­niz­able, almost dai­ly, sound pro­duc­tion, cre­at­ing an acces­si­ble play­ground for the lis­ten­er to step into. He plays in sev­er­al for­ma­tions, includ­ing 2GIRLSNAMEDSERGIO and Ï Î. De Clerck explored the aulos in a solo project, Bloedneus & de Snuitkever.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Interviews with Áine O’Dwyer, mix by Ugne Vyliaudaite.

Lišajník (“lichen”) is a new com­po­si­tion inspired by lichens and their struc­tures. It is based on poly­met­ric rhythms which devel­op into chaot­ic pat­terns over time. These pat­terns com­bine with field record­ings and a lay­er of in-situ vocal impro­vi­sa­tion. Various nat­ur­al instru­ments were used in trans­form­ing the son­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic of the voice in order to present alt-human pos­si­bil­i­ties of vocal­iza­tion, sym­bol­iz­ing the coop­er­a­tive, mul­ti-organ­is­mic, nature of lichens.

Photo by pieter kers sonic acts
© Pieter Kers

Sound enthu­si­ast and avid mycol­o­gist, Jonáš Gruska​’s main focus is chaot­ic and poly­met­ric rhythms, uncon­ven­tion­al tun­ings, explo­ration of psy­choa­coustic prop­er­ties of sound and field record­ing. He has cre­at­ed sev­er­al site-spe­cif­ic sound instal­la­tions, based on res­o­nant prop­er­ties of spaces and mate­ri­als. In 2011 he start­ed LOM — cul­tur­al space, label and hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ing company.

The har­mon­i­ca is seen both as a toy and as a very expres­sive musi­cal instru­ment, depend­ing who you are ask­ing. Its inex­pen­sive­ness and egal­i­tar­i­an aura is opposed to the rich chords it pro­duces and its sub­tle micro­ton­al and melis­mat­ic impro­vi­sa­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. Anyone Can Play Mouth Harp is a piece for lay­ered, cus­tom-tuned, dia­ton­ic harmonicas. 

Stellan Veloce

Stellan Veloce is a Sardinian com­pos­er, per­former and cel­list liv­ing and work­ing in Berlin. They com­pose pieces for acoustic instru­men­tal ensem­bles as well as work­ing on instal­la­tions or per­for­mance pieces focus­ing on tim­bre, rep­e­ti­tion and sound den­si­ties. Veloce works or has worked with col­lab­o­ra­tors from many dif­fer­ent disciplines.

Space to breathe. A selec­tion of inter­views, read­ings, and ambi­ences between the fes­ti­val program.

Volta con­sist of a pow­er­ful plas­ma speak­er capa­ble of cre­at­ing a 50Kv elec­tri­cal arc that pro­duces the sound between two elec­trodes; a high volt­age mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­er. As tech­nol­o­gy evolves, mechan­ics are dis­ap­pear­ing and replaced by minia­tur­ized elec­tron­ic com­po­nents and elec­tri­cal charges. The project Volta address­es a crit­i­cal approach to this evo­lu­tion, aim­ing to lit­er­al­ly short-cir­cuit the use of inter­faces, awak­en­ing the ghosts and mag­i­cal beliefs around tech­nol­o­gy in the form of harsh min­i­mal techno. 

Volta jack good

Yann Leguay, defined as a media sabo­teur by the Consumer Waste label, seeks to fold the mate­ri­al­i­ty of sound in on itself using basic means in the form of objects, instal­la­tions and performances. 

Áine O’Dwyer will make a live broad­cast per­for­mance enti­tled Playing Place from her home in East London. Áine has been a res­i­dent of Lady Helen Seymour House in London since the sum­mer of 2015. It is a his­tor­i­cal­ly list­ed and pro­tect­ed build­ing, which served as a hos­pi­tal upon its con­cep­tion in the 1800’s and con­tin­ued to func­tion in this capac­i­ty up until the 1950s. Being both Áine’s liv­ing and stu­dio space has exposed her to the mul­ti­far­i­ous tones and ​‘nat­ur­al musics’ at play, both with­in the struc­ture of the build­ing, and the dia­logue shared with the com­mu­ni­ty that holds it. The space is spread across the entire width of the build­ing, and as such gets a stereo­phon­ic impres­sion of the sur­round­ing environment.

Aine O Dwyer

Áine O’Dwyer is an artist whose work is informed by both the con­cep­tu­al con­cerns of sound-art and tra­di­tion­al com­po­si­tion­al tech­niques, embrac­ing the broad­er aes­thet­ics of sound and its rela­tion­ship to envi­ron­ment, time, audi­ence and structure. 

Oscillation Festival daily blog

Dear Readers,

In about 45 min­utes the last day of The Oscillation ::: Tuned Circuits Festival starts. Today is all about the last cycle of tun­ing: the beau­ti­ful prac­tice of detun­ing.

On the menu: live per­for­mances by Lukas De Clerk, Yann Leguay, Karen Willems. There will be exclu­sive­ly for this fes­ti­val made pieces by Stellan Veloce, Jonáš Gruska, Áine O’Dwyer, Olli Aarni, and many more.

So we kind­ly invite you to tune in at www​.oscil​la​tion​-fes​ti​val​.be and detune togeth­er with us, and the online oscil­la­tion com­mu­ni­ty who has been very warm and active in our cha­t­room.

We would like to thank all the part­ners who helped to make this pos­si­ble, all the artists who in one way or anoth­er pro­vid­ed works and per­for­mances, and as last, but not least, all of you who joined in this com­mu­nal detuned expe­ri­ence. Hope to see you next year in real life.

We’d like to remind that there’s some extra’s avail­able at the spe­cials sec­tion of the web­site: videos that are avail­able exclu­sive­ly dur­ing the fes­ti­val. Have a look, because at the end of today they will be gone.

The Oscillation Büro

Dear Readers,

Today, at 15:00, the 3nd day of the Oscillation Festival will unfold in the aether. We’ll delve deep into the won­der­ful world of feed­back, a tech­nique that can be applied both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly. It’s an apt theme, explor­ing ques­tions about com­mu­ni­ty, and how com­mu­ni­ties com­mu­ni­cate (and feed­back into each oth­er) if actu­al gath­er­ing is impos­si­ble. And what about feed­back loops in the echo cham­bers of vir­tu­al realms?

We start at 15:00 sharp with talk by Pierre Deruisseaux, in which he explores in his own unique way the inter­con­nec­tions between jazz music and spir­its. From there we fol­low a path over live con­certs by Jeroen Uyttendaele, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Esther Mugambi & Raoul Carrer, Cathy van Eyck, Catherine Lamb & co., Lucrecia Dalt and Billy Roisz. Lendl Barcelos and Goodiepal will guide through talks over the top­ics in their work and we con­clude the evening with a spe­cial live cod­ing sound & visu­als event by Olivia Jack, Celeste Betancur & Guests that can be fol­lowed both via the radio stream as a (web)site spe­cif­ic visu­al expe­ri­ence at ojack.xyz/flujos

We’d like to remind that there’s some extra’s avail­able at the Specials sec­tion of the web­site: videos that are avail­able exclu­sive­ly dur­ing the fes­ti­val. Have a look, because at the end of the fes­ti­val they will be gone.

Enjoy!

The Oscillation Büro

Dear Attuners,

In just a cou­ple of hours the 2nd day — Attuning — of the Oscillation Festival will unfold in the aether.

Last night we opened the broad­cast for all you out of there, join­ing togeth­er in een vir­tu­al embrace via the radio. Apparently there is some con­fu­sion about the fes­ti­val: this is a radio fes­ti­val, there is no video streams avail­able — it’s an old school expe­ri­ence that at the same time rede­fines the idea of what a fes­ti­val can be.

There are some exclu­sive visu­al good­ies avail­able though, and you can see them sole­ly dur­ing the fes­ti­val: there is Oramics: Atlantis Anew, the beau­ti­ful doc­u­men­tary essay on the work of Daphe Oram; and there’s The Mirror a won­der­ful col­lage a/​v piece by People Like Us. There’s also some extras you can find on the web­site.

Today we start at 15:00 sharp with — among oth­ers ‑live con­certs by Farida Amadou, Charlie Usher and Aela Royer! See you online — there is a chat­box where you can join the Oscillation com­mu­ni­ty.

Enjoy!

The Oscillation Büro

Dear Oscillators,

A short update on today’s sched­ule of The Opening Night of the Oscillation Festival.

Tonight we focus most­ly on the beau­ti­ful and piv­otal work of the British com­pos­er and instru­ment pio­neer Daphne Oram. Oram was involved in the found­ing of the leg­endary BBC Radiophonic Workshop*. At 20:00 sharp the musi­col­o­gist Anna Steiden will talk about Oram’s most cre­ative peri­ode, a.o. the con­struc­tion of the noto­ri­ous Oramics syn­the­siz­er. We fea­ture the movie Oramics: Atlantis Anew by Aura Satz, and Caroline Profanter will spa­tial­ize works by Oram.

The open­ing will be con­clud­ed by a per­for­mance of the elec­tron­ic musi­cian Jessica Ekomane, who com­posed for this fes­ti­val a new piece. The fin­ish­ing touch will be pro­vid­ed by People Like Us, who hosts a cas­cad­ing live radio mix. During the fes­ti­val the lat­ter will also presents the A/V per­for­mance The Mirror, which will be avail­able for stream­ing exclu­sive­ly dur­ing the fes­ti­val.

Enjoy!

The Oscillation Büro

*For those who are curi­ous about this insti­tute of elec­tron­ic wiz­ardry, there is a beau­ti­ful doc­u­men­tary avail­able online.


Dear Readers,

We are one night’s sleep away from the grand Opening Night of the Oscillation Festival.

In under­stand­ing what the stakes are in think­ing about sound, tun­ing is a con­stant touch­stone. Tuning is a sys­tem, but also an activ­i­ty: it plays a major role in how musi­cians play togeth­er, both in impro­vised and com­posed music, but it’s also deep-baked into the vocab­u­lar­ies of radio, music tech­nol­o­gy, DIY and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness. While in music, tun­ing is pri­mar­i­ly under­stood as the rela­tion of tones, it equal­ly con­cerns the equi­lib­ri­um between peo­ple and between human and machine. It’s a con­cept that can lead us to reflect fur­ther on the lim­its between nat­ur­al and con­struct­ed; between per­son and envi­ron­ment; the human propen­si­ty for con­ver­gence; the self-reg­u­la­tion of sys­tems; and the ques­tion of canon­ic­i­ty.

In order to under­stand the phe­nom­e­non bet­ter for our fes­ti­val, we split the broad­er top­ic of tun­ing into three sub-cat­e­gories of rela­tion, which togeth­er form a cycle: attun­ing – feed­back – detun­ing. These cat­e­gories are them­selves unsta­ble. They over­lap and inter­sect, and many of the artists we have invit­ed to con­tribute to the fes­ti­val would be equal­ly at home in two or three of these sub-the­mat­ics. We approached attun­ing as a move­ment of com­ing into con­so­nance, to site one­self in regard to oth­ers, posi­tion­ing one­self in a rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship to one’s sur­round­ings. Feedback cre­ates a dynam­ic bal­ance of sta­bil­i­ty / insta­bil­i­ty which demands con­stant cal­i­bra­tion, and is a site of recep­tion, cor­rec­tion and learn­ing. In detun­ing we want­ed to remind our­selves that some­times a cut is nec­es­sary, to zoom into anoth­er per­spec­tive, or to hack the sys­tem from the inside. Like sound itself, all of these are actions in time, con­stant­ly mov­ing in and out of phase: what is now in tune will not stay that way.

We reserve a spe­cial men­tion for the com­pos­er and inven­tor Daphne Oram, who was a well­spring of inspi­ra­tion on this top­ic. Further, we feel a deep kin­ship with her approach to research as some­thing rig­or­ous, intu­itive, sub­jec­tive and full of space for imag­i­na­tion. Her book, An Individual Note, was pub­lished in 1972, at a moment in which elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy for sound pro­duc­tion and gen­er­a­tion was chang­ing many under­ly­ing assump­tions about tun­ing, feed­back and oth­er sound phenomena.

The artists we have invit­ed for the fes­ti­val con­tribute in var­i­ous ways to our reflec­tion on the the­mat­ic frame­work.

So, sit tight, and tune in tomor­row at www​.oscil​la​tion​-fes​ti​val​.be. There’s a wide vari­ety of fel­low radios broad­cast­ing bits and pieces of the fes­ti­val: Radio P‑Node and Listening Arts Channel will cov­er the fes­ti­val exten­sive­ly from Friday until Sunday; there will be short fea­tures on Radio Campus (Sat. 18:00 – 20:00) and Radio Lyl (sat. 15:00 – 24:00). Radio Helsinki and Cola Bora Dio will stream bits and pieces in the after­math of the fes­ti­val, so they will a good source if you missed parts. A warm thanks to all our radio friends!

The Oscillation Crew

Dear Attuned and Detuned followers,

Welcome to the sec­ond episode of the oscil­la­tion bul­letin. The fes­ti­val has start­ed!

We are now halfway in a series of work­shops. Tomorrow you can expe­ri­ence togeth­er with Aela Royer how to tune your vocal chords to a machine; and there is an online Live Coding Visuals ses­sion with Olivia Jack. Wednesday Sarah van Lamsweerde, Esther Mugabi & Raoul Carrer guide you towards a col­lec­tive con­scious­ness by tun­ing in to a nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment; and Celeste Betancur will delve deeply into Live Coding Sound. Some spots for the work­shops are still avail­able, so be quick to inscribe!

Thursday we open the fes­ti­val broad­cast; so we kind­ly invite you to tune into www​.oscil​la​tion​-fes​ti​val​.be at 20:00.

As a warm-up we pre­pared for you a Festival Reader with texts that give you some deep­er insight in the pro­gram. There’s an online ver­sion avail­able, and you can order a lim­it­ed edi­tion phys­i­cal copy by mail­ing info@q‑o2.be. If you’d like to have it deliv­ered at home: € 5 for Belgian based read­ers; € 8 for Europe (exc. BE) based orders. 

As you will know by now: Oscillation ::: Tuned Circuits is a live radio fes­ti­val. For the occa­sion we pirate here and there some fel­low radio friends with pre­views. You can re-lis­ten our show at Kiosk here and there is a radioshow at Lyl Wednesday 28th at 13:00.

That’s all for now, folks. The next days some more stories.

The Oscillation Büro

Dear all,

If you are read­ing this, it means that you are part of the Q‑O2 cir­cle. The next 10 days we will keep you reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed about a very spe­cial event hap­ping right now: Oscillation Tuned Circuits fes­ti­val.

Unlike what we had hoped, this fes­ti­val is a dis­tanced ver­sion. By this writ­ing, we’d like to engage you into an old school expe­ri­ence that recalls the ear­ly fifties, when peo­ple tuned in col­lec­tive­ly to their favorite radio program.

It’s fair­ly sim­ple to engage: on the 28th of April, at 20:00 you head over to oscil​la​tion​-fes​ti​val​.be, sit com­fort­ably in your couch, press the play but­ton and imag­ine there are thou­sands of peo­ple doing the same. You will tune in to a collective/​individual expe­ri­ence of music, talks, per­for­mances that all address one of the pil­lars of music mak­ing: tun­ing. It’s a now or nev­er expe­ri­ence, none of the broad­casts will be avail­able once the fes­ti­val has end­ed. One advice: tune in, or stay detuned!

For now, to start the excite­ment, we have some good­ies for you: there’s some fea­tures by The Wire Magazine on two of the artists per­form­ing at the fes­ti­val: Jonáš Gruska and People Like Us. Yann Leguay is fea­tured on the It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine, with an indepth inter­view on his recent works. And next Wednesday Lyl radio will host a spe­cial on the fes­ti­val. Upcoming Friday, at 15:30, De Neus van God, at the infa­mous Radio Panik, will host Henry Andersen, who will give a deep insight in the what, who, and why of the festival.

Last, but not least: from upcom­ing Friday, the 23rd until the 28th of April, there’s an exten­sive pro­gram of work­shops — both off- and online — address­ing top­ics like a.o. synth-like vocal explo­rations, live cod­ing exper­tise, col­lec­tive impro­vis­ing and even spring rolls sound med­i­ta­tion. You can find all info at the site; places are lim­it­ed, so be quick to subscribe!

On a prac­ti­cal note: Stellan Veloce, who facil­i­tates a work­shop and who per­forms on the fes­ti­val, is look­ing for ​“spare” har­mon­i­cas, lying some­where in the base­ment or attic, to donate or sell! Please con­tact us!

Kind regards,

The Oscillation Crew

Dear vis­i­tor of the brand new Oscillation fes­ti­val site,

Welcome to the Tuned Circuits blog. Keep an eye on this blog for being tuned in dur­ing the fes­ti­val about what’s on and hot.

More to follow.

Q-O2.be

Oscillation is a project by Q‑O2 werk­plaats con­ceived and coor­di­nat­ed by Julia Eckhardt, Caroline Profanter, Henry Andersen, Ludo Engels, Niels Latomme, Ugne Vyliaudaite and Christel Simons. Q‑O2 is a lab­o­ra­to­ry for exper­i­men­tal music and sound art locat­ed in Brussels. More info: info@q‑o2.be

Graphic- & webdesign by Joris Verdoodt & Mathieu Serruys