Frank Bretschneider - ISOLATION (Audiovisual Performance)

Isolation was initially composed in 2012 as part of the installation “Zwei Zellen/Hörgang Bautzen II” by Moritz von Rappard and Thomas Ritschel at the former Stasi prison Bautzen II, in Bautzen, Germany. This notorious prison, actively used from 1956 to 1989, held political prisoners under severe incommunicado incarceration conditions. Isolation undertakes an auditive journey along the narrow edges between the inner and outer acoustic world. This work attempts to explore and interpret the impact of longtime sensory deprivation and how this environment changes the auditory perception of prisoners as well as such effects as perceptual disorders and tinnitus.

Frank Bretschneider is a composer and video artist in Berlin. His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures and its minimal, flowing approach. Bretschneider’s subtle and detailed sound is echoed by his visuals: perfect translated realizations of these qualities within visual phenomena. Bretschneider (1956) was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz since 1990), where his aesthetic developed as he listened to pirate radio and smuggled Beastie Boys tapes in the former East Germany. After studying fine arts and inspired by science fiction radio plays and films he began experimenting with tape machines, synthesizers, and modified guitars in 1984, as well as exploring the possibilities of exchange between visual art and music by various means such as film, video and computer graphics. In 1995, Bretschneider and fellow AG Geige member Olaf Bender founded Rastermusic which eventually merged with Carsten Nicolai’s noton to form raster-noton in 1999.

http://www.frankbretschneider.com/

https://www.facebook.com/frankbretschneider.music

Alberto de Campo - MetaKontrol study no 1; Complex Setup Improvisation

Traditional design practice assumes that users of instruments/devices will want to have complete control of them. For artistic purposes, one can question this belief: instead of a conceptual model of full control, where an instrument only follows orders in a chain of command, one can experiment with systems that show nontrivial behavior by themselves already. Based on a conceptual model of "networks of influence", one can devise many strategies how such systems can become interesting performance partners providing surprise on multiple structural levels for both players and audiences.

Based on recent experiments with more indirect forms of control ('Lose control, gain influence'), this performances will be an attempt to formulate a balance between gradually relinquishing control of the sounding processes in play and handling the ensuing surprises gracefully.

Alberto de Campo (* 1964) studied classical composition and jazz guitar in Austria. As guest researcher and later research director at CREATE, UC Santa Barbara, he worked with Curtis Roads on experimental synthesis instruments, and wrote the tutorial for SuperCollider2. He taught at the IEM Graz, and at the Academy for Media and Arts (KHM) Cologne. There, long term collaborations began with Florian Hecker, earweego, powerbooks_unplugged, and realtime research. From 2005-2007, he was lead researcher in the SonEnvir project at IEM Graz, where an interdisciplinary team of scientists studied the applicability of sonification in diverse fields. With the team, de Campo wrote numerous publications, and organised a concert of sonifications of social data for the ICAD 2006 conference in London. Since 2009, he is Professor for Generative Art/Computational Art at the Institute for Time- based Media, Arts University Berlin (UdK).

http://medienhaus.udk-berlin.de/pages/Dr._Alberto_De_Campo