Highlighting some of the leading developments in the use by artists of digital technologies, Romaeuropafestival 2008:Notte Digitale brings together breathtaking works that combine video, visual art, music, performance and improvisation. Ryoji Ikeda, Charles Atlas, Gina Czarnecki, Ulf Langheinrich and Fennesz represent different faces of the inventive artistic approaches made possible by the ever-increasing power of digital technologies.
In making her work, British artist Gina Czarnecki collaborates with computer programmers, dancers, musicians and sound engineers. Often she begins by filiming raw footage, and then applying advanced, bespoke editing techniques and effects to individual frames to compose the work. This intricate process can be compared to making tapestry, and creates rich, abstract works that reflect the artist’s interest in the human body and bio-sciences.
In the works presented, Czarencki has collaborated with Fennesz, and with Ulf Langheinrich, co-founder with Kurt Hentschläger of the influential duo Granular Synthesis. Langheinrich envelops spectators with his works, at times even overwhelming their senses. Fennesz, with New York video artist Charles Atlas, presents an audiovisual concert that comprises two parrallel improvisations. Atlas is renowned for his pioneering work in combining video with live performance, and is best known for his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and Antony and the Johnsons. His powerful live mix of images, taken from films and television, and layered with digital processing, is suspended in the evocative temporality of Fennesz’s music.
In datamatics [ver.2.0], Ryoji Ikeda’s acclaimed audiovisual concert, pure data provides a source for sound and visuals. Ikeda’s dynamic, computer-generated imagery progresses through multiple dimensions, accompanied by his meticulous layering of sonic components to produce immense and apparently boundless spaces.
All of the works presented in this event are produced by Forma,a London-based agency that works closely with artists to explore and support new ways of making, presenting and experiencing contemporary art. Following digital universe, the long night goes on with warm groove live set of Gilles Peterson, the great blender of world music and electronic sound.
Charles Atlas, an award-winning filmmaker, video artist, and pioneer of the medium of media-dance, has created work for film, theatre, television and such prestigious museums as the Whitney, NY and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with choreographers, dancers and performers. Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. His lush and luminant compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments.
Ulf Langheinrich is an Austrian artist who creates powerful audiovisual installations, films and performances. His works use sophisticated post-production treatment and synthesis of source imagery and sound to explore the materiality and the physics of the media with which he works. Japan’s leading electronic composer/artist, Ryoji Ikeda , focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. Gina Czarnecki is a British artist whose work intersects multiple genres and platforms, working with highly aesthetic, but recognisable images processed through bespoke post-production effects.