SCREEN MUSIC 2
Mechanical cinema-veritè, circuit bending, electric/electronic audio-video
conceived by Gianni De Simone, curated by Marco Mancuso – Digicult director and Andrea Mi – Videominuto director
invited artists: Pierre Bastien, Mikomikona, Franko B, Loud Objects, BitShifter&Nullsleep&Otro:8bitpeoples, Sanch Tv, Mylicon/En, Costa, Dimlite, Steinski, Pyntaicolorea
Screen Music belongs to the program of the Creativity Festival , a new and innovating event promoted in Tuscany to affirm its role of “netpoint” in the global creativity net, a “pop” event with a high communicative profile that has the declared purpose of becoming an interactive window for the monsters of the different fields of creativity, innovation and research. In the wide fields of contemporary experimentation, within the new mixedmedia disciplines/subjects, chapter number two of the Screen Music review , presents a multishaped group of artists (performers, videoartists, musicians and designers) protagonists of the most advanced electronic audiovisual research, in the many of its possible declinations, considering this ear also the possible means of dialogue between “digital” and “material” aesthetics.
Therefore of the first edition of Screen Music had focused on the analysis and description of the most modern forms of electronic audiovisual interaction in terms of projections and live performances, the second edition of this review in the location of the Teatrino Lorenese, wants to point out the need of a reflection on the audiovisual aesthetics of tangible, of effectiveness, of manual character and analogic mechanicalness, in a period of excessive digital over-stimulation and exasperate techno-fetishism. A step backwards, a moment to reflect and stop, a return to physicalness of action, to underline the possible alternative ways of audiovisual creativity that, operating by now for many years, assume a reason and a creative and operative value thanks indeed to the deep antithesis that they keep in opposition to the reigning digitalization of artistic instruments and creative aesthetics.
It’s above all the part of Screen Music 2 followed by Marco Mancuso/Digicult, Saturday 27/10 and Sunday 28/10 that focuses on these dynamics, thanks to some audiovisual performances where synaesthesia within music and video is realized through the dialogue between the sound produced with mechanical instruments and electrical and physical processes and the image that visualizes what happens on the stage, staging a direct relation in between the resonant source and the visual perception of the audience.
In this direction moves also the last project Popular Mechanics of the pioneering musician Pierre Bastien produced by Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Label, Italian absolute preview, where a system of motors, filters, paper instruments, pulleys and Mecano pieces build up the rhythmic and hypnotic base of an audiovisual concert in the form of cinema-verité unique in the whole world. And more, the where the electromagnetic camp produced by the two projectors creates the audio backstage when it interacts with the graphical patterns designed by the same artists on special projected slides, for an audiovisual performance in real time completely improvised and absolutely genial. The Americans Lou Objects are instead within the most important representatives on an international level of the circuit bending aesthetics, art of improvising audiovisual situationist performances through circuiting in real time electric and electronic elements, whose screen visualization constitutes a hypnotic element of fascination for the present audience.
The Italian school is represented in Screen Music 2 by Mylicon/En , who characterize themselves visualizing the processes deriving from a set of analogical and mechanical instruments, able to produce sounds digitally sampled and edited in real time. The club part of the two nights is in the end entrusted to two completely different but at the same time fascinating projects: on one side the 8 bit aesthetics of the collective from New York 8BitPeoples, present with its representatives Bit Shifter and Nullsleep with the visuals of the French Otro, that thanks to a wise manual work of hackering and circuiting of Game Boys and old Commodore, Atari and Amiga consoles, will lead the audience to an irreverent dance audiovisual delirium on the sounds and images typical of modern micromusic. On the other side the icon, body art performer and dj Franko B, will measure himself with the software artist and vj Sanch Tv in a live audiovisual set astride between techno music and generative art.
inally, the opening night of Screen music 2, on Thursday 25/10, followed by Abdrea Mi/Videominute together with the staff of RE::LIFE , will be a night totally dedicated to join and weld the audiovisual connections between the best “old school” of hip hop and dj culture (represented by the sampling percussionist Steinski) and the most promising guard of the electronic scene (excellently represented by the Swiss Dimlite and by our Costa) visualized live by the graphic evolutions of the Spanish Iglesias Heras . Tommy Boy, Antidote, Ninja Tune, Stones Throw , Sonar Kollectiv are just some of the basic labels with whom the artists involved in this project have recorded and this will also be the occasion to verify the creative path that begins in the end of the 70s and arrives to the next future, twining styles an sounds in between cymbals and samplers, laptops and videomixers. From the Hip Hop Old School to the Abstract Hip
PROGRAM:
THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER curated by Andrea Mi/Videominuto
23.30-00.15 Costa (Ita) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
00-30-01.15 Dimlite (Svi) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
01.30-03.00 Steinski (USA) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
SATURDAY 27 OCTOBER curated by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00-30-01.30 – Mylicon/En (Ita)
23.30-00.30 – Loud Objects ( Usa )
01.30-03.00 – Franko B ( UK ) + Sanch Tv (Fra)
SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER curated by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00.30-01.30 – Pierre Bastien (Fra)
23.30-00.30 – Mikomikona (Ger)
01.30-03.00 – Nullsleep (Usa), Bit Shifter (Usa), & Otro (Fr): 8bitpeoples
BIO:
| PIERRE BASTIEN |
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Composer and multi-instrumentalist with transalpine origins, Pierre Bastien creates electro-acoustic sounds using mechanical toy-musicians in strange conglomerations of pulleys, rough spring-loaded gears and little motors, near to the tradition of surrealist bricolage. The final results lead back to improvisation music and to ethnic traditional musicality: click and bass drum, electronic melodies and mutant trumpets as contour to the many micro-percussions, elaborations quite free and released from the usual stylistic standards at the point to thrill also Squarepusher and Aphex Twin that wanted Pierre Bastien with them in the respective English and Italian tours. It is a unique combination of experimentalism, melody and sound-art that even though keeps a happy and suggestive pleasantness in listening. With the new project the cinema-verité of Pierre Bastien is characterized by paper drums, paper organ and by sheets of paper that alternate with the usual Meccano pieces and circuits, for the audiovisual portrayal exalted by the sweet and romantic intervention of the jazz trumpet played live by the same musician. |
| MIKOMIKONA |
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Mikomona is a Berlinese duo composed of Andreas Eberlein and Birgit Schneider. Their audiovisual performances, imprinted towards a strict minimalist aesthetic harshness, are real sessions of experimental laboratory during which the duo concentrates on the physical transformations of sound to image and vice versa. Driven experimentalism, liveness and strong scene impact are the uprising characteristics of their works, designed in the balance between deepened theoretic consciousness and technologic research. The instruments that they use in live shows can be overhead projectors equipped with home-built analogical devices that read and transform into audio signals the bedding of optical layers of the slides, or strange machineries with the 16mm. |
| FRANKO B |
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Franko B, born in Milan and living in London since 1979, has created projects using languages such as video, photography, performances, painting, installations, sculpture and mixed media since 1990. his performances have been hosted in spaces such as the Tate Modern, ICA , South London Gallery and Palais des Beaux-Artes, Brussels , while he held lessons at the St. Martins School of Art, DasArt , New York University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Already two biographies have been written on his artistic career: ‘Franko B’ (Black Dog Publishing 1998) e ‘Oh Lover Boy’ (2001). The most recent publications of the artist are a photographic book titled ‘Still Life’ (2003) and the monograph Blinded by Love while his latest projects are on the web : www.franko-b-mentoring.co.uk, www.de-mentored.blogspot.com. Since 2004 Franko B works as dj. |
| LOUD OBJECTS |
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Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta e Katie Shima are Loud Objects, electronic noise group of musicians, artists and architects that build digital circuits on the stage with welding and microchips. The action takes place directly on an old projector, that makes the assembling smoky and transparent, that runs hand in hand with low level circuits that create the music. The first five minutes of their set are usually characterized by complete silence due to the building of the starting circuit, that explodes in the end in a dens a real sound. But don’t think that these small circuits create light sounds noise is hard and heavy, modelled and modulated each time with the addition of new chips to the low-fi system. |
| BIT SHIFTER & NULLSLEEP |
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Bit Shifter explores the energy of low definition music composed and performed on a Nintendo Game Boy. The result is an enjoying and evocative sound performed on a platform that everyone thinks technically limited. Bit Shifter’s music, whose realization is allowed by software designed by Oliver Wittchow and Johan Kotlinski (Nanoloop and Little Sound Dj), defines a low budget aesthetic where a minimal hardware equipment is pushed further to the limit of its expressive potentialities. Based in New York , Bit Shifter has produced music for 8bitpeoples, 555 Recordings, Mirex, Ketacore e Astralwerks, performing in many live sets around the world. Co-founder of the collective 8bitpeoples, Nullsleep creates a pop and romantic sound using old electronic devices trying to avoid their technical limits. Sweet melodies and intense rhythmic pulses are produced and lead through small plastic instruments in an evocative audiovisual research but never nostalgic. His recordings with 8bitpeoples, Astralwerks e Aniplex have made of him one of the most famous artists on the international stage. Based in New York , Nullsleep has performed in live shows between America , Europe and Asia , participating also to the dates of the International Chiptune Resistance World Tour in 2006 |
| SANCH TV |
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Sanch Tv is David Dessens a French freelance designer who creates software for meso.net: instruments for video synthesis in real time that use physical interfaces and full-developed instruments between motion graphics and audio scores, like VVVV. His live visuals surprisingly react to the music they visualize, and since it generate patterns and sequences of images that adapt themselves to the space and location. His scientific and mathematic studiesproduced performances that play with 3dabstraction in creating fluid and unexpected shapes. |
| OTRO |
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Otromatic is a vj that creates visuals using old amiga computers and mobile consoles. His artistic research moves in between the 8bit experimentation, science fiction of low cost kind and influences from the historical vanguards to create dynamic and evocative visual catalogue. Very active as a graphic designer, realizes musical covers and projects of coordinate image for many labels. |
| COSTA |
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Costa is the name that the dj and producer Raffaele Costantino, for years reference in the world of Italian clubbing also with the project xcoast, signs his solo project dedicated to abstract hip hop, an instrumental version of hip hop rich in electronic experimentation and cinematic ambientations. Already collaborator od artists such as Amon Tobin and Funkstorung, Costa is finishing his new record in studio, with Anna Clementi (already with Dorfmeister in the project Tosca), Chris De Luca, Kill the vultures e Popoulus. In his live a lot of attention has been given to the melodic and harmonic aspects typical of jazz and soul, electronic research and rythimic approach to hip hop. Laptop, sampler, cymbals and synthesizers are the elements of his live performance. |
| PINTAYCOLOREA |
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Inés Iglesias Heras, from Salamanca ( Spain ), is a versatile artist with a multiple talent. After ending the artistic formation at the Academy of Salamanca , moves to Amsterdam where starts as a vj in the alive nights of Supperclub. Se reached Rome in 2003 to continue her studies in webdesign and strategy, becomes part of the FLxER team, collective of vjs and videoartists working in “video live performances”. Since then her exhibitions in festivals, nights and events of national and international stamp multiply: she is present as a vj in the Sonar in Barcelona , in the Biennale of Venice, in the Turin Film Festival. Her work as a vj reflects her studies and her character of polyedric artist, able to express herself through different languages of graphics, serigraphy, painting and video, that merge in very coloured performances of unique and original style. |
| STEINSKI |
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The newyorkese turntablist Steve Steinski is one of the “prime movers” of the hip hop scene together with Grandmaster Flash and Sugar Hill Gang, universally known as the inventor of sampling. His ‘Lesson One: the Payoff Mix’ in 1983, realized in team with Double Dee for the historical Tommy Boy Records is considered a real classic of the genre, so much that it is venerated as a hip hop record by artists of the level of Fatboy Slim, Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow e Coldcut. Master of audio cut-up, Steinski has realized and collaborated along his career with many works within singles, remixes (Africa Bambataa, Frankie Goes to Hollywood ), compilations, music for ads and soundtracks. Recently he has produced the EP “Ain’t No Thing” for the Stones Throw Records and he has been one of the main characters of the documentary “Scratch”. His performances are always different and unpredictable: his work together with DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist at the Fillmore Auditorium of San Francisco and with Double Dee for the opening of DJ Shadow’s concert at the Roseland Ballroom of New York are still unforgettable. Manifesto of the music season of sampling and essential to understand the evolution of hip hop sound and culture, nonetheless the birth of some vocal styles, Steinski’s productions up-light the nearness of hip hop with other genres of afro-american origin. |