ENG

PROGRAMME

Concept in Short

The DIGITAL ART WEEKS program is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of symposia, workshops and performances, the Digital Art Weeks (DAW) program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies during the Digital Art Weeks Festival each year, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of application of technology in the arts.

Programme Outline

I

Exhibition Event: “Place Relations II" Scientists and researchers from the ETH and the EPFL Lausanne join together with international recognized artists to create an exhibition that explores the potential of public space, geographic territory, architectural location, social relations, online informational media, and virtual 3D worlds. The works function as situational constructs in that each work reveals the conditions or potential of a place. The works appear in a constant state of flux as they shift in content, whose change is driven by relationships to anything and everything that blends into city life, distant landscape, or the event-stream of global digital space.

Participants: Philipp Bönhof (CHE), Enrico Costanza (CHE), Jeffrey Huang (CHE), Jürg Gutknecht (CHE), Stefan Müller Arisona (CHE), Will Pappenheimer (USA). Sven Stauber (CHE, Simon Schubiger (CHE), Muriel Waldvogel (CHE), UBERMORGEN.COM (CHE), Art Clay (USA/CHE)

IIa

Festival Event: “Scores and Screens”

“Scores & Screens“ is a multifaceted programme that brings together image and sound through synaesthetic connections. This is achieved in part by presenting the “music score“ as an aesthetic image in itself, in part by having static or moving images “seen“ in sound, and finally by also letting the public respond to the visual elements of a still or moving image sonically and affect the performance in turn. Both parts of the Scores & Screens project make a contrast between the "then" of the 1960’s Avant garde and the "now", which in like mind has further extended music notation out of the fixed domain of paper and ink and into the generative art realm of new media.

Part I: This part of the “Scores & Screens” programme focuses on "working actively with contingencies", which is a metaphor for music created from a score that is more open than closed to its interpretation. The Swiss Duo “Dahinden-Kleeb” are well known for their repertoire of works that shift between composition and improvisation as well as their work in free styled improvisation. The works they have selected here, several of which were written for them, all focus on score methods that could be termed "open or "malleable", where scores are no longer are fixed and with which the artistic license of the interpreter becomes an important aspect of composition as the possibilities of participating in the creative act beyond the role of the traditional interpreter open up. Participants: (CHE), Trombone & Alphorn; (CHE), ; Enrico Costanza (ITA/CHE), Physical Sequencer; Art Clay, (USA/CHE), Found Objects Works: Panorama, ; Exercises, Christian Wolff; Trois Stoppages Etalon, Art Clay; December 1952, Earle Brown; Going Publik, Art Clay; Ryonji,

Part II: Part II: The second part of the Scores & Screens programme consists of a series of almost “uninterpretable works” for computer based scores and piano solo performed by the young star Swiss pianist, Simone Keller. The programme also makes a contrast between the "then" and the "now" and at the same time, the programme emphasizes the ironic role of an interpreter, who is confronted with scores that vary from performance to performance are almost „uninterpretable“ due to their constant change. The programme also eloquently contrasts vintage works with recent compositions to show how indeterminacy has played a key role in the development of score malleability and how "algorithmic composition" has given birth to whole new area of generative methods of score and music making. The programme concludes with a recent commission for a piano solo work from a Swiss composer with or without malleable features.

Paticipants: Simone Keller (CHE), Piano Works: Klavierstuck VI, Karlheinz Stockhausen; Valses and Etudes, David Kim-Boyle; Piano Etudes, Jason Freeman; Zero Waste, Nick Didkovsky; Commissioned Piano Work from CH Composer (to be announced)

IIb

Festival Event: „Volumes & Visions“ Sound and Vision will present a two part series of unique performance events and screenings that focus on the synaesthetic relationship between sound and image that challenge assumptions about audio and video forms and their conventions in performance. The first part approaches the synaesthetic relationship between sound and image by relying on projection of musical imagery as the medium of communication to the performers and audience, while elements of the post-avant-garde i.e. techno, electro acoustic, liminal art, and hybrid performance come into within range and focus in the second part of the programme.

Part I: This programme brings together film and music as a related genre that is consumed by the public via large screen projection, which serves a dual function: as "score" for the performers and as an "film" for the audience. Visually, there is no difference between the music scores that are being read in realtime by the musicians and the projected images that are being shown as films to the audience. Both are visually fascinating and can be both heard and seen: the scores can be viewed as art works; the videos as can be heard as scores. At times the music is produced by the projected images and at time the projected images are produced by the music. Through participatory engagement, the audience enjoys immediate involvement in the performance happenings. Participants: Christian Marclay (CHE/USA), Live-Electronics; Natalia Sidler (CHE), Ondes Martinot; Roland Dahinden(CHE), Trombone & Alphorn; Hildegard Kleeb (CHE), Piano; Corebounce.org (CHE), Live-Visuals Works: Prima Vista, Mauricio Kagel; Screen Play, Christian Marclay; Sound Color Space, Natalia Sidler; Screen Improvisations, Corebounce.org & Dahinden-Kleeb Duo

Part II: The Sound and Vision portion of the Volumes and Visions programme will feature new forms of audio-visual media art from a diverse body of artists and sound practitioners. New forms of audio-visual hybrids will be explored including: mobile audio performance; synaesthetic performance; DJ/VJ performance; live video and sound; web-based audio and multimedia; montage video. Drawing on a history of visual music, montage and VJ performance this programme will present viewers with an audio-visual panorama of excess, immersion and psychedelia.

Participants: Steve Gibson (CAN); Scheinwerfer (Corebounce, CHE); Yi Fan Wang (CHN) & Guests

III

Conference Event & Workshops

The conference unites the diverse topics that manifest in the artworks and the technologies they employ. Although separated into a series of blocks the conference unifies such diverse topics in the arts (realtime scoring, psychogeographics, audio-visual media art, mobile performance, new forms of music video) with the themes related to the technologies that make these possible (virtual urban design, wearable wevices, pervasive computing, wireless sensor networks). The general participants for the symposium will be selected from paper submissions from select calls to relevant themes sent out internationally. Priority will be given to Chinese submissions. The conference will also include several key note speakers from the host institutes and a series of workshops that are geared toward creating new knowledge through transdisciplinary settings.

IV Workshops

„Live Audio and Visuals Workshop“ This workshop introduces various approaches to live audio and visuals from an artistic and a software design perspective. The workshop is conceived for anyone interested in research and/ or performance using both sound and image in a live and interactive context. Instructors: Stefan Müller Arisona CHE) and Steve Gibson (CAN)

„Interactive Music Basics & RealTime Scoring Tools“ This workshop shows how to use the power of a computer to improvise with you by having it listen and think about your playing to improvise along with you to create truly interactive music together. The workshop is conceived for musicians and artists who have an interest in interactivity in both music and art and also for those who are interested in how notation as a language can be developed. Instructors: Art Clay (CHE)& Jason Freeman (USA)

“Visual Markers that Communicate to Both People and Machines Workshop Like barcode, visual markers are graphic symbols that can be read by machines, but usually not by humans. The workshop introduces participants to how to create graphic symbols that are both visually expressive, but also readable automatically by human and machine with the hands-on activity of drawing functional visual markers. The workshop is conceived for graphic designers and illustrators who have an interest in interactive and communication technology and digital typography. Instructors: Enrico Costanza

“New Music Improvisation Workshop” This workshop focuses on improvising by approaching the subject with what is already know nto the musician i.e. the sonic vocabulary of the instrument, its repertoire, standard as wells as extended techniques in order to nurture new perspectives to both approach to musicianship and interpretation. The workshop is conceived for musicians and artists interested in exploring sound in a personal manner. Instructors: Roland Dahinden & Hildegard Kleeb

V Calls

„Sound and Vision Call“ The proliferation of audio technologies, audio-visual collaboration, and hybrid forms of live performance in the new millennium is striking. Audio and video artists are exploring the areas of mobility, virtuality, performance, and audience interaction from an experimental point-of- view. Artists and practitioners working in audio or audio-visual based new media will present research in a broad range of audio-visual practices.

Proposals can be in a broad range of audio-visual areas including: computational, interactive or generative audio; the creation of digital audio tools; synchronization between sound and visuals; performative art that explores language, voice and body; streaming radio and mobile audio-visual works.

Call Hosts: Stefan Müller Arisona (CHE), Yi Fang Wang (CHN), Steve Gibson (CAN)

„Real Time Panorama & The Silk Road'' The "Silk Routes" were very important paths for cultural and technological transmission by linking China to the Mediterranean Sea for thousands of years.The projects creates a parallel to the process of traveling the silk road to appreciate not only what came before and the treasures traded along the silk road, but to link technology into a metaphor of travel for the modern image surfer of today.

Artists are invited to submit images that will contribute to a collection of images for viewing using a Real Time Panoramic Viewer. Abstract as well as realistic images that cover or hint at any theme related to the Silk Road and cultural exchange are welcomed.

Call Hosts: Art Clay (CHE) & Jürg Gutknecht (CHE)