A sound art display on the web

The life of a radio broadcast is usually of short duration. After only a few transmissions valuable acoustic treasures disappear without trace into the archives of the broadcasting centres. Hardly any of the public broadcasters also provide public access to their productions. This is particularly regrettable when it involves original radio art. It is precisely this which brings out the exceptional expressiveness of the medium.

In order to avoid this impasse, the sound art editor Götz Naleppa, upon his retirement from Deutschlandradio Kultur, handed over the existing productions to the Phonurgia Nova association and the Musée Réattu Arles.

sonosphere sees itself as a resonance space for innovative artistic work with sound. sonosphere is an online museum that will continue to grow with future productions by Deutschlandradio Kultur, keeping its doors open for further collections.

The head of Deutschlandradio’s radio drama department Stefanie Hoster was able to win over Prof. Nathalie Singer from the Weimar Bauhaus University as a further partner for a virtual exhibition.

 

Deutschlandradio Kultur's Sound Art Collection

Since its foundation in the year 1994, Deutschlandradio Kultur has kept a scheduling slot available for radiophonic works of art: "Klangkunst" (formerly “Hörspiel Werkstatt") – 55 minutes weekly at 0.05 hours on Thursday night.

Ars Acustica, sound art, musique concrète, art acousmatique, soundart, audio art, digital radio art, sound poetry, phonography… Above and beyond all of the various stylistic concepts, the works from this collection are predominantly "radiophonic", i.e. they obey the narrative laws of radio (even if the pieces are not told with words but with sound).

The international collection contains original works by renowned masters such as Luc Ferrari, Christian Calon, Chantal Dumas, Alvin Curran, Hanna Hartman, Stefano Giannotti, Thomas Köner, Tetsuo Furudate, but also compositions by highly promising "newcomers".

 

The Phonurgia Nova collection

From Spring 2012 this collection will be presenting works which have won awards or been commended in the framework of the annual Phonurgia Nova competition. The Concours International de Création Sonore has been awarding prizes for artistic work using sound as a medium of the real and the imaginary in many different forms (fiction, documentary, sound art) since 1986.

The Prix Pierre Schaeffer – named after the inventor of 'musique concrète' – was launched in 2009. This prize is awarded to talented young artists whose work deserves special attention.

In addition, the collection also includes works which were created in Arles under the guidance of the Australian-French Radio artist Kaye Mortley. Arles has a long artistic tradition, among other things as van Gogh's country of choice or as a centre of European photography. Mortley has offered regular workshops in this environment since 1990, which offer an exceptional insight into the practice of acoustic writing. Many young artists from the fields of theatre, cinema or visual arts gained their first experience with sound materials here. As in painting or photography, they started off from real impressions, with the goal of creating artistic fictions.

 

The Weimar Bauhaus University's Experimental Radio Collection

Going online early 2012. "Experimental Radio" at the Weimar Bauhaus University is about radio art and about experimenting: Professor Nathalie Singer and her colleagues devote themselves to a professorship which is unique in Europe, covering the teaching and transmission of radio drama, features and sound art. It focuses on the search for new, experimental formats: Through the students' pop culture experience, artistic works arise which are influenced by club culture, hip hop or electronic music. There are also overlaps with the other Sonosphere collections: Several of the works which came out of the "Experimental Radio" have already been broadcast in Deutschlandradio Kultur's sound art slot, others have been nominated and awarded prizes at the international "Phonurgia Nova" sound art festival.