(Australian)
Dr Colin Black is an internationally acclaimed composer, sound artist and radio artist having won the 2015 New York Festivals Awards, 2003 Prix Italia Award and achieving the final round selection in the 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2016 Prix Phonurgia Nova (France) for his major works. Black has received multiple national and international commissions to create innovative works for installation, performance and broadcast across major Australian and European networks. As part of his doctoral studies at the University of Sydney he spent five years researching the history of radiophonic sound art, its different forms and methods.
The story of the German scientist Ludwig Leichhardt, who disappeared on his third expedition in the Australian bush in 1848, becomes allegorical for Colin Black. The Australian composer takes it as an example of the European conqueror who, in an osmotic process, is defeated by the landscape and eventually devoured. Text, sound and music are equally important in this sound composition and respond to each other like echoes in this soundscape. Black also uses his "extended enviro guitar" with additional three to 15 metre long strings attached to the landscape and which is played by the wind or the rain.
(Serbian)
Arsenije Jovanovič was born in Belgrade in 1932 and has worked since the 1960s as a composer, photographer, writer, audio artist and director in theatre, radio and TV. His audio art pieces have won numerous awards at radio festivals, including the Prix Italia, Premio ondas (Spain), Acustica international (WDR), Grand Prix (Rust), Bienalderadio (Mexico City). In addition, some of his works were selected for film soundtracks, including films by Terrence Malick.
The composition is based on Shakespeare's "Tempest" – however not on the text and the story, but the stage directions, which evoke music and sound, and especially on the numerous passages where people describe sounds that they hear: "out of the air – from somewhere". Jovanovič regards this information and passages from Shakespeare's text as a score for an independent composition, the sorcerer Prospero making the sounds which are inaudible in Shakespeare audible to us on his sound archipelago.
(German)
Frieder Butzmann, born in Konstanz in 1954, is a composer, musician, sound and performance artist as well as a writer of features and radio plays. He lives in Berlin. He collects sounds, music, noises and impressions, yet mostly does not know whether he should use them to make compositions, film music, recitations, radio plays or entire operas. He tirelessly widens, cuts and transposes analogue and digital sound recordings beyond recognition.
In the Spunkkrachlexikon by and with Frieder Butzmann – like in every dictionary – it's a question of hard facts – only more fun: Sorted solely by the sequence of letters (Z-A), information is given on the subject of hearing. Under keywords such as "Zirbeldrüse" (pineal gland), "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah", "Ohrensausen" (tinnitus), "Maulwurf" (mole), "Geräusch" (noise), "fühlen" (feel), and "dröhnen" (booming) you can look up or listen to what Frieder Butzmann associates with it. Find out about acoustic illusions, the chemical toilet on an ICE train, the big bang or information about musical quantum leaps, harmonies and cacophonies. The Spunkkrachlexikon was put on the "www" from its broadcast date and can be heard letter by letter in Real Audio format on the DLR website.
(Argentinian)
José Eduardo Mataloni, born in Cordoba, Argentina in 1965, is a sound artist and composer of electro-acoustic music. He also composes for dance, theatre, performances and sound installations. He has lived in Germany, is now in Spain.
The Arcana, the picture cards from the card game Tarot, serve as a source of inspiration and can offer suggestions for lifestyles in a playful way. The "Juggler" stands for inspiration, the "Popess" for knowledge, the "Emperor" for philosophy, the "Empress" for magic, the "Pope" for the idea of divine incarnation in man, the "Lovers" for temptation, the "Chariot" for the triumph over temptation... Each Arcanum in the Tarot counts as a universally valid psychological and spiritual archetype. José Mataloni's composition sketches the path of an "Initiation into Magic". "In this sound piece I adopt the attitude of the Hermetic philosophers, who are open for all ideas and religions, in order to combine them to form a whole." (J. Mataloni)
(German)
Frieder Butzmann, born in Konstanz in 1954, is a composer, musician, sound and performance artist as well as a writer of features and radio plays. He lives in Berlin. He collects sounds, music, noises and impressions, yet mostly does not know whether he should use them to make compositions, film music, recitations, radio plays or entire operas. He tirelessly widens, cuts and transposes analogue and digital sound recordings beyond recognition.
RÖHRER, Wolfgang
(German)
Wolfgang Roehr, born in Freiburg in 1942, has lived in Berlin since 1965. He studied philosophy and media studies. A writer of radio plays, he has been making his own independent productions since 1980.
August Walla lives in the "Haus der Künstler" (House of Artists) belonging to the Gugging state psychiatric clinic near Vienna. He is a world-famous representative of "art brut", art by the so-called "insane". But for him and his admirers, his mind extends far beyond the cosmos that is known to us: here he paints and describes the "Ewigkeitsendeland" (Eternity's end country), which begins at the end of eternity, but is now already connected to our universe through "worm holes" (as modern theoretical physics refers to it)...
(Italian)
Stefano Giannotti, born in Lucca, Tuscany in 1963.
He has produced international award-winning radio compositions and radio plays since 1989.
Winner of the SWR Karl Sczuka Prize for the second time for "Geologica" (following "Il tempo cambia" in 2002).
Matilde, the baby, is having a restless night. Between waking and dreaming three fantasy worlds open to her.In her first waking dream, the only inhabitants of the Earth are a man and a woman. They have to imitate birds, in order to communicate because they do not speak a language. It is a world without words.In her second vision, the world is being listened to from the Moon: Voices, bells, war cries and machines can be heard; electronic instruments mimic Morse code.Speechlessness once again prevails in her third waking dream. Only isolated computer voices break the silence to announce: "Fine del messaggio" (End of the message).
(Italian)
Stefano Giannotti, born in Lucca, Tuscany in 1963.
He has produced international award-winning radio compositions and radio plays since 1989.
Winner of the SWR Karl Sczuka Prize for the second time for "Geologica" (following "Il tempo cambia" in 2002).
"Paris, 50 125 before Christ. In a café, a couple of Neanderthals are chatting with some representatives of the species Homo sapiens. Suddenly, the waiter reveals himself to be a not quite extinct Australopithecus and blows himself up. The tremendous explosion opens the door to an imaginary landscape of atoms and elementary particles. The clock is put back 14 billion years, to the time of the Big Bang." "Geologica" transposes the different periods of the Earth's history into a playful and ironic sound composition. Quite incidentally, the piece reflects on the smallness of man in the face of the gigantic expansion of the universe.
(Italia)
Lucia Ronchetti, born in Rome in 1963, is a composer of electro-acoustic music, and was the recipient of a DAAD scholarship in Berlin in 2005. Her works range from orchestral works to chamber music with live electronics to vocal music and has won numerous awards.
"This work is a musical portrait of Rome through the sound of its old doors. Their sound gives a shadowy report of the lives once lived behind them. I have tried to listen to each door in order to describe the complexity of this noisy city with its overlapping centuries of sound. The opening of each individual door involves music, shouts or dialogue. Not unlike Ariosto's 'Castello di Atlante' (Atlas' Castle), to which all those are drawn who are seeking a loved one, I have tried to capture the life on the other side of the door by mixing a sound spectacle of personal memories and realistic projections." (Lucia Ronchetti)
(German)
Johannes S. Sistermanns, born in 1955, is an internationally renowned composer, installation and performance artist, and lives near Cologne. Numerous awards, including the SWR Karl Sczuka Prize in 1997 and the WDR German Sound Art Award in 2008. From 1997 to 2010, he was vice-president of the DEGEM, German Society for Electroacoustic Music.
The composition "im klangrand" (in the edge of sound) examines various aspects of the acoustic events at the horizon of perception: Auditory thresholds, transitions and passages, playing with sound in the foreground and background as well as with the distant sources of sound which reach the edges of the universe. Johannes S. Sistermanns found the material for this work in the Australian Outback, the Rhine valley, the Atlantic Ocean of France and in the movement of the stems of a corn field. He listened to the Deutzer bridge spanning the river Rhine in Cologne, New York's Times Square, a Chinese pedestrian tunnel between bustling main streets, and the spacious district around the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Sistermanns composes with everyday items and everyday actions, text margins, edges of voices, with extensive interior spaces and not least with the sounds of pulsars. These distant stars emit radio waves which can be converted into audible noise signals.Sistermanns does not use any artificial reverb and echo effects in the processing of his recordings. A part of his composition is created directly in the recording process by the spatial relationship between the microphone and the sound source. In the studio Sistermanns allows these sounds to become porous and frayed, rupturing and merging into new mixtures. In this way he creates a play of identity, self-assertion and constantly newly emerging sound passages.
(Canadian)
Chantal Dumas, born in Quebec in 1959, sound artist, composer and author of radio plays. She has won a number of awards including the Hungarian Sound Art Prize EAR 1997 and the French Prix Phonurgia Nova in 1997 and 2001. "Les petits riens" was awarded the Prix Bohemia 2010.
"Der Duft der Frauen" (The Perfume of Women) is a sound study of the major migratory movements in civilizations and in nature. It correlates the mysterious cyclical movements of the waters of the Atlantic with the emigration of Europeans to America. Part Two is a kind of parody of the longing for "Elsewhere" and the new Part Three deals with crossing and respecting every sort of boundary. This third part was awarded the "EAR 97" at the end of 1997, the Hungarian Radio's Prize for acoustic art. And the entire three-part work received another award in January: Chantal Dumas won the "Palmarès", the most important French radio play prize, awarded annually in Arles, in the Acoustic Art category.
(Argentinian)
Mario Verandi, born in Buenos Aires in 1960, is a composer and sound artist. His oeuvre encompasses electro-acoustic music, audiovisual installations, radio art as well as music for dance, short films and theatre. His works have received numerous distinctions, such as the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Award, the ZKM Composition Prize (European Bell Festival 2004), the Musica Nova Award in Prague, the CIEJ Musics Electronics Award in Barcelona, the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz and the Stockholm Electronic Art Award.
"Some spirits inhabit human bodies, some the bodies of animals, they inhabit plants, stones, minerals, and nothing is without spirit and intellect...". Giordano Bruno, born near Naples in 1548, fell victim to the Inquisition at the age of 52 on account of his teachings of the infinity of the world and the equality of all religions and world systems. Giordano Bruno's ideas from his work "On Magic" inspired Mario Verandi to a metaphorical sound journey through a world of spirits and demons. In this composition, they slip into voices, tones and sounds and are brought to life one more time.Some gosts live in the human body, some in the bodies of animals and plants, stones, minerals. Nothing is without sence and intellect. Giordani Bruno, born 1548 in Neaple in Italie, was murdered at the age of 52 because he said, that all religions and all world systems are equal. Giordano Brunos’ thoughts in his novel “Magic” inspired Mario Verandi for his metaphorical sound journey throughout a world of gosts an demons. In this composition they hide in voices, sounds and music and return to life for one more time.
(German)
Götz Naleppa, born in 1943, director, media artist, translator and author, was sound art editor at Deutschlandradio Kultur until December 2008. Responsible for well over 100 radio drama productions, works for theatre and opera. Own sound art work since 1983. Numerous awards for radio drama productions (Prix Europa, Prix Marulic, "Gold Award" at the New York Festival 2008, Prix Italia 2009, etc.).
VETTER, Michael
(German)
Michael Vetter, born in 1943, studied theology and music. He is a master of overtone singing. His interest is in using different media (language, painting, photography, theatre, music) for the realisation of what he refers to as "Transverbal": Language is movement is music.
After thirteen years in Japan living primarily as a Zen monk, today he lives withdrawn for the greater part of his time, painting, writing and gardening in the middle of his olive grove on the Monte Amiata. He founded his Accademia Capraia here in 1991, a "school in the art of living" operating according to his concepts.
This new piece by Michael Vetter is a further development of his work on a "transverbal language". A wordless language that attempts to direct the whole apparatus of human understanding associatively towards the interplay between ear and voice. This freedom and extreme ambiguity results in every listener having heard another radio play at the end. In this new work, language islands swim on a "Goldgrund" (golden background) of overtone singing, which tells of the "wonders of the voiceless saints".
(German)
The combination of electronic and acoustic instruments, and composition and improvisation is characteristic for the Munich-based outfit 48nord (Ulrich Müller, Siegfried Rössert), whereby the use of new technologies plays a decisive role. For their work, Ulrich Müller and Siegfried Rössert received a scholarship for Music and New Media, and a scholarship for Music in public places (both awarded by the City of Munich).
RÖSSERT, Siegfried
(German)
The combination of electronic and acoustic instruments, and composition and improvisation is characteristic for the Munich-based outfit 48nord (Ulrich Müller, Siegfried Rössert), whereby the use of new technologies plays a decisive role. For their work, Ulrich Müller and Siegfried Rössert received a scholarship for Music and New Media, and a scholarship for Music in public places (both awarded by the City of Munich).
TERMINUS means both term and boundary. The radio play focuses on borders: between people, between countries, borders of perception, of language, the border between life and death. If terms become shaky in borderline situations, the sound takes us further: Language on the border between meaningfulness and pure sound. Instrumental actions breaking out from the sounds of speech, also blurring the border between speech and music. The realm of the terms in TERMINUS is defined by two textual layers: by a text by Leonardo da Vinci about the Flood and by fragments of text mostly of literary origin, in which borders and border situations are discussed.
(Japanese)
Tetsuo Furudate, born in 1958, lives in Tokyo and is one of the most important composers and musicians of the Japanese NOISE movement playing numerous concerts in Europe. "The Auditory Sense of Mr. Roderick Usher" (DLR, Berlin 2004) received a prize in the Dresden competition "Blaue Brücke".
"The auditory sense of Mr. Roderick Usher" responds abnormally acutely to steps, voices, the quietest noises. But what is the cause of his clairaudience? Why he is smitten with this painful hypersensitivity? And are the many voices which Roderick Usher hears at outsize volumes utterances of one and the same personality? Furudate interpreted Usher's suffering as the suffering of Eros: as a distorted, outrageous desire that sinks into audio intoxication.
Noise Opera „Der Niedergang des Hauses Usher“ nach Edgar Allan Poe
(French)
Francis Dhomont, born in Paris in 1926, composer. Discovered "musique concrète" in the 1940s and gradually moved across to the composition of electroacoustic music. Five-time winner of the International Competition for Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, numerous other awards, the Magisterium Prize in 1988.
Canadian electro-acoustics are regarded throughout the world as outstanding. Their origins can be traced back to the 1940s, when Hugh LaCaine developed a forerunner of the modern synthesizer in Ottawa. The studios at the Universities of Toronto and Montreal were established in the 1950s. The scene is alive and creative like hardly any other. There was a big meeting at the ZKM "trans_canada" Festival in Karlsruhe in February 2005.
"Vol d’arondes" by Francis Dhomont, the master of acousmatics, whose "Schwalbenflug" (flight of swallows) achieves extremely poetic effects with playful jauntiness.
(German)
Werner Cee, born in 1953, lives in Allendorf near Giessen, and works as a sound artist and composer. He has won numerous prizes at international festivals, most recently the Prix Italia 2010 for "Featuring Schuberts Winterreise". "Maschinerie der Polarlandschaft" (Machinery of the Polar Landscape) received a special commendation at the "Palmarès" in Bourges in 2005.
"Die Zeit weht" (Time is drifting) is a radio play about clouds – about the formless, void, variable and bottomless symbolic of these celestial phenomena, composed from the waving sound images of two hybrid instruments: Werner Cee's E-Chin and Eivind Aarset's electric guitar."Ränder der Musik" (The margins of music) is a radio play about the poetry of the unwanted, the useless, the not-thought out and the not-done. It is made up of the sounds of musicians before and after making music. A composition that shows sounds as they are: seemingly random, effortless.Both pieces enter into a sound-poetic dialogue on the margins between form and dissolution and on the continuous change in the course of time.