Dive deep into freshly made immersive electronic music with the 20.4 system of the Sonic Lab. This is a concert designed to perceive spatial music selected from the call for contributions that relates to Resonating Hope: Audible Manifestations. The program shows a variety of styles of multichannel music from around the world.
| João Pedro Oliveira (PT) | N’vi’ah / 2019 / 11:48 |
| Lidia Zielinska (PO) | The Eighth Island (Ósma wyspa) / 2011 / 09:05 |
| Peter Trabitzsch (AT) | Meergeister / 2017 / 06:32 |
| Martina Claussen (DE) | Verstimmt_B / 2024 / 9:13 |
| Michael J. Schumacher (US) | Noema / 2023 / 13:22 |
| Moldir Slyamova (KZ) | Auaa (kaz. Luft) | Scarecrow / 2024 / 09:04 |
Program:
João Pedro Oliveira (PT) / N’vi’ah / 2019 / 11:48
N’vi’ah is an Old Testament word meaning prophetess. A prophetess conveys one or more divine messages often in the form of inspired songs. And many times, her words are cryptic, requiring interpretation or even translation. This work uses isolated phonemes as musical material. Intelligible words are not articulated, leaving the listener to imagine what their contents and meanings could be. N’vi’ah was commissioned by the Ibermúsicas Project and composed at the Human Interaction Laboratory – Diego Portales University in Santiago de Chile. It is dedicated to Federico Schumacher.
Lidia Zielinska (PO) / The Eighth Island (Ósma wyspa) / 2011 / 09:05
The immediate inspiration was the work of Joseph Conrad, a Polish-English writer who straddled the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Joseph Conrad’s complete works in Polish may be downloaded from the Internet. Electronic Conrad for the people, who fly to exotic destinations. Conrad: timeless and old-fashioned. He was a great writer, period. Thousands and thousands of pages on moral dilemmas and choices, multiple suggestive depictions of the anxious beauty of the oceans. Yet also a shocking lack of proportion, at least for me as a reader. When Conrad’s ships approach the coast, a terrible lack of political correctness, and a total absence of curiosity about the world. Eurocentric criteria and judgments. The twilight of “drawing room anthropology”.
I have switched off the potentiometers of Conrad’s ships and crew and tried to hear what Conrad himself deemed uninteresting. Although it must have been audible then, it is lost today. Traces of what I heard are included in my nine-minute nocturne The Eighth Island. Aside from the inspiration of Conrad, my piece is in fact an impression of the cultures that are disappearing in front of our eyes owing to our neglect, lack of interest, ignorance, the hypocritical pose of political correctness we adopt, and climate change.
Peter Trabitzsch (AT) / Meergeister / 2017 / 06:32
Meergeister is a surrealistic portrait of electronic and acoustic sounds that visualizes the visions and hopes of a half-human, half-water creature. It lives between two worlds, yet feels it belongs to neither. Inwardly torn, the creature searches for answers in the depths of its dream-like underwater world.
Martina Claussen (DE) / Verstimmt_B / 2024 / 9:13
This acousmatic composition takes the listener on an auditory journey through diverse soundscapes, ranging from gentle harmonies to distorted, fragile sounds. The versatility of the voice and its various sonic qualities are explored, beckoning the audience to immerse themselves in a world unfolding around them.
Michael J. Schumacher (US) / Noema / 2023 / 13:22
An algorithmically generated piece in which the computer chooses samples from a library of 3001 sounds and loops them for a certain period of time. In this way, sounds are replaced with new ones as the piece progresses.
Moldir Slyamova (KZ) / Auaa (kaz. Luft) | Scarecrow / 2024 / 09:04
The Auaa or Scarecrow is an acousmatic piece written for the Scarecrow dance performance of Sofia Zeifert. This piece delves into personal traumas and the isolating experience of being abroad, portraying the raw confrontation with one’s inner fears and thoughts. It is about making connections with your inner voice and yourself, resisting the fears and starting new chapters of life.