Ars Electronica Garden Tehran is an online sonic garden curated by Beshknow Radio – an independent online radio station and collective based in Tehran – in collaboration with Iranian sound artists from all around the world who know what a Persian rock candy infused with saffron is!

Beshknow Radio invited Iranian sound artists to contribute a retrospective mix that could depict their sonic perspective. This borderless sonic garden welcomes you virtually to lay down on a Persian rug and fly over the country of Iran, listening 24/7 to the real sound of the city accompanied by hours of field recordings as well as a big bite of electronic music from an abstract point of view.

Today, Tehran is a city of 730 km square area, twenty-five times bigger than the city it was in the nineteenth century. And, its population is about 15 million; sixty times more than the population it had during the nineteenth century. The atmosphere of Tehran is to some points incomparable with its past. One of the most key features of Tehran is its diverse cultural, economic, and architectural urban textures. Variety and plurality of the artistic and cultural events represent considerable qualities of today’s Tehran. This plurality can be heard in its soundscapes.

In addition to the pure sound part of the garden, Beshknow presents the “Learning Salon,” learningsalon.ai, an interdisciplinary weekly forum hosted by Dr. Ida Momennejad, Dr. John Krakauer, and Dr. Joshua Vogelstein, discussing bridges and contentions between biological and artificial learning with a different guest and the audience each week. Guest speakers span the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science. The interdisciplinary discussion takes a long format, drawing an international audience who regularly attend the meeting, with close to 3000 live subscribers on Crowdcast. The sessions are available for offline viewing on youtube.”

The radio time slot is flexible during the festival days for all the time zones by splitting 24 hours to two -12hour sets of play and replay programs.

Ars Electronica Garden Tehran is set to take place online and on-site at the Johannes Kepler University Linz from September 8-12, 2021.

Video

Sonic Garden, Beshknow Radio (IR), Credit: Ahang Ahmadi

Sonic Garden, Beshknow Radio (IR), Credit: Sasan Abri

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Sonic Garden – Wed. Sep 8

Pantea and Momo Zeli (IR) – Vedad Famourzadeh (IR)

This mixtape represents the progress of Everyday, an artistic research project led by pantea and momo zeli. The project aims to foreground the unheard sounds of everyday cultures; sounds which are less acknowledged and explored in the creative musical heritage, sounds which embody local knowledge, cultural practices of the vernacular, and ecologies – many of which were not made for musical purposes in the first place. Through the project recordings are being highlighted that denote a blurred line between everyday sounds and musicality.

Sonic Garden – Thu. Sep 9

Saba Alizadeh (IR), Sohrab Motabar (IR), Reza Atashran (IR)

Saba Alizadeh (IR): Born in Tehran in 1983, Saba Alizadeh is an unparalleled figure at the forefront of contemporary Iranian music. Alizadeh subsequently studied experimental sound practices at Calarts in Los Angeles. He began expanding his musical cosmos utilizing different instruments and methods of composing. Apart from Kamancheh, no-input mixer, modular synthesizer, laptop have been the main instruments that Alizadeh has created his sonic cosmos with. Alizadeh also uses a lot of manipulated historic audio recordings and field recordings in a neo-musique concrète fashion. Treating sound as an object has always been Alizadeh’s fascination. 

Sonic Garden – Fri. Sept. 10

Siavash Amini (IR), Active Listeners Club (IR), Sepand Jamshidy (IR), Dariush Sardari (IR)

Siavash Amini (IR) is a composer from Tehran, Iran. He has worked with renowned international labels Room40, Hallow Ground, Opal Tapes and Umor Rex for the better half of the past 10 years.

Sonic Garden – Sat. Sep 11

Rojin Sharafi (IR/AT), mHz (IR/NZ), Houman Hoorsan (IR)

Rojin Sharafi (IR/AT) is a Vienna-based, Tehran-born sound artist, performer and composer of acoustic and electronic music, freely crossing the borders between genres. She creates entirely unique musical textures using analogue, acoustic and augmented instruments, as well as digital tools of her own devising. She is currently pursuing her masters in sound engineering and composition at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. Her debut album “Urns Waiting to be Fed,” with Zabte Zote, has been lauded as “one of [2019’s] most ecstatic and fiercely original hours of music.”

Sonic Garden – Sun. Sep 12

Sote (IR/US), Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (IR/CA), Navid Asadi (IR)

Ata Ebtekar aka Sote (b. Hamburg, Germany) is an Iranian-American electronic music composer and sound artist based in Tehran, Iran. In the past 30 plus years, his music has been published by various companies, such as Warp Records, Sub Rosa, Opal Tapes, Diagonal, Morphine and Repitch among others. (11 albums, numerous eps, singles and compilation appearances)

Sonic Garden

Moss (IR/FR)

Mohsen Ataei AKA Moss is a veteran Iranian underground DJ, starting electronic music back in 2000. Collecting and playing music has been an obsession with Moss since his teenage years, eventually leading him to study Audio Engineering and Electronic music production at SAE Paris. In the late 2000s, he became a member and producer of the Parisian underground cult band “Big Daddy’s Dead” performing at most of the city’s prestigious clubs.

Sonic Garden

Farzan Badie (IR)

Farzan Badie is a DJ/music producer/audio engineer and radio host based in Tehran. He got his Diploma in Sound Engineering from the S.A.E Malaysia. Since then he has played in Iran, Germany, Hungary, Malaysia, Dubai, Cyprus and Turkey. He formed a DJ/Live act with British DJ Jules Dickens in Kuala Lumpur and worked in a public studio in Budapest for 2 years. Farzan is the co-founder and music director of “Beshknow”, an online radio and collective from Tehran.

Credits

The Learning Salon (Ida Momennejad – Joshua Vogelstein – John Krakauer)
Media Partners: Zamineh Platform, Owrsi Media