OK OÖ Kulturquartier

Muted Situation #22: Muted Tchaikovsky’s 5th

Samson Young (HK)

This is how Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony can sound too: keys click, sheets of music rustle, and bows sweep tonelessly over strings. By “muting” the foregrounded sound event, a surprising amount of previously unnoticed sounds can be heard in this performance. In Muted Situation #22 – presented as a 12-channel audio installation – Samson Young’s idea is to suppress the dominant voices, uncover the unheard, and point out basic principles about hearing and sounding.

Strings

Ruini Shi (CN)

Strings is a poetic animation in the style of early computer games. In this setting the main character is in search of his lost love in an obsolete online game. The film tells a story about mediated intimacy by depicting a range of virtualized spaces or realms in a game, aiming to open up new ways of thinking about digitally mediated relationships.

One Tree ID − How To Become A Tree For Another Tree

Agnes Meyer-Brandis (DE)

One Tree ID is a biochemical and biopoetic odor communication experiment between visitors and a black pine. For the project, the artist created a perfume from the gas emissions of the individual tree. These volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the communication system of the plants and produce what we recognize as the fragrance of a forest.

Mosaic Virus

Anna Ridler (UK)

The video work Mosaic Virus is a contemporary version of a classic Dutch still life for the twenty-first century. The project is based on 10,000 tulip photographs which were used to train a model. An artificial intelligence (AI) thus generates an endless flood of images of imaginary tulips whose appearance is directly controlled by the current Bitcoin course. Anna Ridler focuses on current speculation in crypto currencies and draws historical parallels in this way to the “tulip mania” of the 1630s in the Netherlands and Europe. At that time, horrendous prices were paid for tulips that were striped. These stripes were caused by a disease – the so-called mosaic virus.

TORSO #1

Peter Kutin (AT)

TORSO #1 is a sound sculpture that is visually reminiscent of a klopotec. This windmill-like wooden construction serves as a scarecrow in vineyards as it mechanically generates sounds and vibrations. Here, an electro-acoustic system of four 100 V loudspeakers rotates at different speeds, generating feedback patterns and modulating sound signals and the spatial sound itself. The targeted acceleration and deceleration of the rotating of the four-voice system serves as the central compositional means for the 35-minute piece – the sculpture becomes an abstract, audiovisual instrument. Warning: The stroboscope-like visual stimuli can cause physical discomfort (dizziness, nausea, etc.) or epileptic seizures in susceptible individuals.

[ir]reverent: Miracles on Demand

Adam Brown (US)

In his research project Adam Brown investigates the influence of invisible microbial agents on human history and its belief systems. He has developed a “miracle on demand” similar to those “divine phenomena” that people believed in for centuries. The artist uses Serratia marcescens, a microorganism that grows on bread and produces a viscous fluid that is very similar to blood.