
A first photo documentation of the preview symposium and the performance programme made by pablosanz.
sound / space / context

A first photo documentation of the preview symposium and the performance programme made by pablosanz.
As there is a lot of interest and only limited seating for the preview symposium on the 26th of January at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, we recommend to make a ticket reservation. Please send us an e-mail tickets@tunedcity.de

Geert-Jan Hobijn is the founder of the Staalplaat music label and has been the organizer of many sound art and performance events in the past. Staalplaat Soundsystem has been showing works at several international festivals, museums, galeries and events like Avanto (Helsinki), Sonar (Barcelona), CEMC (Beijing), DEAF (Rotterdam), Ars Electronica (Linz), Moca Taipei, etc.
appearance at Tuned City Preview
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
and Tuned City
design of acoustic environments / 04.07.08
and
Composed City

Lola landscape architects – Peter Veenstra / Eric-Jan Pleijster / Cees van der Veeken
Lola landscape architects is a Rotterdam-based office for landscape architecture, that studies and designs projects on every scale: parks, urban plans and regional plans, resulting projects such as the regional design for the Ruhr-Randstad area “Livin’ On The Edge” and the design for a landscape park for Sintra, Portugal: “Nature is my Neighbour”. Lola has a conceptual approach and searches in many projects for cooperation with architects, artists and other disciplines.
appearance at Tuned City Preview/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
and Tuned City
design of acoustic environments / 04.07.08
and
workshops
Sound artists from Zurich and Bern. Since 2004 ongoing collaboration and installation work. Pe Lang and Zimoun focus on researching sound of materials as well as creating accessible and organic acoustic spaces. Their works “untitled sound objects“ are created by using small machines and robots, in combination with different materials which are used as sound sources. The artists focus on creating acoustic architecture with an organic feel, investigating the properties of sound, materials, resonance and generative systems. The work is presented as sound installations and as audio/visual live performances.
http://www.zimoun.ch
http://www.untitled-sound-objects.ch/
appearance at Tuned City >
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City

Prof. Dr. Gernot Böhme studied mathematics, physics and philosophy. 1965-69 scientific assistant at the University Hamburg and Heidelberg; 1970-77 scientific assistant at the Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg for the reaearch of living conditions of the scientific-technical world. 1977-2002 professor of philosophy at the Technical University in Darmstadt. 1997-2001 spokesman of the post-graduate college „Technology and Society”. Denkbar-award for oblique thinking 2003. Headmaster of the Institute for Practice of Philosophy in Darmstadt. Research and publications in time theory, classical philosophy, philosophical anthropology, science research.
appearance at Tuned City
Brussels / Aesthetic of Atmospheres / 30. June 2013
Berlin /symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
Tuned Space / 27th January 2008 / Maria am Ostbahnhof / Berlin / Germany
For a first preview weekend within the framework of this year’s clubtransmediale festival we have put together a programme with artists from across the sound-art spectrum who have been invited to make their own sonic investigations, deconstructions and provocations within the architectural space of the Maria Club itself, taking the audience from the quiet minimal world of found objects and sounds through to the body- and building-crushing power of subsonic rumblings.
The UK’s Dallas Simpson will undertake a detailed and intimate binaural sonic investigation of the urban wasteland around the club, putting the audience directly inside the performer’s head via wireless microphones and headsets. Swedish field-recordist BJNilsen has teamed up with Icelandic cello player Hildur Gudnadottir to explore the minute architectural and structural resonances of the viola and cello instruments and their so-called Wolftones, played out over a multichannel speaker setup. Basque noise-aktionist Mattin declines to state the trajectory of his performance for the evening, as this anti-laptop “Body & Linux” performer prefers the element of surprise to any other. Daniel Menche, hailing from Portland Oregon, USA, similarly involves his body in the production of an overwhelming sound which seeks the limits of both physical tolerance and structural restraint. And finally, Netherlands-based US expatriate Mark Bain will demonstrate his “Vibrasonics” system, a set of subsonic devices designed to inject sound waves into the foundations of a building, challenging our notions of architectural stability and perhaps even bringing the walls crashing down upon us.
Dallas Simpson (UK)
BJ Nilsen + Hildur Gudnadottir (S/IS)
Mattin (BASK)
Daniel Menche (US)
Mark Bain (US/NL)
Tickets: 12 €
more info on tickets see CTM website >>>
Tuned City Preview / 26th January 2008 / Ballhaus Naunynstrasse / Berlin / Germany
As part of clubtransmediale 2008 we will organise a preview weekend. As a theory starting point lectures and presentations will introduce the different aspects of the topic and outline the key points of the planned conference.
The sociologist Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen will open up with some basic thoughts on recent urban developments, followed by the philosophical position of Prof. Dr. Gernot Böhme defining space through the aesthetics of athmospheres. The architectural historian and theorist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winko will give an introduction of the history of music and architecture and will hand over the topic of sound art to the writer and artist Brandon LaBelle. Coming from a critical sound and space dicourse himself, Labelle is going to question one of the pioneers and major figures of sound art Max Neuhaus.
Between the single lectures artists participating in the project in July 2008 will give short presentations of their work.
12:00 – 12:20
introduction
12:30 – 13:15
Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen
City – Megacity – Urban Landscapes: Volatility of Sounds?
13:15 – 13:30
presentation I
Lola landscape architects / Geert-Jan Hobijn
composed city
13:30 – 14:15
Prof. Dr. Gernot Böhme
architecture and City planning – and the acoustic atmospheres
14:15 – 14:30
presentation II
Pe Lang
untiteled soundobjects
14:30 – 15:00
intermission
15:00 – 15:45
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winko
of the sound of spaces – architecture, music and sound art in the 20th century
15:45 – 16:00
presentation III
Nik Hummer
social sound systems
16:00 – 16:45
Brandon LaBelle
Sounding Spaces
16:45 – 17:00
presentation IV
Mark Bain
sonic architecture
17:00 – 17:30
intermission
17:30 – 18:30
Max Neuhaus
site-specific sound work – Max Neuhaus in discussion with Brandon LaBelle
18:30 – 19:00
perspective
Photo documentation by pablosanz online.
Tickets: 5 €
more info on tickets see CTM website >>>
supported by



Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winko teaches architectural theory at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich and aesthetics and philosophy of art the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. He studied philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, and theoretical linguistics. He also works as a curator, presents lecture and science performances. In 2006 he co-curated the exhibition “Iannis Xenakis – Architecture and Music” in Munich. Focus of publications and research: theoretical principles of architecture, aesthetical theories of the modern age, and philosophy of modern art.
appearance at Tuned City Preview
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
and Tuned City
listening to soundspaces / 02.07.08
Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen is professor of urban and regional sociology at the University of Kassel. He studied sociology, psychology and ethnology. His main working fields are: urban housing sociology, urban planning, regional sociology, space perception, ecological aspects of space development. He is a member of the expert commission urban development of the Heinrich Böll foundation.
http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb6/person/ipsen/welcome.html
appearance at Tuned City >
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
On the 26th/27th of January the project Tuned City will be introduced as part of clubtransmediale 2008.
For the preview symposium on the 26th of January at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, lectures and presentations introduce the different aspects of the topic and outline the key points of the planned conference. Invited artists and projects present themselves and their working methods: the pioneer of sound art Max Neuhaus, the philosopher Prof. Dr. Gernot Böhme, the urban sociologist Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen, the architectural theorist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winko, the sound artist and writer Brandon LaBelle, the artist Mark Bain, the musician Nik Hummer a. o.
On the 27th of January, a night at the Maria am Ostbahnhof illustrates the different musical and performative modes of using and adopting the space of the club, from microacoustic mappings to subsonic deconstructions. Artists and musicians from across the sound art spectrum are invited for this performance programme: Dallas Simpson, BJNilsen and Hildur Gudnadottier, Daniel Menche and Mark Bain.

Max Neuhaus (born 1939) was in fact renowned for his interpretation of contemporary music while still in his twenties. In the early sixties, he toured America as a percussion soloist first with Boulez, and then with Stockhausen, and gave solo recitals at Carnegie Hall and in European capitals.The world of the percussionist is one focused on sound timbre: Neuhaus travelled with one thousand kilos of percussion instruments to perform his solo repertoire. He extended this palette of sound color by inventing several early electro-acoustic instruments. His solo album recorded for Columbia Masterworks in 1968 stands as one of the first examples of what is now called live electronic music.
Neuhaus went on to pioneer artistic activities outside conventional cultural contexts and began to realize sound works anonymously in public places, developing art forms of his own. Utilizing his sense of sound and people’s reactions to it gained after fourteen years as a musician, he began to make sound works which were neither music nor events and coined the term ‘sound installation’ to describe them. In these works without beginning or end, the sounds were placed in space rather than in time. Starting from the premise that our sense of place depends on what we hear, as well as what we see, he utilized a given social and aural context as a foundation to build a new perception of place with sound. With the realization of these non-visual artworks for museums in America and Europe, he became the first to extend sound as a primary medium into the plastic arts.
He has continued his activities in music with his networks or broadcast works: virtual architectures which act as a forums open to anyone for the evolution of new musics. With the first Public Supply in 1966 he combined a radio station with the telephone network and created a two-way public aural space twenty miles in diameter encompassing New York City where any inhabitant could join a live dialogue with sound by making a phone call. Later with Radio Net he formed a nationwide network with 190 radio stations. The current project, Audium, proposes a twenty-four hour a day global entity for live interaction with sound.
In his moment works, a series of large scale sound works for whole communities, he utilizes the cessation of sound to create a periodic sense of silence throughout the community both marking time and creating reflective moments.
Over the last thirty years he has created a large number of sound works for various environments including permanent works in the United States (Times Square in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago) and Europe (Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Locmine, France; CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; the AOK Building, Kassel, Germany; the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; and the Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Italy) along with numerous short-term works in museums and exhibitions (The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Clocktower in New York City; ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France; Documenta 6 and 9, Kassel, Germany; the Venice Biennale; and the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland) and numerous one person exhibitions of his drawings.His interests are diverse. He designs the sound generation and projection systems which realize his work, himself. He has originated new concepts of aural urban design, and utilized his knowledge of sound technology and the psychology of sound to design a more humane and safer set of sounds for emergency vehicles. Recently he began a series of retrospective books on his oeuvre with the publication of Max Neuhaus, sound works, volumes I-III. (Ostfildern-Stuttgart: Cantz 1994).
In support of his work, Max Neuhaus has been awarded fellowships by the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, and both the music and plastic arts sections of the National Endowment for the Arts.
appearance at Tuned City >
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
Site-specific Sound Work, Max Neuhaus in conversation with Brandon LaBelle:

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist. His artistic work explores questions of social life and cultural narratives, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. This results in situational and contextual projects that create forms of intervention in public spaces, acts of translation and archiving, as well as micro-actions aimed at the sphere of the (un)common. He is also an active lecturer working with institutions around the world addressing questions of auditory culture, sonic and spatial arts, experimental media practices and the voice. Current research projects focus on “voicing and the choreography of the mouth”, “sonic materiality and auditory knowledge”, and “the aesthetics and politics of invisibility”.
His artistic work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, NY (2012), Image Music Text, London (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), A/V Festival, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Instal 10, Glasgow (2010), Museums Quartier/Tonspur, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegro (2009), Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (2009), Tuned City, Berlin (2008), Casa Vecina, Mexico City (2008), Fear of the Known, Cape Town (2008), Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2003, 2007), Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil (2003, 2006, 2009), Singuhr Gallery, Berlin (2004), and ICC, Tokyo (2000).
Also a prolific writer, he is the author of Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (Errant Bodies, 2012), Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (Continuum, 2010), and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum, 2006). Through his work with Errant Bodies Press he has co-edited the anthologies Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear Volumes 1 & 2 (1999, 2011), Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001), Surface Tension: Problematics of Site (2003) and Radio Territories (2007), along with a series of monographs (Critical Ear series) on sound and media artists.
His ongoing project to build a library of radio memories was presented at Casa Vecina, Mexico City in 2008. He has numerous audio releases on international experimental music labels, and regularly produces works for radio, notably for Kunstradio in Vienna (1999, 2001, 2007, 2009) and Deutschland Radio (2009). He received a Masters degree from Cal Arts, Los Angeles in 1998, and completed his PhD at the London Consortium in 2005. Following his doctoral work he undertook a post-doctoral project at the University of Copenhagen from 2006 to 2009, in Modern Culture and Sound Studies. In 2008-09 he worked as Guest Professor at the Free University in Berlin, holding seminars on acoustic territories, spatial practice and the male voice. He lives in Berlin and is currently Professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway.
http://www.brandonlabelle.net/
appearance at Tuned City
Brussels / Shared Space / 29. June 2013
Berlin / building with sound / 02.07.08
Berlin / Room Tone, 18 sounds in 6 models
appearance at Tuned City Preview
Berlin /symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City

Nik Hummer – electronic musican/set-designer/interior architect, describes his musical work as “social acoustic studies”. He is member of the sound art-collective thilges3, co-founder of the group metalycée and runs the record label thilges. In the last 5 years he puts his focus on the reuse of the ancient electronic instrument “trautonium”. During his residence at “tesla im podewilschen palais” in Berlin he started to work on a new version of this instrument. a combination of digital and anlog synthesis. He has cooperated with: Dougie Bowne, Eyvind Kang, Mike Patton, Franz Hautzinger, Shahazad Ismaily, and many others. Together with the austrian sculptress Claudia Märzendorfer he created the performances “vlun” and “frozen records” based on the use of records made of ice.
His musical work appears on: artonal, ipecac, laton, mosz, staalplaat , staubgold, tzadik …
appearance at Tuned City Preview
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
and Tuned City
Sperrgut

Daniel Menche is a US musician/sound artist who has worked primarily in the ‘somatic’ area of noise music, using natural sounds recorded from the human body and the open air, along with broken audio machinery. Known for creating towering plumes of densely droning layers, Menche sees himself as a sound sculptor working with the opposing forces of order and chaos. He carefully structures sound with unfolding narratives in a determined quest for ‘vehement beauty’ that results in a crossbreeding of noise and ambient music. Using mostly low-tech electronics, Menche has been performing live and releasing music prolifically since 1993.
The Portland-based artist presents live shows that may be characterized as both extremely loud and delicately subtle. Menche often compares his work to storytelling, concentrating on purposeful sound arrangement, with beginnings, middles and ends, each contributing in a specific way to the mood of the piece. He eschews classification as a noise artist, though many of his techniques suggest similarities to musicians who work within that realm.
Menche avoids the use of synthesizers and other complex technologies, often relying on contact mics instead. Menche also developed a reputation for using his own body as a sound source early on in his career, manipulating contact mics on his skin to produce sound. He often uses field recordings in his compositions too, though most sources become unrecognizable after thorough processing. Menche’s first album Incineration, released on Soleilmoon in 1993, attracted attention for its aggressive explorations of processed bodily noises. Follow up albums were produced in a similar vein, but after Vent (Or, 1998), Menche began to sculpt a kind of noise that was subliminal, atmospheric and ambient. The EP Crawling Towards The Sun (Soleilmoon, 2000), October’s Larynx (Alluvial, 2001), exemplified this new approach, as did the dense textures of The Face Of Vehemence (Ground Fault, 2002), the organic structures of Beautiful Blood (Alien8, 2003) and others that followed.
Menche turned another 180 degrees in 2006, with the double-CD Concussions. In a totally new approach, the album was devoted to percussion instruments. Menche explored extremes of percussion by recording the pummeling of tom-toms and bass drums, then altering the speed of each track in the mix, electronically speeding up and slowing down the rhythms. The Concussion project has been compared to Steve Reich’s Drumming.
2006 was also a year that Menche’s music took on a more gothic aesthetic, Radiant Blood (Drone, 2006), a 10″ record of slow drone, is a good example, as is Creatures of Cadence (2006). Menche released a collaboration with Kevin Drumm, Gauntlet, on Editions Mego in 2007, which was generally well received.Menche performs live extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan. He has released music on labels such as Trente Oiseaux, Or Records, Alien8, Antifrost, Tesco Organisation, Blossoming Noise and Beta-lactam Ring Records. He made one album under the alias Johnny Pinkhouse called Bad Acetate that was released on Soleilmoon Recordings in 1999.
http://www.esophagus.com/htdb/menche/
appearance at Tuned City >
/concert/27.01.2008 Tuned Space

Mattin, born 1977, is an artist from Basque Country associated with laptop improvisation and noise. Mattin’s exploration of sound is rooted in contrast, testing the oppositions between noise and silence, between extreme high and low volumes, and between the digital and physical sounds of the computer.
Mattin uses the laptop primarily to create simple and powerful feedback, but also uses improv and fluxus-like techniques, scraping and sawing the case of his laptop with a small metal file, physically attacking the computer, sometimes leaving the machine switched off, other times using just the hard drive to produce noise, or the cd writer. Mattin plays solo, but more often collaborates with electroacoustic improvisers. He frequently works with improv artists playing traditional instruments such as Radu Malfatti and Eddie Prévost. He has recently developed an interest in the use of free software for improvisation, particulary for the egalitarian, co-operative approaches it engenders.Mattin studied visual arts and art history in London, and he is also a filmmaker. He makes short, silent films that are politically engaged, the 2004 short Bilbo Bukatua, for example, deals with the problem of gentrification in Bilbao, the largest city in Basque Country.
Mattin is also a theorist, and has written extensively about improvisation, free software and Anti-copyright. He runs the experimental record label W.M.O./r, and the netlabel Desetxea. Mattin has released over 40 CDs on labels around the world, many of which he published under the no-licence of Anti-copyright.
The first official Mattin release was a collaboration with Rosy Parlane called Mendietan in 2002, which was also the first official (cat. No. 5) release on his label, W.M.O./r. Other notable releases include recording of a free improv session with Norwiegen noise artist Lasse Marhaug and others called The Seedy R on a 2006 solo untitled album on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, a New Zealand label run by Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel. In 2007, Mattin released a collaboraton with Taku Unami on Hibari Records in Japan.Mattin is a member of the Basque based group Billy Bao, a garage punk band made of a Nigerian expat vocalist, Mattin, and another Spaniard. He’s part of a duo, NMM, or No More Music at The Service of Capital, with Lucio Capece, and Sakada, formed in 2001 with Eddie Prévost and Rosy Parlane.
Other projects include: La Grieta with Josetxo Anitua, Josetxo Grieta and Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra.Mattin has collaborated with an extensive list of artists. The long list includes Oren Ambarchi, Tony Conrad, Matthew Bower, Taku Sugimoto, Yasuo Totsuka, Axel Dörner, Masafumi Ezaki, Kaffe Matthews, John Butcher and Matt Davies.
appearance at Tuned City
Brussels / Noise & Gentrification / 28. June 2013
Berlin /concert/27.01.2008 Tuned Space

Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir, born 1982), is a cellist and composer. Best known for her collaborations with Mum and guest appearances with Pan Sonic, she has a rich catalogue of collaborations and varied projects behind her.Guðnadóttir began playing cello as a child, entered the Reykjavík Music Academy and then moved on to musical studies/composition and new media at the Icelan Academy of the Arts and Universitat der Kunste in Berlin. Back in Iceland, she became very active in the nu-Iceland scene as a member of Kitchen Motors, a Reykjavík based think tank, record label and an art collective along with internationally renowned composer Johann Johannsson.
In 2004, Guðnadóttir played a few gigs with Angel, including clubtransmediale 2005. She made an album with Schneider TM, and went on to play live PanSonic, later collaborating on their album Cathodephase.She released her first solo album, Mount A, under artist name Lost in the Hilderness, on the Reykjavík based label12 Tónar in 2006. The album was recorded in New York City, and at ‘Hólar in Hjaltadalur’, a historic spot in Iceland with a house named Auðunarstofa. The old house is constructed from Norwegian wood and was chosen for its excellent cello acoustics. Guðnadóttir played all the instruments on the album – vibraphone, viola da gamba, harp and vocals.Guðnadóttir is a member of Storsveit Nix Noltes (The Nix Noltes Big Band), a rotating cast of 7 to 10 Icelanders playing traditional Bulgarian and Greek dance music. The group has toured the US twice supporting Animal Collective.
She has also played frequently with field recording artist and performer BJ Nilsen; delicate duets that conjure somber rapture of multi tracked cello – Guðnadóttir’s live playing augmented by laptop loops. Guðnadóttir has collaborated, played and recorded with other artists such as Skull Sverrisson, Hilmar Jensson, Hafler trio, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Angel, SchneiderTM, Ben Frost and Stilluppsteypa.
As a composer she has written music for plays, dance performances and films, pieces for chamber orchestras, various instruments, voices and electronics. She recently wrote a score for the play Sumardagur (Summer Day) performed at Iceland’s National Theatre. Guðnadóttir has made sound and visual installations and has also assisted other artists such as Christina Kubisch with realizing and setting up sound installations. She recently co-composed a live soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s 1980 film In The Shadow of The Sun with legends Throbbing Gristle, arranged choir for performances by them in Austria and London.
appearance at Tuned City >
/concert/27.01.2008 Tuned Space

Benny Jonas Nilsen (b.1975) is a Swedish sound engineer and recording artist who lives in Stockholm. He uses field recordings and electronic processing to explore perceptions of space and time through music. After releasing his first album as a teenager, Nilsen was later signed to Touch sub label Ash International before his debut on Touch proper in 2002.
Nilsen become interested in experimental music at an early age, creating his first solo project, Morthond, at just 15, while playing guitar and bass in local bands. His first album, Death Time, was a cassette released on Sound Source, the now defunct debut-only sub-label of Sweden’s Cold Meat Industries, in 1991. Parent label Cold Meat Industries, one of the oldest experimental music labels in Sweden, released Nilsen’s next missive, The Crying Game, on CD the same year. In 1992 Nilsen changed the spelling of his moniker to Morthound and recorded two more albums for the label, Spindrift (1992) and The Goddess Who Could Make The Ugly World Beautiful (1994).
Between 1994 and 1996, Nilsen adopted a new pseudonym, Hazard, and with the name change came a slightly different approach. The first Hazard album, Lech, was a long treatise on darkness and shadow released on American label Malignant records, while the second, North, earned him a spot on the Ash International/Touch roster with its concrete loops and shimmering gray drones.
Nilsen went on to release a series of albums on Ash International, including collaborations with former Cabaret Voltaire and Hafler Trio member Chris Watson, and was included on a 2001 Touch split EP with Fennesz and Biosphere.Following his Touch longplayer debut, Land, Nilsen began recording under his own name, and has since established himself as one of the label’s mainstays. He’s also released music on Kning Disk, Helen Scarsdale Agency, Punk Kein Rock, iDEAL Recordings and Quecksilber.Nilsen made one recording as Tape Decay in 1999 for Cold Meat Industries, called Estheticks Of Cruelty. He is part of a duo project called Janitor with Lina Baby Doll (Peter Andersson, former member of Swedish industrial cult band Njurmännen). Nilsen has also collaborated with Icelanders Helgi Thorsson and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson of Stilluppsteypa and cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir.
appearance at Tuned City Preview
Tuned Space / 27.01.08
and Tuned City
Storm / 05.07.08

UK based Dallas Simpson trained as a scientist, but has spent the last ten years involved with recording and performing binaural soundworks. He is a professional sound engineer, a self-taught environmental sound-artist and a pioneer of binaural sound art – sound-scapes recorded exactly as perceived by the human ear with in-ear microphones. The subject of each of his binaural recordings varies from natural surroundings to artificial environments. A concern with environmental conservation underpins much of Simpson’s work – he strives to invigorate our relationship with the environment to help us reconnect spiritually, emotionally and socially.
High quality, binaural recordings have the periphonic potency of a three-dimensional surround-sound experience when replayed on headphones, which Simpson uses to engage the listener in the experience of soundscape directed by Simpson himself. While recording, his movement through a location is pedestrian choreography – he creates a walking compositional arrangement of sounds in three-dimensional space with an unfolding narrative. The nature of the recordings allows Simpson’s experience to be transmitted to the listener with uncanny accuracy.
In addition to creating recorded soundscapes, Dallas Simpson performs live. He has appeared at the London College of Music with composer Chris Thorpe; in York with Linda Merrick; in Glasgow as part of the ‘Drift – Environmental Sound Art / Acoustic Ecology Project; and has performed with Max Eastley and Helmut Lemke at Creswell Craggs. Simpson has written about the performative aspects of his practice in depth in ‘The Art of Binaural Location Performance,’ which appeared in the UK Journal of Free Improvisation: Rubberneck, and was subsequently reproduced on the US website for free improvisation ‘The Improviser’.
Simpson has released several CDs including For Alderney on the and/OAR label in 2004, Sonic Bathing 1 on Farfield Records the same year, and A Meditation For Spring on Autumn Records in 2005. His work The Valley Of Crows appeared on the 2006 compilation Recorded In The Field By… on the German label Gruenrekorder. His pieces were selected for inclusion in sound art compilations curated by Colin Fellows of the John Moores Liverpool University (Hope, Trace and Zero), and two pieces have been released through Time Recording’s EMIT series, Abha (EMIT 2296) and Waterpump (EMIT 1197).
Simpson’s work was included in the ‘Music for Spaces’ composition series on BBC Radio 3, and has been frequently featured on London’s art radio station Resonance 104.4 FM.
appearance at Tuned City >
/concert/27.01.2008 Tuned Space

The work of American artist Mark Bain (b.1966) centres on the interaction of acoustics, architecture and physical/mental reactions to infrasonics – sounds below the human hearing threshold. Bain is involved in ongoing research investigating the effects of inherent and induced sonic events on structures and the people that inhabit them. He uses both the inaudible sounds normally present in buildings and other large constructions, amplifying them with seismographic and other specially designed equipment, and the sound potential of structures, using machinery to vibrate the materials and/or surroundings – essentially shaking buildings or the ground – for sonic effect.Amplifying the seismographic oscillations of the architecture and ground, either acoustically or using vibrators, allows Bain to plumb structures with waveform data and sound, mapping out the signatures of each and defining a presence within that which is normally thought of as static. Bain’s work finds parallels in Nicoli Tesla’s early experiments with vibrational devices.
Bain comes from an architectural family and his work – which attacks, or topically addresses, architecture and other spaces we inhabit – places him in the position of anti-architect. He is also particularly interested in “connective tissue” between structures and the audience at the show or installation, whose bodies contribute to the sum of vibrations.Bain is from Seattle, USA, and studied at MIT before completing a two-year residency at the Rijksacademie in the Netherlands. He has vibrated the V2 building in Amsterdam, the Het Paard – a club in Amsterdam – and has received commissions to shake bridges, laboratories and freight containers internationally. Bain is the founder of Simulux, an audio/visual research facility based in Seattle, and is also a member of a band with his brother, John Bain, called the Mutant Data Orchestra.
Mark Bain has released three audio recordings. The earliest was Vibronics a mini CD on experimental label Staalplaat in 2000 that included a recording of the ‘Skowhegan Bridge’ (Maine, USA). The second was a CD supplement to the catalogue of the show Mommy And I Are One, in the catalogue of the deAppel Foundation, Amsterdam, in 2001, and the third was a controversial recording of the ground vibrations at the time of the 9/11 World Trade Centre’s collapse. The 74-minute piece was made with data collected from Columbia University, which collects seismological information from the area. The piece was slated for release as StartEndTime on Staalplaat in 2004, but the CD no longer appears in the label catalogue. It was, however, broadcast in full on London’s art radio station Resonance 104.4 FM.
Bain has had solo shows at Galerie Romain Lariviere, Paris, France, and the Rooseum in Malmo, Sweden. Group exhibitions include In the Meantime, De Appel Foundation Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and others at the Blue Moon Project-Mobile, Groningen, The Netherlands; the Smart Project Place, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and the Fundament Foundation, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
appearance at Tuned City Preview
/symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City
and
/concert/27.01.2008 Tuned Space
and Tuned City
building with sound 02.07.2008
and
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