projects

SAVE THE DATE! – TUNED CITY – LISTENING POLITICS

May 31st – June 3rd 2018 – Tuned City, Ancient Messene.
The urban landscape of Messene was constructed in the Early Hellenistic era, according to certain architectural and town-planning principles of spatial organization, which reflected the political and social values of the period applied to the demands of this programmatic city founded by the Thebans in 369 B.C. on the south slopes of mount Ithome. The city was famous for its mighty fortification walls, the monumentality of its public buildings and the Hippodamian town-plan. Continue Reading „SAVE THE DATE! – TUNED CITY – LISTENING POLITICS“

projects

Berlin Sonic Places finally out!

The book documenting Peter Cusack’s Berlin research is finally out. In the frame of his residency at DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2012 we developed and produced a series of events together which extended to this little publication.

Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide is an appreciation of, and an enquiry into, Berlin’s sounds and soundscapes in all their moods of noise and quiet. It asks why does Berlin sound the way it does and what makes one neighbourhood sonically different from another. It pays attention to the aural character of particular buildings, streets, squares and green spaces, listens to the city’s public transport system and celebrates the importance of nature to Berlin’s acoustic environment. Briefly it attempts to find out what Berliners think and feel about the sounds of their city and how Berlin’s soundscape compares with those of other European capitals? Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide raises the question, „How do we hear the cities in which we live?“ and offers some thoughts and responses from Berlin’s point of ear.

With contributions by: Pascal Amphoux, Peter Cusack, Max Dixon, Anna Fritz, Eva Kietzmann, Petra Kübert, Valeria Merlini, Udo Noll, Martyna Poznanska and Fritz Schlüter.
Edited by DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program

In English, 96 pp., photos, audio files online, soft cover with sound walk map,
Pb., € 12.–, 978-3-95593-083-7

http://www.wolke-verlag.de/cusack.html

projects

COLLABORATION TSONAMI + TUNED CITY

We are very excited to announce a new collaboration with the festival TSONAMI in Valparaiso/Chile.
Thanks to the help of the Goethe-Institut international co-production fund we will be able to start an extensive research project, connecting Tsonami/Valparaiso (2017) and Tuned City/Messene/Greece (2018) with a residency exchange program.

projects

interfaces website online

INTERFACES is an international, interdisciplinary project focusing on bringing new music to an extensive range of new audiences. It involves a partnership of organisations from a wide range of European countries having a broad spectrum of experience in fields such as performing, multi-media exhibitions, new media, acoustic and electroacoustic research and education. This trans-sectoral approach is the key to opening up new perspectives on both the creative dimension of the project and the central objective, which is to engage new audiences of all ages and those potential audience segments which, for a variety of demographic or cultural reasons have not yet been exposed to the music of our time.
The Interfaces network includes the following partner institutions: Onassis Cultural Centre (GREECE), De Montfort University (UK), European University Cyprus, IRCAM (FRANCE), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (GERMANY), CREMAC (Romania), Q-02 (BELGIUM), ICTUS (BELGIUM), Klangforum Wien (Austria), the affiliate partners Centre Iannis Xenakis (FRANCE), Theatrum Mundi (UK), Tuned City (GERMANY) and Medea Electronique (GREECE) and was made possible thanks to the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Tuned City will take place in the frame of Interfaces in May 2018.

projects

Site and Sound exhibition in Hong Kong

Sites and Sound + Urban Sound Art
Sound Art in Public Spaces
08.10. – 03.11.2016 – Goethe-Institut Hong Kong – 14/F HK Arts Centre
2, Harbour Road, Wanchai – Hong Kong

The exhibition »Sites and Sounds« documents sound installations in public spaces in an exemplary manner. The works presented here not only have in common the fact that they have been permanently producing sound for many years: they are also paradigmatic for a type of artistic practice in which the central subject of creative postulation is the confrontation with a concrete location. The presentation includes works by Max Neuhaus in New York City (USA), Bruce Odland + Sam Auinger in North Adams (USA), Bernhard Leitner in Paris (France), Andreas Oldörp in Grafschaft (Germany), Hans Peter Kuhn in Leeds (UK) and Rolf Julius in Nantes (France) at various places of different function and atmosphere in Europe and the US. This exhibition was originally curated 2014 by Markus Steffens for the bonn hoeren festival.

The Second part »Urban Sound Art« documents the large sound installation projects created by Bonn city sound artists since 2010. Works by Sam Auinger (2010), Erwin Stache (2011), Andreas Oldörp (2012), Christina Kubisch (2013), Max Eastley (2014), Stefan Rummel (2014), Edwin van der Heide (2015) and Gordon Monahan (2016) give an overview of how diverse the sound artists’ engagement with urban situations and spaces under Bonn Hoeren is. Sound art in public spaces constitutes the centre of Bonn Hoeren’s artistic work and research area. Initiated in 2010 by the Beethoven Foundation for Art and Culture of the City of Bonn, the curated project by Carsten Seiffarth (Berlin) has been studying continuously the acoustic conditions and sonic contexts which define modern urban spaces. For that Bonn Hoeren appoints yearly one artist to be that year’s city sound artist of Bonn. And with a residency the artist realizes a new sound installation for the city. In addition, the residences include acoustic research and onsite investigations as well as scientific side events and education projects.

We installed the exhibitions at the Goethe Institut and used the time for some research in Hong Kong.
Read more about the exhibition >>>
projects

HALL 04 theater installation @ DAZ

In times of ‘hyperconnectivity’ the Dutch-Belgian collective TAAT (Theatre as Architecture Architecture as Theatre) takes the idea of architecture as theatre to the extreme. HALL04 is a Do-It-Together-theatre-installation that allows visitors to meet under special conditions in a large-scale wood sculpture.

The Berlin version at DAZ (11.-18. September 2016) was constructed by TAAT in cooperation with architecture students of Alanus Hochschule and theater students of Aberystwyth University under special consideration of sound as medium. We tutored parts of that process.

http://www.daz.de/de/hall-04/

projects

PHANTOM POWER – Konrad Smolenski

For the Polish Institute Berlin we curated and produced a solo show of Konrad Smolenski.

Phantom – something, what exists only in your imagination or fantasy, something not real, an illusion, a confusion of the senses.
Stage, gallery, institution – Konrad Smole?ski utilises the icons, artefacts, spatial determinations, codes and social syntax of contemporary culture production and presentation and undercuts their conventions and formats.
PHANTOM POWER plays with symbolic assignments, presence and absence and shows, how Foucault formulated so spot on „[…] that we do not live in a homogeneous and empty space, but on the contrary in a space thoroughly imbued with quantities and perhaps is full of phantoms as well.“

Konrad Smolenski (1977) works with sound, film, object in-between installation, performance and situation. In 2013 the internationally successful artists represented Poland at the 55th Venice-Biennale. http://www.konradsmolenski.com

Continue Reading „PHANTOM POWER – Konrad Smolenski“

projects

The Statement! Sound – Installation

Just contributed an article (Acoustic Knowing – Formats of Mediation between City and Sound) to this book.
This publication on the theory and history of artistic practice in the field of sound art illustrates themes and debates concerning the homonymic meeting that was held last summer at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. In the field of sculptural art that uses sound, interventions using sound have developed since the 1980s into an area of their own, to which practice, artistic application, and theory are matched within the context of teaching at the UFA. Ingo Schulz, Ulrich Eller, and Christoph Metzger motivated renowned curators, artists, and theorists of sound art to take their inventory of the resonant art form. The book reflects the status of university teaching across Germany as well as curatorial practice and is so designed as to further the aesthetic debate in this field beyond music.

Editor: Christoph Metzger, Ulrich Eller
Authors: Andreas Oldörp, Anne Müller von der Haegen, Annette Tietenberg, Antimo Sorgente, Bärbel Schlüter, Carsten Seiffarth, Carsten Stabenow, Christoph Metzger, Dennis Graef, Franz Martin Olbrisch, Fraucke Stiller, Ingo Schulz, Jens Brand, Johannes Meinhardt, Julia Gerlach, Maija Julius, Robin Minard, Sebastian Pralle, Ulrich Eller

ISBN 978-3-86828-641-0

Sounding Spaces

lecture by Brandon LaBelle (US/DE)

Hinting at notions of temporality, event-situations, and electronic interactions, the auditory contours the built with flexibility and multiplicity, bending spatiality through acoustical additions and sonorous perceptions. While manifest readily in acoustics, such as concert hall and sound studio design, sound and space also interweave within a legacy of sound art and installation projects, electronic music works and a general consideration of the soundscape as integral to the built environment. From the tonality of spaces and the musicalizing of built environments to transmissions and invisible wavelengths, approaching space through sound suggests other dimensions to the experience of architecture. Exploring such dimensions, the sonic arts functions as an ongoing experimentation onto the spatiality of sound, while providing an important platform for social, participatory, and sensory experimental modes for building place.

im Programm von Tuned City Preview
Berlin /symposium/26.01.2008 Tuned City

projects

Listening to Public Space – Montreal

Conferences, concert, roundtable / September 21 – 23, 2015
Oboro: 4001, rue Berri, # 301; Goethe-Institut: 1626, boul.St-Laurent, Montreal/Canada

The Goethe-Institut MontrealHexagram, Oboro and DOCK Berlin unite forces to present a series of events exploring the relationship between sound, art and urban space.

Three evenings of public events are planned, including a sound walk by artist Nicolas Dion Buteau, presentations by curators Carsten Seiffarth and Carsten Stabenow on artistic platforms in Germany promoting the research, presentation and creation of sound works and the urban environment (bonn hoeren and Tuned City), the presentation of a listening map of Bonn by sonic artist Sam Auinger, a performance by Ernst Karel of a composition integrating both human and non-human voices emanating from an urban environment, and finally a roundtable on the transformation of urban sounds in the built environment. Details >>>

In collaboration with the Goethe-Instituts of New York, Boston, Mexico, Sao Paolo and Montevideo.

projects

Drone Lab + Unmapping – workshop + seminar for tsnonami/valparaiso

In November/December 2014 we had the chance to do a research trip to Valparaiso. On invitation of the Tsonami Festival and Goethe Institut Chile we spent 2 weeks at this highly interesting place and carried out a workshop and a seminar under the Tsonami’s 2014 topic „GEOGRAFÍAS AUDIBLES“. We hope to develop that collaboration further…

Continue Reading „Drone Lab + Unmapping – workshop + seminar for tsnonami/valparaiso“

projects

Composición espacial TUNED CITY MONTEVIDEO

In the frame of Festival internacional de Arte Sonoro Monteaudio 18-22 Nov 2014 tuned city was invited by Lukas Kühne and Fabrice Lengronne for a workshop at EUM Escuela Universitaria de Música – Facultad de Artes, Montevideo/Uruguay.
Together with their students of the „Forma y Sonido“ class and the artist and curator Martin Craciun we explored for a couple of days different sonic aspects of the town.
projects

festival bonn hoeren 2014

12. – 22. juni 2014

im fünften jahr von bonn hoeren wird ein großes FESTIVAL vom 12. bis 22. juni 2014 die grundsätzlichen thematischen ideen der vergangenen vier jahre konzentriert zusammenfassen sowie künstlerisch und diskursiv weiterentwickeln. um zwei wochenenden herum verwandelt sich bonn in eine plattform künstlerischer produktion und präsentation, diskussion und vermittlung von klangkunst und musik im öffentlichen raum. das stadtweite projekt wird vor ort entwickelte arbeiten zahlreicher klangkünstler präsentieren und in einem internationalen symposium (18.-22.6.2014) den theoretischen und praktischen diskurs zum thema klangkunst und stadt führen. studentengruppen aus architektur, musik und klangkunst von unterschiedlichen hochschulen werden in bonn recherchieren, projekte entwickeln und vor ort künstlerisch intervenieren. neben ortsbezogenen konzerten und performances findet am 20. juni die uraufführung einer großen stadtsinfonie mit hunderten beteiligten im zentrum bonns statt.

projects

Tuned City presentation at KUMU, Tallinn

 

Symposium: Sound and public space
30.10.2013 / 11:00 – 17:00
[…] Urban space and sound: John Grzinich will introduce Tuned City, which has been held in different cities of Europe since 2008 and in Tallinn in 2011. Mapping connections between the built environment and sound, it pays attention to sounds that we usually do not consider to be important, sounds that don’t seem „interesting“ or seem to be just background noise. But once they are noticed we actually sense our surroundings differently. Besides „amplifying“, the project experiments with what kind of sounds can be added, and how we can use the city as an instrument. Besides raising the awareness of city soundscapes, it explores how other fields can use the outcomes of such projects as Tuned City, and what the sound artist’s point of view offers to urbanists, architects etc. […]

The Symposium is part of the large scale exhibition „Out of Sync. Looking Back at the History of Sound Art
http://kumu.ekm.ee/en/syndmus/out-of-sync-looking-back-at-the-history-of-sound-art/

projects

tuned city presentation at mutek mexico

MUTEK_LAB – CREATIVITY IN THE PUBLIC SPACE
international symposium in the frame of MUTEK_MX at Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City

Monday 30th Sept 2013
SOUND & SPACE/CITY/URBAN ENVIRONMENT 3.30 – 3.45pm
Introduction by Carsten Stabenow, initiator and artistic director, Tuned City, Berlin

CASE STUDY 3: TUNED CITY (3.45-4.15pm)
Presentation of the Tuned City platform & projects – the relation between sound & space/city/urban environment, the research and methods of mediation, how to translate to an audience and into the design of public policies.

PANEL 1: Architecture, sound & new technologies in the future city (4.15-5.30pm)
Building audiences, mediating, mixing fields, and blurring the limits of the art fields. How to collaborate with local institutions, with their infrastructures, to try to make things change from the very inside?
Modetator: Carsten Stabenow, Tuned City, Berlin / Speakers: Martin Craciun, Soco Festival, University Montevideo / Abel Perles, Productora, Mexico DF / Natalia Britos, Museo universitario el Chopo

http://www.mutek.mx/mutekmx/mutek_lab/