Giga-Hertz Award 2022

Lectures on the premieres of the works by the Giga-Hertz Production Awards of previous years:

Martino Sarolli (2018), 15’ [cancelled]
Artemi-Maria Gioti (2019), 15’
André Damião (2021), 15’

Honorable mentions as well as awarding of the Giga-Hertz Production Awards, the PopExperimental Award and the main prize.

Honorary Mentions
Timothy Roy
Claudia Robles-Angel
Bálint Laczkó

Production Awards
Peter Gahn
Yu-Jung Chen

Advancement Award PopExperimental
Nyege Nyege

Main Award
Daniel Teruggi

Presentation: Nina Sonnenberg

Followed by a reception at the music balcony.        

World premiere of works by current and previous winners of the Giga-Hertz Award, performance:

Artemi-Maria Gioti »Bias II«, (2021 – 22)     12‘ – 15‘
for piano & interactive music system
piano Magda Mayas
world premiere

Martino Sarolli »Memocide Redeem«, (2022)     7‘17‘‘  [cancelled]
fixed media
world premiere

Timothy Roy »dans les dents de la guivre«, (2021)  11‘
for recorded harp, live Ambisonics,
fixed electronics & video

André Damião »Multidões«, (2022)             ca. 20’
for piano, viola caipira & live electronics
all instruments André Damião
world premiere

Bálint Laczkó »Itara«, (2021)                        9’28’’
fixed media

Yu-Jung Chen »Lightscape of the Silence«, (2022)   13’
for fixed media & video

Peter Gahn »De-escalating Skies I+III«, (2017)         10’
alto saxophone & multichannel live electronics
alto saxophone Ruth Velten

Followed by a performance by DJ Diaki (Nyege Nyege) at the music balcony.

Screening »Sisters with Transistors«, (2020), 86‘
by Lisa Rovner on the pioneering women of electronic music

»A Trajectory of Sounds«

Daniel Teruggi on his musical life’s work followed by a Q&A session.

»Eterea«, 1. Satz aus »Sphaera«, (1985)          15‘
Fixed Media

»Spaces of Mind«, (2004)                                18‘ 
fixed media

»Remembering«, (2018)                                   18‘
fixed media

»Autumn Song«, (2008)                                   19‘
for tape & piano
piano Ancuza Aprodu

»Punctus spatio«, (2022)                                  17‘ 
fixed media

Daniel Teruggi is so much more than just a composer. He is also a passionate researcher and an important mastermind for educational programs in the fields of electroacoustic music, sound and visual arts.

During his 20 years as director of the GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales) in Paris, he worked to promote musical creation by regularly organizing concerts in France and around the world. With his open and active personality, Teruggi knows how to bring electroacoustic music to a wide audience by including works of the younger generations in the program and linking the GRM's activities with educational and research institutions. As the technical director of the INA (Institut national de l’audiovisuel) in Paris, he contributed to the research and development of digital tools for music production as well as for music education and writing. Through his participation in numerous international events, seminars and master classes, he promoted and supported the expansion of the genre in aesthetical, pedagogical and technical terms.

His research focuses on a wide range of aspects. These include, among others, the invaluable development of new technologies for the digital preservation of electroacoustic music and audiovisual media, the development of tools for pedagogical purposes, the restoration of historical documents as well as research on the perception and analysis of music - especially in the field of spatial music and multiphonic 3D sound perception.

As a composer, Daniel Teruggi has developed a very personal style that creates impressive atmospheres through complex mixtures. His interest in the transformation of timbre and space allows him to develop evocative articulations as well as new sound objects. His large repertoire includes instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed works with real-time treatments. Especially in his acousmatic works, he uses the concept of surround listening through multiple tracks representing different sound sources in space (from 8 to 32 different sources) and thus redefined the Acousmonium. His productions also include music for theater, dance and cinema.

For his important contributions to the development of electroacoustic music and his career as a composer and researcher, the jury is happy to award Daniel Teruggi the Giga-Hertz Main Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Elsa Justel (Composer)

Yu-Jung Chen's audiovisual work »Lightscape of the Silence« is a mesmerizing sequence of artificial and alienated real images combined with sonic planes, dots, and lines, which he connotes with aspects of Deleuze's thinking on »time« and »trace« as well as the concept of virtuality.

The artist, originally from southwestern Taiwan, uses virtuality to transfer the concrete sonic or pictorial substance into a state of the ephemeral and spiritual – memory. Sonically, he achieves this due to the dissolution of time and abstraction by the use of heavily processed recordings. As a result, sounds move between recognizable noise and heavily distorted material. He also uses this bipolar principle in his visual materiality in which he transfers filmic or photographic material from the concrete to the abstract through abstract lines and dots. In doing so, he succeeds in keeping the events beyond the narration suspended in a real / surreal space with disparate sonic as well as visual sequences, gently but firmly beguiling the audience without indulging too much in the stereotypes of an ambient sound world.

Ludger Brümmer (Composer, ZKM | Hertz-Lab & Professor of Composition for Digital Media at HfM Trossingen)

»What times are these when a conversation about trees is almost a crime because it involves a silence about so many misdeeds!« (Bertolt Brecht)

Peter Gahn does not fall quiet and speaks about what lies underneath the trees by means of his music. Under our root system, there is a widely ramified pipeline system furrowing our soil for civilian and military use supposed to secure our supply. The sound of this pipe system with its pumps is the source material of his piece »De-escalating Skies I+III« for alto saxophone and live electronics, which now receives a burning topicality due to Russia's murderous war of aggression not wanting to let de-escalation arise in the sky above Ukraine.

His translation from pipe sound to reed sound, i.e. that of the saxophone, particularly impressed the jury because he carried it out in a supremely differentiated form, which makes the sounds of the system appear »inwardly full of figure« (Albrecht Dürer). The composition obtains its »New Complexity« not as a result of divinely instrumental playing, but by virtue of the inner life of the sounds, which then meander spatialized through the room.

This rhizome-like wandering of the sounds in the inside and outside demands a high degree of attention from the listeners. They cannot »hang out together« as was recently proclaimed as a new reception model at documenta 15, but are called upon to think and feel along. The fact that »hanging out« at documenta 15 also symbolically includes the unhanging of traditional and incriminated works of art was probably only mentioned in passing due to the anti-Semitism debate. (In German, both »to unhang« and »hanging out together« are translated with the word »abhängen«. The intended pun therefore does not work in the English translation.)

Peter Gahn, in contrast, believes in the »aesthetics of resistance« and defends himself with his work against the fashion of demodernizing art. He upholds the traditional concept of the work, which Bazon Brock has just declared dead, by inventing a cipher system that rises above the work as such and becomes political without lapsing into cheap agit-prop.

Detlef Heusinger (Composer, Director, Conductor & Artistic Director Ensemble Experimental)

The ZKM | Karlsruhe’s Giga-Hertz PopExperimental Advancement Award goes to the Nyege Nyege collective and their studio house as one of the most important East African music incubators, based in the heart of Kampala, Uganda.

The vast array of Nyege Nyege artists connect traditional sounds with modern electronics, creating fierce bricolages into the spotlight of contemporary culture. From metal to experimental electronics, from wedding music to conscious hip hop. Since its beginnings, the collective has been shaping a new global understanding of the diversity of music coming from the African continent, where colonial and Eurocentric terms such as »world music« finally belong to the past. Nyege Nyege breaks out of the niches usually reserved for acts from Africa: Their collaborative approach and infective palette of styles has been celebrated by music fans worldwide, bringing new sounds and an enthusiastic attitude to a music and club landscape that often seems to have gone stale and lost in the business world.

The heart of the Nyege Nyege community is »The Villa«, a freely accessible studio house in Kampala. Here, the collective supports young musicians in professionalizing themselves, provides rooms for workshops, designs residency programs, and gives artists free access to recording equipment and studios. With two record labels (Hakuna Kulala & Nyege Nyege Tapes), the annual Nyege Nyege Festival, and connecting the broader African underground with key music players on a global level, Nyege Nyege is laying the groundwork for dozens of careers of musicians who now make a living from their art.

The output of the Villa has received international acclaim, putting women at the forefront and creating radical collaborative models of learning: everyone teaches everyone, each artist leverages the power of the collective to develop both their artistic expression and tap into the opportunities of the collective knowledge and a growing network of fans and supporters. ZKM’s Giga-Hertz PopExperimental Advancement Award 2022 supports Nyege Nyege’s fruitful, collective output.

Zuri Maria Daiß (Music Curator, Freelance Cultural Worker CTM Festival, etc.) & Nahuel Stoppa (Pop Culture Editor, Arte TRACKS Berlin)

The jury appreciates the refined musicality of Bálint Laczkó’s composition »Itara«, the quality of its sound structures, as well as the sense of time and dynamics reflected in the various sections. The piece opens with a part that builds on deft articulations alternating with well-dosed pauses, reaching an energetic climax. After an extended section in the lower registers, the composition leads into a dense and decisive finale. »Itara« is a piece that pleases with its fine euphony, solid character, and coherent discourse, both in a concert and at an intimate hearing. For this attainment, the jury awards the Hungarian and Oslo-based composer Bálint Laczkó an honorary mention.

Elsa Justel (Composer)

Claudia Robles-Angel’s »REFLEXION – In Sync / Out of Sync« is a real-time light and sound installation. The main concept is based on research whose results show that human heartbeat can be synchronized by deepening our awareness of others. Two visitors surrounded by a light structure of electroluminescent wires are invited to sit opposite each other. This light structure is steered by their heartbeats measured with finger pulse sensors. When the heartbeats of the two participants are out of sync, the installation produces dissonant sounds. However, if the hearts beat synchronously, the sound and light structure produces an environment of peace and harmony. The concept of interaction between individuals and its impact on their physiological responses has a strong human resonance. Being both an interactive and participative installation, it offers the visitors a unique experience, somewhere at a crux between physical and psychological, visual and audible. For this reason, the jury awards this special work with an honorary mention.

Huihui Cheng (Composer)

»dans les dents de la guivre« by the American composer Timothy Roy is an audiovisual piece for solo harp and multichannel electronics. It is inspired by Jacob de Senleches's medieval and ars subtilior style song »La harpe de melodie«, which is a virtuoso solo piece meant to represent the musical abilities of Valentina Visconti, daughter of the first Duke of Milan. The work depicts an imaginary scene towards the end of her life, in which she is locked up lonely in her room with only her precious harp for dialogue. In this mysteriously dramatic and magical environment, the combination of harp, voice and electronics creates a peculiar reverberation of the acoustic space. Its soundscape is often minimalist, but at the same time very vivid, changing the dimension, the speed of movement and the directions of an imaginary space. The fast movements are meant to be reminiscent of the mythical dragon-like figure Guivre. The impressive beauty of this music gives the listeners a very special experience. Therefore, and to encourage Timothy Roy for future works, the jury decided to award this piece with an honorary mention. 

Huihui Cheng (Composer)