Performing Sound, Playing Technology

At Concert III, as part of »Performing Sound, Playing Technology«, the public could look forward to seeing Atau Tanaka, Marco Donnarumma, Stelios Manousakis and Chikashi Miyama. At Concert IV, live coding band Benoît and the Mandelbrots will appear and JAGO ended the evening with a DJ set.
 
Artist and scientist Atau Tanaka is considered the absolute luminary in the field of sensor instruments and artistic use of movement and gesture recognition. He has carried out important research work in this field for many years and holds a professorship at the renowned Goldsmiths Institute, University of London. Among other things, Atau Tanaka will present his current performance, »Myogram«: Four sensors fixed to his forearms will translate his muscular movements and nerve impulses in real-time, so that sounds can be synthesized and spatialized with the help of his expressive gestures.
 
Italian artist Marco Donnarumma is well-known for his particularly physical performances. He will be presenting his new audiovisual performance »Corpus Nil«, within whose framework the bioelectrical potential of his own body and his bioacoustic sounds will become the starting point of monolithical light and sound sequences.
 
Composer, software developer and interface designer Chikashi Miyama will present two performance pieces. As part of »Black Vox«, Chikashi Miyama’s hand gestures will be recognized by the 35 infrared sensors of his musical instrument, Peacock, which he developed especially for artistic performances. The gestures simultaneously control over 300 musical parameters.
 
Stelios Manousakis works on the cutting edge of art, philosophy, science and technology and presents an exciting interaction with the potential artistic uses of wireless communications as part of his »Hertzian Field #2«. A triangle of wifi transmitters and receivers produce an electromagnetic field, which is influenced by the performer and his own electromagnetic body resonance.
 
Benoît and the Mandelbrots are a live coding band, which was founded at Karlsruhe's University of Music in 2009 and has played at more than 70 concerts since then – including acousmatic concerts, audiovisual performances, silent film accompaniments and algoraves. Benoît and the Mandelbrots were awarded an Honorary Mention as part of the renowned Prix Ars Electronica in 2012. In musical terms, they switch between electronica, ambient, noise and drone.

Video Documentary:

ZKM | Institute for Visual Media

Camera: Jonas Denzel, Christina Zartmann
Editing: Jonas Pickel