Cosmos and chaos are kindred elements for sound-art, partly because the material itself is bodiless. In the process of sound creation – whether it is an object, installation or performance – there is movement from chaos into cosmos and back again. In some sense, this transition itself is the source of sound: there will be several works at the festival using charged particle detectors, which create a composition as they randomly go off. There will also be an installation that only makes sounds when you move: if you stop, the meaning is lost, and the ordered information merges into white noise. Another striking example of transition is a performance where all surrounding radio fields – a high-frequency cacophony of the unheard and unseen – are sounded by the performer, structured into an improvised composition with technique and movements.

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Sergei Komarov, curator of the sound art program

 

Performances

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Anastasia Koroleva, Alex Pleninger (Russia)

Gravis, audiovisual performance

November 14, 19:30–20:30, Luda Gallery, Telezhnaya st. 37

 

Gravis studies the connections of sound and video coexisting in a single space, and the nature of boundaries between the visual and audial by mixing several narratives in the viewer’s perception. The sound improvisation by Alex Pleninger combines numerous approaches in working with sound; Anastasia Koroleva’s video unites animated fragments with an 8-bit video sequence of her own devising. The duo of composer and video artist strives to rebuild the customary hierarchy of sound and video, drawing the viewer into the created space. 

 

Anastasia Koroleva (Russia)

Interspecies communication, sound performance

November 14, 19:30–20:30, Luda Gallery, Telezhnaya st. 37

 

The performance is built on sound interaction between the person and another natural agent. The stochastic sound of passing ionized particles controlled by solenoids, combined with synthesized sounds created by the person, creates a complex texture of reality.

 

Anastasia Koroleva

 

Video and media artist, performer, sound artist. Works in the field of sound art and digital animation, creates multichannel compositions and videos for audiovisual performances. Participant of numerous festivals, concerts and exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Koroleva held a personal exhibition at the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation in 2020. Collaborates regularly with the company Keen Association – Moscow. Lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

 

Alex Pleninger

 

Composer, sound artist, engineer, inventor of musical instruments. Since the late 1980s he has written and performed electronic compositions, and composed music for theater and film. In 2005 he recorded an album with Ethnica Music Project, and took part in international tours by the group. Since 2010, he has worked as a composer with the independent studio SounDrama. In recent years he has combined academic electronic sound with chiptune. He took part in re-releasing the Soviet synthesizer Polyvox. In 2015 he founded the company Keen Association – Moscow that develops innovative sound instruments. Participant of numerous festivals, exhibitions and concerts in Russia and abroad. Lives and works in Moscow, Russia. 

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Alexey Grachev, Aleksandr Groznykh, Andrew Strokov, Dmitry Shishov, Anton Shchegolev (Russia)
Consequences, audiovisual performance

November 14, 20:30–21:30, Luda Gallery, Telezhnaya st. 37

This is a performance that took place during the assembly of part of the “Measure of Chaos” installation, and is an individual improvisation by each participant. The artists/engineers wired up a matrix of Geiger counters, and converted the triggers obtained into sound. “Consequences” is a continuation of the “Measure of Chaos” project, but the main difference is that human will is involved. In the installation, all the settings are static and do not change, but during the performance the parameters are interpreted by humans (apart from the flight of the ionized particles through the bulb, of course).

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Boris Shershenkov (Russia)

Etheroforming: Broadcast, audiovisual performance

November 18, 20:00–20:40, Annenkirche, Kirochnaya st. 8b

 

In this performance, pure test signals are broadcast to several major analogue television channels that functioned for decades but are now empty. This forms an audio-visual composition containing the imprint of a historical media layer, giving an estimate of the degree of etheric pollution.

 

Boris Shershenkov

 

Engineer, sound artist and musical instrument designer. Born in 1990 in Vladivostok, USSR. PhD in Technical Sciences. Boris specializes in experimental music and sound art, and is the author of numerous media installations and sound performances and a curator of concert programs, exhibitions and educational projects. As a musician, he works in the fields of live electronics and electroacoustic improvisation, both solo and in collaboration with Russian and foreign musicians.

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Anne-Sarah Le Meur (France) and Kumiko Omura (Japan–Germany)

Rouillir, audiovisual performance

November, 20 at 20:30–21:00, Luda Gallery, Telezhnaya st. 37

 

The performance explores the metaphorical power of colours in the ethereal 3D-space. It develops multiple evocations: green for nature, blue-turquoise for the hope and dream of a better life, dark pink and red for love-drama, orange for decay-rust. Macro and micro worlds evolve similarly. An undulating surface-space, like a screen, makes colored lights visible and sometimes breaks them. Fascinating black spot, an unreal negative light realised by programming attracts, organises, or devours the other elements. It appears and disappears continuously. Simple shadow, scary black hole, dead star or dilated pupil?

 

Anne-Sarah Le Meur 

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Anne-Sarah Le Meur studied computer graphics in the 90's. Influenced by painting and experimental cinema, her images, abstract and organic, paradoxically almost-flat, explore the plastic potential of 3D-space via programming and numbers. After playing with wire textures, she is interested in lights, one of which is negative and black, very rich in pictorial and symbolic terms. She belongs to the second french computer artists wave. She has exhibited in ZKM Karslruhe and Charlot Gallery Paris represents her.

 

Kumiko Omura

 

Kumiko OMURA is a Japanese composer in the field of contemporary music. After studying at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, she studied composition with Prof. Nicolaus A. Huber and electronic music with Ludger Brümmer at the Folkwang-Hochschule Essen in Germany, and participated in the annual composition course at Ircam, Paris. In 2006-2010, she was a guest artist by ZKM (Center of Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Omura won the Irino Prize, the grand prix at the Gaudeamus Music Week in Holland, prize at the Hannover Biennale in Germany, the young artist prize at the Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany, and Takefu composition prize. Her works have been performed in Europe, America, Korea and Japan at such festivals as the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and musica viva in Germany, Festival Agora and Centre Acanthes in France, and International Computer Music Conference.

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Hans Tammen (USA)

Manifolds, installation, participatory performance

November 22, from 8 p.m. to closing, Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, Solyanoy lane, 13-15

 

“Manifolds” is a multichannel installation and audience participation performance, where visitors become a moving loudspeaker orchestra projecting sounds through their cell phones. Each channel is streamed to the audience's cell phones over the Internet. A laptop receives the main channel containing the lower frequencies, while the higher voices are solely distributed to the audience's cell phones. Visitors connect through a browser using a QR code, and by walking around in the space they become a moving loudspeaker orchestra.

 

How to interact with the installation

 

1. Scan the QR code.

2. Press connect.

3. Crank up your phone to the max.

4. Move your phone away from your ears, so you can hear the other phones.

5. Walk around, you are now part of a multi-channel installation.

 

The installation works from 6 p.m. to closing time on all exhibition days.

 

Hans Tammen

 

Hans Tammen is a composer who likes to set sounds in motion, and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. Tammen’s numerous projects include site-specific performances and collaborative efforts with dance, light, video, and theater, using technology from planetarium projectors to disklavier pianos. His works have been presented at festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, the Middle East and all over Europe. He has recorded on labels such as Clang, Innova, ESP-DISK, Nur/Nicht/Nur, Gold Bolus, Nachtstück, Creative Sources, Leo Records, Potlatch and Outnow. Hans Tammen currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts (New York, USA) and other colleges.

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Exhibitions

 

Cosmos and Chaos exhibition project

November, 15–26, Luda Gallery, Telezhnaya st. 37
Mon–Sun: 16:00 – 20:00
Free admission

 

Artists 

 

Alexey Grachev, Dmitry Shishov and Andrey Strokov (Russia), Anastasia Koroleva (Russia), Tine Surel Lange (Norway), Victor Pedersen (Norway)

 

Curators 

 

Sergey Komarov (Russia), Karolin Tampere (NNKS, Norway)

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