Resonant Memory Traces/ Nightline Institut für Medienarchäologie

Resonant Memory Traces/ Nightline Institut für Medienarchäologie

Date: 
31.01.2007 00:00
Edition: 
2007
Format: 
Performance
Location: 
Akademie der Künste

With a range of different performances, the Austrian Institute for Media Archeology (IMA) focuses on the sonic arts and, under the title ‘Nightline’, will be presenting artists and compositions with diverse instruments and sounds. For several years, Rebekah Wilson, aka Netochka Nezvanova, was pure fiction. Naming herself after a literary character of Fyodor Dostoewsky’s, the trained composer was haunting the net as an enfant terrible, anti-pop star, and digital icon. In her current rebirth-phase as Rebekah Wilson, she has found her way back to her home country of New Zealand. In the performance ‘A History of Mapmaking' she uses the cello live to create sound and to manipulate sound events. (Compositions and performance: Rebekah Wilson). The performance entitled ‘4:3' is a resonating memory trace transforming the experiments of Leon Theremin (Lev Sergeyevich Termen) who worked with the avant-garde filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute in the 30s in his New York studio connecting light and sound to create his ‘Lichtmusik’. His idea of merging light, sound and movement opens up an exciting field for research and experiments, even in the age of digital technology. (Compositions and electronics: Elisabeth Schimana, flute: Cordula Bosze, Terpsitone: Elena Golovasheva, instrumental design: Andrej Smirnov). In 'ghost engine - Sprechen ohne Sprache’ (Talking without Language) two writers try to communicate without using any language. The theremin, one of the first musical instruments designed to be played without being touched, develops the ‘speech’ that Liesl Ujvary and Ann Cotton explore experimentally. Additionally, they play the Kaosspad (a device for musical effects), and use the laptop to filter the theremin's sounds. The emerging compositions create a panorama of the human existence: straight, moving and non-verbal. (Theremin and electronics: Liesl Ujvary and Ann Cotton). Ushi Reiter’s ‘Turntable Improvisationen’ accompanied by live-visuals by Starsky brings scratching records, needles in the groove as well as scraps of sound, into a dialogue with static sound-waves and space. The performance starts with 20th century sound material produced exclusively by women.

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