Curated by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, the ArtScience Interfaculty and Synergetica Lab present a series of multi-sensory performances and installations in the context of synthetic biology. Founded in 2006 in The Netherlands, Synergetica is an art-science laboratory, investigating photonics, fluid dynamics, acoustics, quantum chemistry and psychophysics.
Visit the Synergetica website: synergeticalab.com
Paul Prudence | Francisco López
Hydro-Acoustic Study
Hydro-Acoustic Study is a cinematic exploration of sonically activated hydrological events, specifically evolving waveforms, protocellular bubbles, and meniscusʼs that grow and exhibit behavior in direct response to sound.
Paul Prudence is an audio-visual performer working with algorithmic and generative environments. His work, which had been shown and performed internationally, focuses on the ways in which sound, space and form can be cross-wired to create live-cinematic visual-music experiences. Paul maintains the weblog Dataisnature exploring the interrelationships between natural processes, computational systems and procedural-based art practices.
Visit Paul Prudence’s website: paulprudence.com
Francisco López (ES) is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than thirty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion.
He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, workshops and sound installations in over seventy countries of the five continents. His extensive catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 150 international artists) has been released by more than 300 record labels worldwide. He has been awarded four times with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival and is the recipient of the Qwartz Award 2010 for best sound anthology.
Visit Francisco López’s website: franciscolopez.net
Bas van Koolwijk
Fdbck AV
Media artist Bas van Koolwijk uses both sound and image, be it analogue or in numerical code, as interchangeable data. He produces visual and acoustic compositions in which both manifestations powerfully interact. His works can often be seen as an attack on the illusion of the medium itself. Van Koolwijk develops his own hardware and software applications.
For the Fdbck AV live sets and releases, Van Koolwijk has created a feedback control circuit between audio and video data, making these into two facets of a self-sustaining data stream. Through manipulation of the ensuing processes, the system becomes an audio-visual instrument. This particular composition was especially created for projection within the Sphæræ dome.
Visit Bas van Koolwijk’s website: basvankoolwijk.com
Jet Smits
LC Environment
New media artist Jet Smits explores the transitional border between the physical and the virtual world, investigating the transition point where data becomes sensorial, trying to capture that exact moment of change. She finds herself in the area of science and technology related to our perception. Her phenomenological approach results in the use of different media and technologies to create immersive, contemplative installations, based on empirical research as well as thorough artistic and scientific experimentation.
In LC Environment, liquid crystals are a physical substance able to translate digital data to visual images. The fascinating transitional qualities of the material captured her interest. While many households use liquid crystals in their most conventional form; the LCD screen, her aim is to use the unique qualities of this material in different aesthetic ways. The Technical University in Delft allowed her to do a residency, which enabled her to do more extensive research into the behaviors and aesthetic qualities of this material. This research lead her to create a live-video installation and an abstract video piece utilizing liquid crystals, which enables the visitor to experience this material directly.
Visit Jet Smits’ website: jetsmits.nl
Martijn van Boven
On Growth and Data
The work of Martijn van Boven lies in the field of experimental film and computer art. In his work, he uses the techniques and possibilities of state of the art image processing within the context of the experimental film and early computer generated films. The abstract films of Stan Brakhage and computer art also have an influence on his work and thinking about abstract imagery in relation to film.
Martijn van Boven studied at the Royal Art Academy in The Hague, at the Image and Sound department. His work includes video-installations, films, and collaborations with composers and Live Cinema performances. His work has been shown at numerous festivals world-wide such as: IFF Rotterdam, State X New Forms, Sonic Acts, Holland Festival, Five Days Off, FICCO (Mexico City/MX), RIKZ (Riga/LV), SKIF-9 (St. Petersburg/RU) and Transmediale (Berlin/DE), STRP Festival (Eindhoven/NL) and Woodstreet Galleries (Pittsburgh/US).
Since 2000, Martijn van Boven works as a freelance film and video curator, focusing on avant-garde film and abstract cinema. In 2003, he co-founded the new media art center The Hague. Since 2006, he is part of the curatorial team of Sonic Acts (NL). In the same year, he also started teaching audio-visual design at the Art Academy of Arnhem, and as of 2012 he is head of the department of Interaction Design at the ArteZ Institute of the Arts.
He lives and works in Amsterdam (NL).
Visit Martijn van Boven’s website: 474746.org
Paul Prudence
Lumophre
Paul Prudence is an audio-visual performer working with algorithmic and generative environments. His work, which had been shown and performed internationally, focuses on the ways in which sound, space and form can be cross-wired to create live-cinematic visual-music experiences. Paul maintains the weblog Dataisnature exploring the interrelationships between natural processes, computational systems and procedural-based art practices.
Originally commissioned for the Kaluga Festival at the Kaluga Planetarium and Space Museum in Russia, Lumophore explores the potential for inter-modal colour-shape-sound synergies to create an abstract narrative of architectonic forms in relation to sound. A lumophore (also luminophore) is an atom or atomic grouping in a chemical compound that manifests luminescence.
Visit Paul Prudence’s website: paulprudence.com
France Jobin + Fabio Perletta with xx+xy visuals
Mirror Neurons
Mirror Neurons represent a distinctive class of cells that fire both when an animal executes an action and when it observes another individual performing the same action. Discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team at the University of Parma while doing a research on the neural representation of motor movements in monkeys, the precise function and influence of these neurons has become one of the most important topic in neuroscience. They have been linked to many behaviours and abilities, from empathy to learning by imitation and language acquisition, as well as implicated in conditions such as autism and other brain disorders. These findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in our ability to experience empathy.
Initiated by sound artists France Jobin and Fabio Perletta, Mirror Neurons is a media-project investigating the notion of empathy and physical distance. The entire album is the result of extended sound files exchange between Montréal (Canada) and Roseto degli Abruzzi (Italy). Each of the pieces is based on rough sounds and their consequent re-working, listening and reaction, processing and imitation. The ongoing process helped artists to draw inspiration in terms of stimuli for the act of composing itself in two very distant cities, different climate, time zones and languages. The piece will make its debut at the 2014 AxS Festival.
Like much of Jobin and Perletta’s recent works, Mirror Neurons explorestheartists’ interest in intersection between science and art, as well as the infinitely small and invisible. In order to further develop the concept of distance/connectivity, visual artists xx+xy visuals from Rome have been involvedinthe process. They created a multi-dimensional, generative and ever-changing sound visualization through the use of quiet textures and subtle movements emphasizing the slowed sense of time of the work itself.
France Jobin is a sound / installation / artist, composer, and curator residing in Montreal, whose audio art, qualified as “sound-sculpture”, reveals a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital intersect. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces.
Her work can be “experienced” internationally in varied music venues and new technology festivals, such as Mutek, FIMAV, SEND + RECEIVE, Club Transmediale, ISEA RUHR 2010, surface tension tour Japan and Flussi. Jobin has solo recordings on many renowned labels, mainly Baskaru (FR), ROOM40 (AU), LINE (US), nvo (AT), DER (US) and ATAK (JP). Her sound art is also part of countless compilation albums.
In January 2013, the Conseil québécois de la musique awarded France Jobin with the prestigious Opus Prize for Concert of the year – Category Musiques Actuelle, électroacoustique for her concert at AKOUSMA 8. France Jobin’s work continues to evolve as technologies enable her to create new environments.
Visit France Jobin’s website: francejobin.com
Fabio Perletta is a sound & multimedia artist living and working in Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy. His works include electronic music, sound & light installations, live performances and graphic design. By using computer and custom softwares, Perletta’s sound research explores the intersection between different yet complementary areas such as physics, psychology and human perception.
His works have been exhibited internationally at media art festivals, art galleries and venues including SoundFjord (UK), Café OTO (UK), O’ (IT), Flussi Festival (IT), Liminaria/Interferenze (IT), Area Gallery (FR), Acusmatiq Festival (IT), Krake Festival (DE), Berghain Kantine (DE), Auditorium Parco della Musica (IT), Raum (IT). Over the years he has collaborated as curator/musician and shared the stage through live performances and group exhibitions with international artists such as Vladislav Delay (FI), Richard Chartier (US), Yann Novak (US), AGF/Antye Greie (DE), France Jobin (CA), Giuseppe Ielasi (IT), Dadub (DE), Emiliano Romanelli (IT), Ennio Mazzon (IT), Franz Rosati (IT), Giustino Di Gregorio (IT), AIPS (IT), Davide Luciani (IT), XX+XY Visuals and others.
He runs the Farmacia901 label and in 2014 he co-launched Mote, a mixed media design studio based in Berlin creating contemporary design solutions for culture and commerce.
Visit Fabio Perletta’s website: fabioperletta.it
xx+xy visuals are Rome based multimedia duo of Sladzana Bogeska and Giuseppe Pradella. Collaborate and perform together since 2006. Together they research reversible processes of digital media through synaesthetic audio video experience, cinematic performance and related forms of media arts, and have presented their audio video projects at festivals as Störung Barcelona, Mirage Lyon, Digital Life Rome, Flussi Avellino, Visionsonic Paris, REC Tarragona, Dokfest Kassel, MIT Auditorium PM Rome, Interpenetration Festival Graz and many other events internationally.
Collaborations on sound visualization include sound artist artist as Murcof, through 2008/07 xx+xy developed the visual concepts for album Cosmos [Leaf Label], and performed at festivals as: Mutek Montreal, Dissonanze Roma, Play Festival Madrid, Shift Electronic Arts Festival Basel, Seconde Nature Avignone, NatFilmFest Copenhagen, Evolution Leeds, Corsica Studios Londra, Territorios Festival Sevilla, Urban Explorers Dordrecth.
Visit xx+xy visuals’ website: xxxyvisuals.com
Mattia Casalegno
Strutture Dissipative
Strutture Dissipative is a framework of audiovisual experiments dealing with the notions of emergence and complexity inspired by the work of the Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine, who in the ’70 studied the behaviors of complex systems and thermodynamic systems. His seminal work is been extended to social sciences phenomena and helped the rise of a kind of complexity studies in the ’70-’80, leading to recent speculations about a deep ecology approach and a paradigm where human urge to seek new ways to be in equilibrium with his surrounding environment.
Mattia Casalegno is a Los Angeles based artist exploring issues of perception, intimacy and audiovisual improvisation. He often collaborates with designers, scientists, neurologists and musicians to produce works spanning architectural video-installations, multi-sensorial interfaces, live media performances and kinetic sculptures.
His aesthetics are driven by the research in the relationships between the fields of information (in-forms, to give form), biology (bio-logos, discourse on living) and ecology (in the Batesonian term), pointing on the centrality of code as tools and metaphor of his poetic. His works and performances have been showed internationally in institutions and venues such as MediaFacade Festival Europe, MACRO Contemporary Art Museum and Roma Auditorium in Italy, Mutek in Montreal, iMAL and Cimatics in Brussels, Optronica Festival in London, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei, LACMA and LACDA in Los Angeles. He is represented by the Belgian Cimatics Agency, writes regularly about new media and art on the online magazine Digicult.it and instructed classes at UCLA and Art Center College of Design, CA.
Visit Mattia Casalegno’s website: mattiacasalegno.net