Janek Schaefer interviewed by Ear Room

concert_c2a9-jschaefer-2009
Janek Schaefer is a UK based sound artist, musician, and composer born in England to Polish and Canadian parents in 1970. His concerts and installations explore spatial and architectural aspects of sound, and employ hybrid analogue and digital techniques, modified vinyl, and found sounds. Janek’s work has been exhibited and released by numerous galleries and labels across the globe and in 2008 he won The British Composer of the Year Award for Sonic Art & The Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers Prize.

Full interview at Ear Room.

Janek has released “Hidden Name” (with Stephan Mathieu) in Crónica and has a new work in preparation.

“Lovely Banalities” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Lovely Banalities
Via Berlin und Lissabon erreichten mich Klänge aus Litauen. GINTAS K hat daheim in Marijampolé aus Klängen, die er an einem windigen Sonntagnachmittag beim Spazierengehen einfing, und Alltagsgeräuschen im Haus – ein Besetztzeichen des Telefons z.B. – 14 Lovely Banalities (Crónica 040) für ein Audiopoesiealbum gesammelt. Seine beiläufigen Funde, der Wind, Vögel, der Klang seiner Schritte, ein plätschernder Bach etc., sind eingebettet, eingearbeitet in laptop-typisch rauschendes Gedröhn, gelegentlich rhythmisiert, meinst nur flatternd zermulcht, kraus gewellt, aufgeregt tüpfelig, gesprüht, kullerig. Melodisches Summen mischt sich mit einer brachialen Kaskade, Glitches brodeln, es furzelt, blitzelt, funkelt, stottert. Die immer wieder hörbaren Schritte erinnern, wohl gewollt, an Musorgskys Bilder einer Ausstellung und an sich Unbemerkenswerten. Die Ästhetisierung des Alltags durcht den Alltag ? Warum fällt mir jetzt der Politiker ein, der vorkaute, dass man mit 5€ am Tag fürstlich leben kann?

“1001 Songs of eBay” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

1001 Songs of Ebay
Athanasius Kirchner, Raymond Queneau, UBERMORGEN.COM && NUSSBAUMER, sie alle erfanden Wunderautomaten, Wort- oder Tonmaschinen, für Hunderttausend Milliarden Gedichte oder 1001 Songs of eBay (Crónica 043, Digital release). Lizvlx & Hans Bernhard, ein Wien – & St.Moritz-basiertes Gespann von Net-Artisten, Pixel-Boxern und Media-Hackern, lassen zusammen mit Stefan Nussbaumer, “Kultur-Techniker” aus der osttiroler Sonnenstadt Lienz – Wahlspruch: Die Technik ist (m)ein Hund – eine SC3 Supercollider sound-generation engine für jeden Benutzernamen, den man bei www.sound-of-ebay.com eingibt, einen spezifischen “Song” generieren. Wozu ? Um sich nie mehr zu langweilen mit über 51 Sunden, 4 GB, potenziell aber unerschöpflichem, superbilligem Elektrogeplimpel? Mit Unterhaltung, fast wie geschenkt? Die Kehrseite – dieses Esel-streck-dich an heiter schnurrender, eifrig klopfender, unermüdlicher und nie um “Einfälle”, sprich Variationsmöglichkeit verlegener Funkyness ist ein Zeitfresser. Gegenrechnung: Zeit = Geld, Lebenszeit = Blut -> Plimpelscheißer = Zeitfresser = Dieb = Vampir. Basta. > 51 STunden, um den eBay-Konsumismus zu veräppeln? Wer sich heute mit Pixeln und Gigabytes zuscheißen lässt, wird übermorgen nicht nach Rosen duften.

Template 2.0 at ISEA 2009

Because Someone Said So
Template 2.0, an interdisciplinary multiformat exhibition curated by Joe Gilmore and Chris Murphy presents works of digital artists and is part of the ISEA2009 conference to be held in Belfast in August. Lia, Carvalhais and Tudela’s collaboration entitled “Because Someone Said ‘So’”, produced for the first Template exhibition will be shown once again, along with pieces by Dextro, alorenz, Mark Fell, Tina Frank, Semiconductor, and others. Opens next thursday.

“Compilation Works 1996-2005” reviewed by The Wire

Compilation Works 1996-2005
Sound artist Marc Behrens, based in Frankfurt, has travelled widely to perform live electroacoustic music, stage installations and make field recordings. This retrospective collection, available for free download, brings together more than two hours of his material that has previously been scattered across compilations and reinterpretation projects issued from various parts of the globe over a ten year period. The 19 tracks, remastered and presented with liner notes, are not ordered chronologically, so the overall effect is rather like dipping into a journal where the same spidery calligraphy registers changing circumstances, shifts of interest and emphasis.
Behrens tends to avoid grand sonic statements and definitive gestures, preferring to work with layered and intersecting textures in a generally low-key mode, where the distinction between digital and environmental sources is often blurred or irrelevant. He revisits material from the likes of John Hudak, Disinformation and Ralf Wehowsky; works with fire, with his own breath, saliva and heatbeat; generates music from a light-to-sound transducer; abstracts from recordings made in taxis and bars.
Behrens clearly uses a mixed language, but it gravitates towards grainy rustling and crackles or shimmering haloes and seeping tones, a ghostly language of implication and peripheral phenomena. It’s a kind of electronica that the ear can easily skate across without much reward; focused attention, on the other hand, reveals emergent designs and subtle correspondences. As when browsing someone’s journal, too much at once can seem inconsequential. Dipped into with suitable attentiveness, you can find strange kinds of sense and a shaping personality at work. Julian Cowley

If you haven’t already, download it for free.

UBERMORGEN.COM – Media Hacking vs. Conceptual Art

UM_B_COVER_S

UBERMORGEN.COM – MEDIA HACKING VS. CONCEPTUAL ART
HANS BERNHARD / LIZVLX
Alessandro Ludovico (Ed.)
Christoph Merian Verlag
ISBN 978-3856164607, Euro 24,00

For the first time and marking UBERMORGEN.COM ‘s 10-year anniversary, a critical examination of the complete body of work of the artist duo lizvlx and Hans Bernhard is presented in the form of a 200 page book, which includes more than 200 color pictures.

A highly varied assortment of critics, curators, and artists reflect on UBERMORGEN.COM’s border crossings in the channels of global mass media and on their radical actions above the abyss of the international art scene. It is this conglomerate of conceptual art, software art, fine art, media hacking, net.art and media actionism that makes UBERMORGEN.COM the hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk that stands out in Europe’s media art avant-garde.

It includes texts and interviews by and with Inke Arns, Florian Cramer, Régine Debatty, Raffael Dörig, Marina Grzinic, Jacob Lillemose, Alessandro Ludovico, Stefan Nussbaumer, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Domenico Quaranta, Yukiko Shikata, Cornelia Sollfrank, Grischinka Teufl and Peter Weibel.

The project section of the catalogue features exemplary projects such as [V]ote-Auction, the Generator Tetralogy, the Psych|OS cycle and the EKMRZ Trilogy: GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime and The Sound of eBay.

The Monograph is a joint effort from three solo exhibitions held at the Basler Forum für Neue Medien [plug.in] (2005), at HMKV – Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund (2006) and at Overgaden Contemporary Art Institute Copenhagen (2006). Funded by Bundesamt fuer Kultur Switzerland, Danish Art Council, net.ART council Texas USA and Migros-Kulturprozent Switzerland.

Order now through Amazon.de or from Merianverlag Switzerland.