ELIAD WAGNER

BEFORE IT BEGINS (2020)

Eight-channel sound installation.

February 6 – March 12 2020

The ninth instalment of SONIC SPACE features an eight channel sound installation by the Israeli born, Berlin based artist Eliad Wagner.

Eliad Wagner inside the Sonic Space sound installation space. Photo: Henri Falk.

Of the principal challenges that I encounter as a live performance artist working with fixed media, imbuing a piece with a spirit of spontaneity, spectacle, and physical agency stands as one of the most difficult. This Piece works towards that challenge, by transforming the oval octophonic void of the gallery into the very center of an abstract, but very present, electronic instrument.

Although “Before It Begins” is not delivered live, it was derived through the process of performance using an 8-voice synthesizer and an octophonic sound system, exploring complex phrases, gestures, and articulations for this instrument.

Much of the artefacts used in this piece were derived by accessing sounds stored on memory of an old digital sampler. The sounds were strangely stored within preset files but take place before the sample/file start point- hidden from the common user, with no clear reason or purpose for their presence. These sounds could be accessed only by curiously examining what could be considered as boring and mundane factory presets in an on board sample editor- looking where one shouldn’t be looking. While the concept of this piece doesn’t revolve around these specific technicalities, the idea of finding an aesthetic on the cusp of a machine’s failure or by working against its design, is a recurring theme in the sound design of much of my art. Eliad Wagner.

Visitors at Sonic Space. Photo: Henri Falk

NO-INPUT DIGITAL DELAYS (2019)

Eight-channel sound installation.

NOVEMBER 28 2019 – JANUARY 23 2020

The eighth instalment of SONIC SPACE features an eight channel sound installation by the Japanese, Tokyo based artist Toshimaru Nakamura.

Toshimaru Nakamura at Sonic Space. Photo: Henri Falk

Since the mid-nineties Japanese sound artist Toshimaru Nakamura has centered his practice around the “no-input mixing board”. He describes it as a way of using a standard mixing board as an electronic musical instrument by redirecting signals from the output jacks back into the mixer’s input jacks.

“No-Input Digital Delays” at Sonic Space is a direct continuation of this technique. Nakamura employs guitar effect pedals between the outputs and inputs of the mixing desk which twists and distorts the exhibition space by working with feedback sounds from digital delays.

However, the “no-input mixing board” it not merely a technique for sound production. It also operates as a conceptual strategy that disrupts the conventional flow of compositional agency from artist to medium by allowing the unpredictability and glitches of the hardware to function as a compositional principal in this high pitch frequency encounter. Nils Bloch Sørensen.

Visitors at Sonic Space Photo: Henri Falk

EAR PRESSURE (2019)
Eight-channel sound installation.

OCTOBER 17  – NOVEMBER  16 2019

The seventh instalment of  SONIC SPACE features an eight-channel (plus subwoofer) sound installation by the Los Angeles born, Berlin based artist Doron Sadja.

Visitors at Sonic Space. Photo: Henri Falk

Doron Sadja’s sound installation “Ear Pressure” is a psychoacoustic investigation into the spatialization of audio. It utilizes the gallery’s multichannel-setup in an unusual way: Whereas traditional spatialization relies on panning (changes in volume) to move sound from one speaker to another, in “Ear Pressure” nearly all sounds come out of all 8 speakers at the same volume. Yet still, sounds twist and turn around the room as identical (or nearly identical) sounds collide and disrupt each other. A sound is a physical vibration that pushes and pulls air molecules as it expands through space. Like waves in an ocean, sounds collide, and as they do they modulate one another – interfering, cancelling, enhancing, and even transforming each other into something completely new. These pockets of interference are the focal point of “Ear Pressure” and the end product is a sonic choreography that invites the listener to interact with it. Try moving your head around. Feel the sounds warp and change. You may experience your sense of space distorted and you might even feel a little dizzy! Nils Bloch-Sørensen.

ELEGY TO A FAILED INSTRUMENT (2019)
Eight-channel sound installation.

SEPTEMBER 12 – OCTOBER 12 2019

The sixth instalment of  SONIC SPACE features an eight-channel (plus subwoofer) sound installation by the English, Berlin based artist Robin Hayward.

Elegy to a failed instrument explores the poetics of failure. It is a conversation between recent and seemingly obsolete technologies. An interaction between the ages, that affords the listener an entry point into a past vision of the future…

Photo: Henri Falk

The tuba player and composer Robin Hayward was born in Brighton, England in 1969. He studied classical music at the University of Manchester and tuba at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he graduated in 1991. In the following years he was active in the improvised and experimental music scenes in Manchester and London. Since 1998 he has been based in Berlin.

He has introduced radical playing techniques to brass instruments, initially through the discovery of the ‘noise-valve’ in 1996, and later through the development of the first fully microtonal tuba in 2009. In 2012 he invented the Hayward Tuning Vine, partly out of a desire to visualise the harmonic space implicit within the microtonal tuba. In 2005 he founded the ensemble Zinc & Copper to explore brass chamber music from an experimental music perspective.

REPOSITION (2019)
Eight-channel sound installation.

JULY 13 – AUGUST 8 2019

The fifth instalment of  SONIC SPACE features a nine-channel sound installation by Ulf Langheinrich & Eric Wong

Uff Langheinrich and Eric Wong have taken upon granular synthesis in combination with extended electric guitar techniques to create counter-punctual glittering textures, which magnify microscopic waveforms, in this nine channel electric-acoustic creation.

Photo: Henri Falk

Uff Langheinrich (born 1960) is a visual artist, composer and sound installation artist. His work is mainly concerned with non-narrative environments and performances focusing on a specific approach to time, space and body.

Since 2003, Ulf Langheinrich has realised various large scale solo projects including Drift, Waveform, Hemisphere (hemispheric film on a suspended dome) and his first stereoscopic film commissioned by Liverpool Biennial in 2008, entitled ‘Land’. His artworks have been exhibited at MACBA (Barcelona), Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin), Hellerau European Centre for the Arts (Dresden), ARCO (Madrid), PICA (Perth), DEAF (Rotterdam) Zendai MOMA (Shanghai), Shanghai Sculpture Space and Science Technology Museum, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Wien Modern (Vienna) amongst others.

Since 2016 Langheinriche has been the Artistic Director of the International Festival for computer based art CynetArt in Dresden, Germany.

Eric Wong – Born 1981 in Minneapolis, grew up in Hong Kong, studied psychology at the University of Minnesota, and subsequently audio production and engineering at the Institute of Production and Recording. He is a composer and sound artist, as well as a guitarist and computer musician. His main focus lies on sound textures, the perception of sound and spatial experience. Projects he involves include BISTRE, SLIDE PLUCK BOW, and guitar septet PANOMORPH.

Currently based in Berlin, he has performed in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Macau, USA, Taiwan, China, Poland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Norway, Denmark, and France.

In 2016 he co-curated and performed in UNSTUMM HONG KONG, a cross media improvisation performance with musicians and visual artists from Germany and Hong Kong.

Reposition is Wong’s first multi channeled sound installation creation.

CHORALE (2019)
Eight-channel sound installation.

JUNE 8 – JULY 6 2019

The fourth instalment of  SONIC SPACE features an eight-channel sound installation by the American, New York based artist Elliott Sharp.

CHORALE – ELLIOTT SHARP (2019)

Chorale is an 8-channel audio installation that uses bird songs and sounds as a starting point. Electronically processed and layered, the bird songs are rarely heard in their original register but through transposition reveal previously unheard melodies. The 8 channels are asynchronous and looped thereby providing an aggregate sound that is always changing and never repeating in exactly the same way.

Photo: Henri Falk

Elliott Sharp is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane. His innovations have encompassed fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithms, genetic metaphors, and new strategies for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art. In 2015, Sharp was awarded the Berlin Prize and the Jahrespreis from der Deutscher Schallplatten Kritiks. In 2014 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Center for Transformative Media. He has been featured in the Darmstadt and Huddersfield festivals, New Music Stockholm, Au Printemps-Paris, Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale, and the Venice Biennale. He is the subject of the documentary Doing The Don’t and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.  Installations include Foliage, Fluvial, Chromatine, and Tag.

EROSION (2019)
Eight-channel sound installation.

MAY 17 – JUNE 6 2019

The third instalment of  SONIC SPACE features a spatial eight-channel composition by Burkhard Beins based on an archive of audio samples recorded in 2016 with sound engineer Jean Szymczak.

EROSION – BURKHARD BEINS (2019)

The silences here are retreats of sound, like the retreat of the surf before a tidal wave: Sound draining away, down slopes of acoustic passages, to gather, someplace else, to a great surge of noise. (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

Visitors at Sonic Space. Photo: Henri Falk

Burkhard Beins is a Berlin-based composer-performer, sound installation artist working in the fields of experimental music and sound art. He is known for his definitive use of percussion in combination with selected sound objects. Furthermore, he works with live-electronics/analog synthesisers and has conceived and exhibited several sound installations. Since the late 1980’s he has been performing at internationally renowned venues and festivals throughout Europe, America, Australia and Asia.

Alongside his solo work he is a member of the ensembles Polwechsel, Activity Centre, The Sealed Knot, Perlonex, Trio Sowari, Sawt Out, Tree, Vertigo Transport, Splitter Orchester and also works with composers/musicians such as Sven-Åke Johansson, Andrea Neumann, Keith Rowe, Axel Dörner, Chris Abrahams, John Tilbury and Charlemagne Palestine.

It didn’t feel like I was screaming because the world was so loud (2018)
Eight-channel sound installation.

15 November – 13 December 2018.

The second installment of SONIC SPACE, a new exhibition series at Geoff Stern Art Space, features a sound installation by Natalie Sandtorv.

Sandtorv’s sound installation is a retrospective meditation on her own career choices and a comment on societies’ constant need for self-confirmation through imitation of the originality of others; the never-ending mirroring we do to ourselves. The human voice has no limitations, and Sandtorv builds a universe in this installation by using nothing but the voice itself. With sound artist Erik Havnes as producer and musician/husband Ole Mofjell as sound recordist, Santorv has compiled recordings of her voice as a multichannel, ambisonic piece, and Havnes has layered, edited and dug deep into the sonic material to create an intimate and immersive listening experience – eight individual tracks, improvised and made as a comment to each other.

Natalie Santorv at Sonic Space. Photo: Raquel Olivas

The Norwegian voice artist Natalie Sandtorv has been working on improvisational music with different groups and the electro-acoustic solo project Pieces of Solitude. There she explored the voice in combination with electronics and created a new vibration within the avant-garde scene. With her commissioned works Freedom Nation and Nomadic Rhymes, she has established herself both as a strong composer and unique vocal artist. It didn’t feel like I was screaming because the world was so loud is her first sound installation.

Creepage Current (2018)
Nine-channel sound installation. Duration: 25′

12 October – 9 November 2018.

SONIC SPACE, an exhibition series at Geoff Stern Art Space, opens with a sound installation by Andrea Neumann and Mads Emil Nielsen.

Creepage Current, the artists’ three-part acousmatic work, is realised via a sound system involving eight high-fidelity, three-way speakers and a subwoofer. Each part of the work is derived from recordings of electronics by Nielsen and recordings of Neumann’s playing of her signature ‘inside piano’, a reduction of the piano to its strings, resonance board and cast-iron frame. Created by means of open improvisation, graphic scoring and multilayering, these recordings are remixed and spatialised through nine channels into a complex collage of sonic movement that elicits an impression of spatial texture and tactility.

Andrea Neumann (b. 1968), based in Berlin, studied classical piano at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Through her exploration of the piano for new sound possibilities in the fields of new and experimental music, she has been significantly involved in the formation and development of the Echtzeitmusik scene in Berlin. She has co-organised ‘Labor Sonor’, a series for experimental music, film and performance in Berlin since 2000 and Labor Sonor Festivals since 2015.

Mads Emil Nielsen (b. 1989), based in Copenhagen, is a musician and composer who works with basic sound sources, often combined with short percussive and orchestral samples, real sounds and an amplification of machine produced errors. In 2014 he founded arbitrary, a label and artistic platform on which he has released a series of graphic scores and recordings. He has recently performed at Présences électronique 2018 (Ina GRM, Paris) and Phono & Wundergrund Festival (DK).

Photo: Henri Falk