Audiopantalla MACBA: Japanese Audiovisions
Concert programme
The computer has been a fully-fledged musical instrument for many years now, allowing real time performances and giving a very diverse range of artists the means to express them in singular ways. All in all, a revolutionary device that can easily and instantly synthesize, manipulate and reproduce sounds of all kinds. But the consequences of the computer's potential as an instrumet go beyond the sphere of sound in a strict sense. Live digital music performances often seem to draw attention to a lost performative dimension, a "deauratized" stage model, as Walter Benjamin would say. In this new live context, more and more artists are responding by creating image-sound works that fit into the specific form of audiovisual reception that Michel Chion has called "audiovision."
Audiopantalla MACBA: Japanese Audiovisions is programmed as part of the 2010 Grec Festival, and focuses on a selection of artists from Japan, a country with a particularly prolific scene in these kinds of projects. It showcases live audiovisual works that explore new interconnections between image and sound, and that pick up the baton of experimental tradition around synaesthetic and multisensory creation, bringing it into today's technological and cultural context.
The program presents three very different projects from Japan, which explore the relationship between images and music in a specific and original way.
Curator: Arnau Horta
Programme
Thursdays 1, 8 and 15 July, at 9 pm
Thursday July 1
AVVA (Toshimaru Nakamura / Billy Roisz)
AVVA is the duo of Toshimaru Nakamura and Billy Roisz. The project's name, which stands for «Audio Video / Video Audio», is a reference to their particular working process. Nakamura produces feedback with his no input mixing board, and Roisz uses these electronic signals to generate moving optical patters and thus cerate a video projection based on Nakamura's music. The Japanese musician sometimes bases his performance on the visual results obtained by Roisz, in a circular process created in real time. A unique synaesthetic project created with pre-digital tools, presented in Spain for the first time.
Thursday July 8
Sawako
Born in Nagoya and based in New York, Sawako is one of the leading names on the international digital scene. Her work has been released on the labels 12k, Anticipate and Community Library, and her eclectic list of collaborators includes Taylor Deupree, Jacob Kirkegaard and Andrew Deutsch. When she turns her hand to audiovisuals, the Japanese artist casts nets between the organic, pixilated forms of her personal sound universe and the projected images she generates live. Sawako's multimedia performances include field recordings and digitally manipulated video fragments, bluring the boundaries between virtual representation and reality. An experimental, ethereal experience for all ages.
Thursday July 15
Ryoichi Kurokawa presents Rheo
Ryoichi Kurokawa spreads his time and work between sound art, installations and live performance. His projects have been presented at the Tate Modern and the Ars Electronica and Transmediale festivals. His latest work, Rheo, is an audiovisual concert inspired by the philosophy of Heraclitus that recreates the changes that modify natural landscapes over time. A spectacular multimedia project with high-definition multi-screen projections and a 5.1 sound system that combines sound and video recordings, digital audio and image synthesis, and a series of generative digital processes. Rheo's scope and technical complexity are sure to guarantee an intense sensory experience.
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