The mystery of the music in the brain is far from being understood. Through his career and while exploring brain music interfaces, quantum computing, cognition and biocomputers, Eduardo Reck Miranda take us into a field of possibilities for the future (of) music. Unlocking new opportunities and crossing boundaries of medical science and arts, we here discuss why music technology offers (again) new perspectives for music composition.
Eduardo Reck Miranda / Interview by Luca Forcucci – January 2023 / Berlin
Eduardo Reck Miranda’s distinctive music is informed by his unique background as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientist and classically trained composer. He is internationally known for his research in neurotechnology for music and is championing investigation into quantum computing for musical creativity. Eduardo was a research scientist in the evolution of language group at Sony CSL Paris. He is a professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, where he leads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR). Currently, he is working with Quantinuum to develop applications of quantum computing in music. His opera ‘Lampedusa’, composed with sonification of subatomic particle collisions and live-electronics was premiered by BBC Singers.
New paper, just out of the oven: In 2015, after having successfully passed my PhD, I was invited for an art & science residency named Scientific Delirium, Madness (!!!) in the Silicon Valley, by the Djerassi Foundation and Leonardo / ISATS. I spent one month in a beautiful landscape with the Pacific ocean on the horizon, and with very talented artists and scientists (13). During that time, I worked on a composition involving the body of a dancer as the sonic source, a sculpture inside a tree with a sculptor, and I developed the initial ideas for my very own lab, www.ubqtlab.org. Since then, the project, LASER NOMAD, has traveled over four continents. I finished a paper about the story of this project that can be find here, and it will be published later on print.
In collaboration with nexCafé event, Swissnex in Japan
When
November 16th, 2022 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (Kyoto)
Location
1F, 1 Chome-13-22 Sonezakishinchi, Kita Ward WeWork Midosuji Frontier Osaka, 27 530-0002 Japan
What
The first Japanese edition of LASER NOMAD continues its investigation and critic of the implicit biases found in academic publishing, or the disconnect between work within a university and that going on outside, by decompartmentalizing knowledge, namely by creating bridges, and here asking what is the role of science and technology in art and humanities. The quest relates to interdisciplinarity, and indisciplinarity generated by art and science collaborations. Such pervasive fields are now mostly approached from a techno-scientific and Western perspective, and looking outside well established Western academic methodologies, focusing on the rituals involved within such collaboration through a nomad lab as mobile and multi-sited ethnography might lead to new questions and answers.
We investigate the role of science and technology in art and humanities. We invite Ryuta Aoki, a Tokyo-based artistic director and social sculptor, and Adrian Altenburger, professor for building technology in Lucerne, Switzerland, for an exclusive discussion.
18:00-18:10 Welcome and Intro 18:10-19:00 Presentation 19:00-19:20 Discussion 19:20-21:00 Networking Reception with music performance by Luca Forcucci / The Room Above
Tokyo-based artistic director and social sculptor. I have been creating invisible structures that maximize people’s creativity to explore the form of “society as it could be” that terraforms cultural deserts into cultural forests. I currently plans, designs, directs and implements research projects, exhibitions, and artworks in the interdisciplinary art and science technology field.
Professor and Head of Institute / Course Building Technology and Energy at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2015. Former partner, board member and co-owner Amstein+Walthert AG from 1999-2015. Lecturer and adjunct professor in the field of energy and building services engineering in Switzerland and abroad (ETH Zurich, HTW Chur, Harvard University – Graduate School of Design and Harvard University – Extension School, University of Zurich, Kyoto Institute of Technology).
Laser CYLAND and Laser NOMAD have decided to collaborate based on the field of possibilities and potentials of collective endeavours. The term inception suggests a beginning, after the pandemic and other events having brought some lives to an end, the idea of a new start promotes hope. It may also allude to several layers of ideas, dreams or realities. Humanity finds itself in a peculiar situation, movement is certainly more restricted. The issues the world will experience when life goes back to ‘normal’, whatever that may be, and to which kind of normality, are as yet unknown and unknowable. Globality will probably be reconsidered and reshaped. Nevertheless, it seems that we need to continue to dream and reinvent a new future, one that, it is hoped, will avoid dystopian realities. Transformations in Sound Art and in the Sonic Arts tend to be invisible, but not immaterial. Fermentation processes may also be used as a modification of matter to create something new in visual, digital, and sound art.
Luca Forcucci, artist, scholar and guest professor, observes perceptive properties of the first person experience through large scale installations, compositions, video, photography and writing. The research investigates mental imagery of sonic architectures. The works were held at Ars Electronica Linz, Biennale del Mediterraneo Palermo, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Centro Hélio Oiticica Rio de Janeiro, The Lab San Francisco, Rockbund Museum Shanghai, MAXXI Rome, or Akademie der Künste Berlin. His plateform UBQTLAB.ORG develops art and science encounters.
Komarov Sergeyis a sound artist and curator. In 2003-2005, he curated the Oscillation Works label that published works by experimental musicians. Since 2008, he has worked as a computer programmer and an engineer at CYLAND Media Art Lab; since 2010, he has initiated the Kurvenschreiber Collective. Since 2013, has curated CYFEST International Media Art Festival audio projects and CYLAND Audio Archive (cyland.bandcamp.com(link is external)). Sergey Komarov is a participant of CYFESTs of various years, ArchStoyanie Festival (2014, Kaluga Region, Russia), “The Creative Machine 2” exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London (2018, UK), exhibitions at Pratt Institute, The National Arts Club, Ca’Foscari University and Experimental Intermedia.
Katherine Liberovskaya is a Canadian intermedia artist based in New York City. Involved in experimental video since the 80s, she has produced numerous single-channel video art pieces, video installations and video performances, as well as works in other media, that have been shown around the world. Since 2001 her work predominantly focuses on the intersection of moving image with sound/music in various both ephemeral and fixed forms (projections, installations, performances), notably through collaborations with composers and sound artists in improvised live video+sound concert situations where her live visuals seek to create improvisatory “music” for the eyes. In addition to her art work she curates events in experimental video/film, sound/music and A/V performance (primarily Screen Compositions since 2005 and OptoSonic Tea since 2006). In 2014 she completed a PhD in art practice entitled “Improvisatory Live Visuals: Playing Images Like a Musical Instrument” at the Universite du Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).
Phill Niblockis an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60’s he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York – www.experimentalintermedia.org– where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, Matiere Memoire, Room 40, and Touch labels. DVDs of films and music are available on the Extreme label and Von Archive. He is a retired professor of film, video and photography at The College of Staten Island, the City University of New York. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Moderator: Natalia Kolodzei, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts, is a curator and art historian. Ms. Kolodzei is Executive Director of the Kolodzei Art Foundation (a US-based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public foundation established in 1991), and, along with Tatiana Kolodzei, owner of the Kolodzei Collection of Eastern European Art, containing over 7,000 artworks (paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photography, kinetic and digital art) by over 300 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ms. Kolodzei has curated over eighty art exhibitions in the US, Europe and Russia. She is an author and editor of multiple publications and organized and contributed to symposiums and panel discussions for universities and museums worldwide, including co-chair Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) CYLAND Talks. In 2010 she was a member of Culture Sub-Working Group under the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission.
The journey takes us from the 1980’s USA to Japan and 1990’s Berlin. Music stories emerges from Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski and ear plugs, Amsterdam squats, Aphex Twin’s influence to the great tradition of counterpoint reborn as disco in Germany. How shared technology and evolution of music relates to culture ? What it means spatializing music and inclusivity in The CUBE at Virginia Tech with a festival created around Afrofuturism and immersive music ? As a composer Eric Lyon talks about pushing the boundaries further and interstices in music, like for example composing for a violin duo, with String Noise, accidents in the process and nuclear wars, random encounters, rewriting the Bad Brains’ music and the intemporal in the arts.
Eric Lyon / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2022 / Berlin – Blacksburg / Part 1Eric Lyon/ Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2022 / Berlin – Blacksburg / Part 2
Eric Lyon is a composer and audio researcher focused on digital interventions, post-hierarchies, high-density loudspeaker arrays, and the inspiration of performer-based creativity. His publicly released audio software includes “FFTease” and “LyonPotpourri.” He is the author of “Designing Audio Objects for Max/MSP and Pd,” a guidebook for writing audio DSP code for live performance. In 2015-16, Lyon architected both the Spatial Music Workshop and Cube Fest at Virginia Tech to support the work of other artists working with high-density loudspeaker arrays. Lyon’s creative work has been recognized with a ZKM Giga-Hertz prize, MUSLAB award, the League ISCM World Music Days competition, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lyon teaches in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech, and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.
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France Jobin has a long career in experimental music. She introduces her works as related to the sonic and architecture, and how she developed works inspired and informed by quantum physics, including the challenges induced by art and science collaborations
France Jobin / Interview by Luca Forcucci – November 2021 / Berlin – MontréalPicture : Bruno Destombes Photographe
Biography
“This album seems to mark a shifting in Jobin’s sound, one that departs from the strictly ultra-minimal ethos she’s known for, and I for one am excited to hear where this goes.
Darren McClure Intrication, No. Toneshift (December 2018)
“We detect imperceptible subsurface discolourations, brief dissipations of energy across the harmonic flawlessness, a few dynamic weaknesses and slight distortions in an otherwise rather narcotic flux. It’s sorrow-inducing, brain-quietening, and profoundly individual.
Massimo Ricci Death is perfection, everything else is relative EMEGO 276 Touching Extremes (July 2020)
France Jobin is a sound / installation / artist, composer and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her audio art can be qualified as “sound-sculpture”, revealing 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 works can be “experienced” in a variety of unconventional spaces and new technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Corea. Since 2009, her focus has been related to Quantum mechanics. Many of her projects are inspired by theories related to topics such as vacuum decay, string theory and more recently, what she feels to be the most perplexing phenomenon in the world of the quantum , entanglement resulting in a first presentation, Entanglement A/V, with visual artist Markus Heckmann, which delves into the realms of quantum physics premiered at Mutek Mtl 2021.
In November 2019, she presented her first modular concert (Buchla 100) at the Ernst Krenek Institute in Austria. Jobin has created solo recordings for Editions Mego(AT), No-ware (CL-DE), Silent Records (USA), popmuzik records (JP), bake/ staalplaat (NL), ROOM40 (AU), nvo (AT), DER (US), ATAK (JP), murmur records (JP), Baskaru (FR) and the prestigious LINE label (US). Jobin’s sound art is also part of countless compilation albums, notably on the ATAK (JP), bremsstrahlung (US), Mutek (CA), murmur records (JP), and/oar (US), tsuku boshi (FR), everest records (CH), and Contour Editions (US) labels. She is also featured in the influential book and recording, Extract, Portraits of Soundartists (book + 2 cd), released on the nonvisualobjects label (AT). The collaborative album ligne, created with sound artist Tomas Phillips, was released on the ATAK label (JP) and her recent collaboration with acclaimed artist Richard Chartier, DUO, is released on the mAtter label in Japan.
DUO A/V premiered at Mutek Mtl 2019 with sound artist Richard Chartier and visual artist Markus Heckmann and was presented at the Precxte festival in South Corea. Her installations and screenings have been shown internationally at museums and festivals. Her work P Orbital released on LINE (Valence, LINE054) was presented in the context of ESCUCHAS, a first sound art exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin, Colombia. P Orbital was also presented at CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT at the Miami Art Fair in Florida, Call &Response, London Uk as well as at the Haunted formalism exhibit in LA curated by Volume. An invitation to the AIR Artist-In-Residence program in Krems, Austria enabled her to create und transit, a sound installation set in the MinoritenKirche cloister in Stein (AT) and und transit.03 has been presented in the sound art exhibit “Dock” at the Ancien Palais de Justice in Lièges, Belgium.
Her two ongoing collaborations with visual artist Cédrick Eymenier (FR) have resulted in EVENT HORIZON, an audio/video piece, and The Answer, a movie, with the soundtrack by France Jobin and Stephan Mathieu. EVENT HORIZON was screened in Paris (2010), at the Venezuela Biennale in Merida state (2010) and was performed live at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles (2010) and ISEA RUHR 2010 (DE). The Answer was screened at IAC, Villeurbanne, France in March – May 2016. In 2011, Jobin was one of five international artists selected to present her sound installation, Entre-Deux, in the new media exhibit Data/Fields, curated by Richard Chartier at Artisphere in the Washington, DC area, along with Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Caleb Coppock, and Andy Graydon. Her proposition received critical acclaim from the national press. Entre-Deux was presented at N38E13 in Palermo, Sicily (2017). She premiered the audio visual performance of “intrication” at Mutek AR 2018 with the Argentinian visual duo prifma. Her audio visual collaboration: “Mirror Neurons” with sound artist Fabio Perletta (IT) and xx+xy visuals (IT) was screened as a world premiere at A x S / ak-sis / FESTIVAL 2014 | CURIOSITY as part of the Synergetica Screening in Los Angeles in September 2014. In October 2015, France was invited to take part in an artist residency at EMPAC (Troy,NY) which resulted in the creation of a new light sound work entitled 4.35 – R0 – 413, a collaboration with Alena Samoray, lighting designer.
Her latest installations, ‘Inter/sperse’ and ‘Entre/temps’ both premiered in Italy. ‘Inter/sperse’ is a site specific installation created in the context of an international residency organized by Museolaboratorio, LUX and farmacia901. It opened May 27 2017 at Museolaboratorio, Città Sant’Angelo Italy. ‘Entre/temps’ is a site specific installation commissioned by Enzo De Leonibus, artistic director of the EaRrEtMeI festival which opened in Palena, Itally, June 4 2017.
She has also participated in numerous music and new technology festivals such as Mutek (Montreal, 2001, 2004 – 2009, 2014, 2017, 2019 AR 2018), Festival Novas Frequencies (Rio, Brazil, 2019) Prectxe (South Korea, 2019), Interference (Austin, 2019), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal 2019), EM15 (Montreal 2014), EMPAC (US 2011, 2015), roBOT 8 (Italy 2015) Angelica Festival (Italy 2016), Portobeseno (Italy 2014), Interferenze – Liminaria (Italy 2014), Flussi Media Arts Festival (Italy 2014), FIMAV, SEND + RECEIVE (Winnipeg, 2003, 2005), Club Transmediale (Berlin, 2004), Shut up and Listen (Vienna, 2009), ISEA RUHR 2010 (Germany), the surface tension tour (Japan, 2012) and the Symétrie tour (Japan 2016).
“immersound” is a concert event/philosophy concept initiated by Jobin, which proposes the creation of a dedicated listening environment by focusing on the physical comfort of the audience within a specifically designed space. The premise of “immersound” is to seek out/explore new perceptions in and experiences of the listening process by pushing the notion of “immersion” to its possible limits. She created and produced “immersound” from 2011 to 2015 at Oboro in Montreal.
She was a finalist at the Sonic Arts Awards 2014 (IT) in the Sonic Research category. In January 2013, the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) awarded the prestigious Opus Prize for Concert of the year to France Jobin for her concert at AKOUSMA 8.
Jobin’s work continues to evolve as technologies enable her to create new environments. France Jobin is published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd
After a year, things have quite changed since the pre- pandemic ‘normal’ life we had. Social behaviours, social injustice, gender and economical inequalities, and psychological effects of the current situation still have to be studied in the human biosphere. However, vaccines were created in a record time, workers and students have moved to the home office, at least some or those who can, and won’t probably easily go back.
What about the earth biosphere’s mutations? What is normal there, what is a network for Gaia? In his books Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime, Bruno Latour insists on climate mutations, and with his book Critical Zones – The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, he mentions the new revolution that comes when thinking over what it means to be earthly nowadays. These issues will definitely inform our behaviours in the near post-anthropocentric future, but also how we will integrate them in our political opening to our collective future and our interconnected knowledges and cultures. Moreover, at a time when a rover and that some of us are preparing to land on Mars.
<NO-ON>: No-Normalidades. Mutaciones, redes y política de la descolonización.
En tan solo un año, nuestra vida ha cambiado dramáticamente desde aquella vida normal pre-pandémica. Los comportamientos sociales, la injusticia social, las desigualdades económicas o de género, los efectos psicológicos de esta etapa aún tienen que ser analizados dentro de la biosfera humana. Sin embargo, las vacunas se han desarrollado en un tiempo record, los trabajadores y estudiantes se han trasladado a su casa-oficina, al menos aquellos que pueden, y no volverán de allí fácilmente.
Pero ¿cuáles son las mutaciones inflingidas en la bioesfera terrestre? ¿Cuál es su normalidad? ¿Cuál es la red en Gaia? En su libro “Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime”, Bruno Latour insiste sobre las mutaciones climáticas, y con la edición del libro “Critical Zones – The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth” advierte sobre la revolución que aparece al analizar los significados de la actual condición terrestre. Todos estos conflictos definen nuevas rutas para identificar comportamientos e identidades de nuestro futuro post-antropocéntrico, pero también para integrarlas como vías políticas que abran un futuro colectivo definido por conocimientos y culturas interconectadas. Más aún cuando, en paralelo, los rovers y algunos de nosotros se preparan para colonizar Marte.
Speakers
Panel 1: Archeology, Science or Fiction. Time to interpret and re-understand science.
Elisa García Prosper (UCV)
Short Bio: Elisa García Prósper, PhD in Archaeology from the University of Valencia (UV), Specialist in Forensic Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Associate professor of Criminology at the Catholic University of Valencia (UCV), and director of the research group Grupo Paleolab® (Funerary Archaeology, Paleopathology, Physical and forensic Anthropology).
Theme: Forensic archaeology and anthropology. Two tools for the future.
Archaeology is a science that has traditionally been considered as belonging to the area of knowledge of the humanities. For its part, forensic anthropology derives directly from osteoarchaeology, or explained in another way, from classical physical anthropology, the science in charge of bioanthropologically identifying the skeletons discovered by Archaeology. Both disciplines are inseparable, the information they offer is of great value for history since it allows us to reconstruct the past through its protagonists. For years both disciplines have also been perfectly combined in the field of forensic sciences and human rights, constituting a fundamental tool for the investigation of missing persons and their restitution to society.
Anyely Marín Cisneros (UAB)
Short Bio: Anyely Marín Cisneros combines a commitment to decolonial and black feminist methodologies in pedagogical spaces with her academic research on the relationship between a politics of the body and the historical racial logics of science. She has a master’s degree in Critical Theory and Museum Studies, and is currently a student at the UAB History of Science doctoral program, where she teaches in the History, Gender and Medicine seminar. Since 2014 she has co-run the artistic research collective @Criticaldías.
Theme: Deracialise the eye
In this talk race and racism will be situated throughout history as an affective algorithm of difference and indifference, while paying attention to the distinctive set of socio-technical conditions that give rise to 21st century racism. Departing from an introduction to the historical Spanish ‘Black Codes’, a few tools will be proposed towards the deracialising of the eye in the present.
Abelardo Gil-Fournier (FAMU)
Artist and researcher, he holds a PhD from the Winchester School of Art and is a postdoc at the School of Film and TV in Prague where he is working with theorist Jussi Parikka on a book on vegetal archaeology of the contemporary image. His artistic practice approaches the materiality of media from a wide variety of techniques and formats, and has been shown at international festivals and exhibitions.
Theme: Excavating the vegetal image. A media archaeological approach
The use of early photographic and moving image techniques in the context of the scientific analysis of plant growth unveils a space of transfers between the living and the animate. This entwining can be observed too in other domains such as agriculture and landscape management. An experimental media archaeological excavation of this transfer, presented as a form of artistic research, brings in additional dimensions to the nuances of this entanglement. Its links to a wider cultural context will be emphasized, including science fiction and speculative design.
Panel 2: Interdisciplinary tools and resources. Caring to the network, to the knowledge and to the media.
Paula Fernández Valdés
Short Bio: Graduate in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the Complutense University of Madrid and Master in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage (2017-2019) from the Universitat Politècnica de València. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Art: Production and Research with a Predoctoral Grant (FPI-UPV) at the same University and is part of the MICIU I+D+i EShID Project. Her research focuses on the preservation of technological art and copyright.
Theme: Preservation of technological art: the curator as a mediator of collective knowledge
Works of art produced at the art-science intersection are increasingly present in the so-called Art World, both in the private sphere and in public institutions, and have undoubtedly become part of our collective culture and memory. Moreover, the restrictions imposed during the covid-19 pandemic have caused a massive digital transition of the cultural industry, which has been forced to seek new ways for the commercialization and dissemination of artistic production. In this context, the curator must pursue new strategies to ensure, on the one hand, the preservation of technological devices, which are fragile and obsolescent in nature, and, on the other hand, the community’s access to its own culture, mediating between the work of art and its collective implications.
Núria Vallès Peris (UAB)
Short Bio: Phd. Sociologist, she is a researcher in the Barcelona Science and Technology Research Group (STS-b) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her main research work is focused on the ethical and social controversies in social robotics, from the study of imaginaries and the ethics of care.
Theme: In her presentation she will propose an approach to the robotics of care, based on the alignment between the ethics of care and STS. From this approach, artefacts can be understood as materialised morality, which opens up new controversies in the introduction of these artefacts in the service of good care and good living.
Short Bio: Lissette Lemus is technology transfer manager at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of CSIC and co-director of the ARTIFICIA platform. She is committed to digital transformation from a social and ethical perspective promoting the use of Artificial Intelligence research results to social challenges such as social integration, citizen participation, mental health and the development of more open and collaborative models in areas such as education and creativity. Born in Havana, she has developed her career as a computer engineer in research centers, startups and in her own entrepreneurship projects.
Theme: We are constantly shaping our present and future with a systematic innovation that changes our behaviors’ nature. One of the most sophisticated and complex human behaviors is creativity, and we are redefining it by implementing new advances in science and technology, particularly through Artificial Intelligence. In this intervention, we will focus on how AI is configuring creativity. What is augmented creativity, how artists and other collectives use AI to analyze from a critical point of view the social and political powers. Can democracy, participation, civic action be more powerful with AI?
Guillermo Muñoz Matutano (UV)
Short Bio: Senior researcher in the Institute of Materials Science (ICMUV), Universitat de Valencia. PhD in physics, in the field of condensed matter, semiconductor physics and quantum optics. Principal Investigator (PI) of the project “Two-Dimensional Semiconductor Photonic Dots – 2D SPD” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Student of the Master’s Degree in Philosophy for Contemporary Challenges (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya).
Theme: Decolonizing quantum technologies. Narratives, metaphors and critical thinking from the quantum world.
Quantum physics and quantum technologies are revolutionizing our understanding and our mutual relations in the world/universe. There is an increasing interest in developing key research areas, usually divided into quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum metrology and quantum simulation. However, new possible exploitation of the quantum features arises when including arts and humanities as possible allies. Quantum technologies offers a new paradigm to build new narratives and explore powerful metaphors for critical thinking and empowering our communities.
Sergio Lecuona (UPV)
Artist and PhD fellow from the research group “Laboratorio de Luz” Universitat Politècnica de València, he is currently investigating the conjunction of data, sound art, music and new technologies, towards the upcoming ways of sound performance and composition.
Theme: Beyond the sound practices of Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence technologies are slowly getting introduced in every corner of our living, so is sound art and music practices. But these implementations don’t lead just to a higher level of automatization. With the new methodologies and concepts that these technologies unfold, ideas such as authorship, creativity and collaboration become susceptible to mutation.
During this interview, Matt Black drive us into more than 30 years of music, activism, ecology, internet, vw bus, pirate tv, Max Headroom, kissfm, london best dj’s, pirate radio, warehouses, encoders, turning Radiohead to electronic, Zen Delay, Vjamm Pro software and more. Black also discuss his latest album, and his experiences in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa, or recording with the drummer Tony Allen and leading to a collaboration with the The Watts Prophets.
Matt Black / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 2021 / Bellinzona – London
Matt Black is half of legendary DJ duo and multimedia pop group Coldcut, formed in 1987, and founders of Ninja Tune, the UK label. In 2020 Ninja Tune celebrated 30 years as one of the world’s leading electronic music labels and a beacon for the independent music spirit. In 2017 Coldcut celebrated 30 years in electronic music with a string of gigs releases and special projects. A new album ‘Keleketla’ was released July 2020 to ‘universal acclaim’ (Metacritic).
Matt is known for innovations in DJing, remixing, mashup, VJing, software, digital art and multimedia. Over 34 years as part of Coldcut he has combined cutting edge artistic expression with positive activist themes in such pieces as Journeys by DJ, The Only Way is Up, People Hold On, Stop This Crazy Thing, Timber, Panopticon, Re:volution, Energy Union, Walk a Mile, True Skool, and many more. Coldcut have worked with a wild range of artists, activists and other groups and luminaries eg Steve Reich, James Brown, Mark E Smith, Queen Latifah, Jello Biafra, Saul Williams, Robert Owens, Lisa Stansfield, Crass, Roots Manuva, Lee Scratch Perry, Adrian Sherwood, Tony Allen, Joe Armon-Jones, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the RCA, Greenpeace, and Avaaz.
In 2011 Matt designed the iOS app Ninja Jamm, Ninja Tune’s first music app which has had over 600,000 downloads; in Feb 2020 the new advanced version Jamm Pro was released. Matt uses his software to perform, lecture, and give workshops on audiovisual art, technology and music- so people can use these tools for their own art and music. In 2017, 2 more apps he designed were released: Pixi a visual synth, and Robbery a satirical video game. Midivolve, a music software collaboration with Ableton was released July 2017. The Zen Delay hardware unit released 2019 is also his co-creation and was rated as one of the top effects of the decade by Music Tech.
At Splice festival 2017 Matt showcased his experiments with Style Transfer, a cutting edge new style of visual processing using AI techniques. For his AV show, done in conjunction with his wife filmmaker Dinaz Stafford, Jamm triggers visual clips so every sound has a matching visual.
Matt collaborated with artist Wolfgang Buttress (the Hive, Kew) for BEAM AV installation Glastonbury 2019. In lockdown 2020 Matt revived PirateTV the netcasting project he started in 1998, and is currently doing AV shows via Twitch.
Matt’s stated ambition is to ‘create positive art, music and spiritual technology to blow the minds of the entire planet and advance cooperative strategies’. He continues to gig, lecture, DJ, VJ, record, make films, develop software and bridge the worlds of technology, club culture, art and activism.
Machines, algorithms and data are increasingly entering the landscape. They are already present in our intimate spaces. During the current pandemic situation, algorithms and data are omnipresent due to our online presence. Further, our landscape is indeed becoming monasterial, because the pandemic forces populations to self-isolate. The utopian landscape is perhaps within oneself then ?
Ticino is the Italian speaking and southern part of Switzerland. In term of transit (cultural and economic), it plays a role as a geographical articulation between North and South of Europe. Inside, deep inside, in the entrails of the landscape of Ticino, the new world longest 57 km long railway San Gottardo tunnel was recently achieved. A utopian invisible landscape made by men and machines. On the surface, the Ticino architecture school is widely acclaimed worldwide since the 1960’s, an architecture, which has been described also as an architecture of resistance. In addition, since the early 1900’s the artistic avant-garde was indeed present in Ticino with the Dadaists for example, and Bauhaus architecture emerged there too between the two world wars. What to expect from an architecture when insights from augmented intelligence, cognition, data and machines are applied to it ? What kind of utopian landscape shall emerge in a not so distant future ?
Davide Macullo (b. Giornico, CH, 1965) is a Swiss architect. His international design studio, Davide Macullo Architects, based in Lugano, Switzerland, was founded in 2000.
The ethos of the studio is one that promotes an open and cultural exchange with architects, artists and collaborators coming from different backgrounds. The diverse contributions promote a dialogue between the specificity of the project, the universality of the contexts and the psychology of space. This ‘drawing from context’ encourages and helps sustain a local-meets-global, embracing approach to architecture, spanning from the theoretical to the practical and detail level, to territorial analysis, pedagogy and sustainability in construction.
The work of the studio includes graphic design, branding consulting and custom designed furniture, and spans to the creation of contemporary art collections for clients. They have also recently produced a customized collection of rugs for the new Chenot Palace Weggis, and a large series of Davide’s drawings (ca. 400nr.) is included in its art collection.
In Rossa, Canton Grisons, he is a founding member of the Rossarte foundation which promotes public and private interventions in situ by international artists to influence daily life through contemporary art.
The first building is the Swisshouse XXXII (Sinusoïde) created in collaboration with Daniel Buren and Mario Cristiani of Galleria Continua.
Prior to the foundation of his own studio, he was project architect in the atelier of Mario Botta with responsibility for over 200 international projects worldwide (1990-2010).
abstract
We are living in an historical moment of epochal change, where the attitude to inhabit the earth, built over millennia, does not reflect the current and future conditions. With the advent of new technologies, unimaginable scientific discoveries and the doubling of the world population, man faces, (with no way back), a completely new universe, in which he must affront from all points of view, taking care of all ecologies. Our generation has the urgent duty to prepare this new territory to allow new generations build on solid foundations and above all for our psychological health, manage an environment that has become extremely complex and potentially hostile.
The development of think tanks and laboratories focused on social sensitivity, inclusive of historical and scientific knowledge, are the terrain on which we move to respond to the call as citizens. The Rossa project in Valle Calanca seeks solutions that go beyond the economic revival of a region, bowing to the principle expressed by Bruno Munari, that a civilized people lives in the midst of their art.
Carole Haensler, born in Lausanne in 1974, was appointed curator of the Museo Civico Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona in 2013, with the task of conserving and enhancing the artistic heritage of the Museum, redefining and strengthening the identity of the institution, developing the offer of cultural mediation as well as synergies with other city and regional cultural institutions. She also accompanied the creation of the Ente autonomo di diritto pubblico Bellinzona Musei – the new administrative structure created in 2017 that manages the Museo Villa dei Cedri – of which she is director since 1.01.2018.
Holder of a master’s degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Neuchâtel (1999), she has worked for various private and public collections in Switzerland, as well as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation in Lugano and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary – TBA21 -, Vienna, the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Geneva. She is mainly specialized in modern and contemporary art, in particular in French art and literature of the second half of the 19th century and in French and German art of the period 1900-1950, and focussed her programme at Museo Villa dei Cedri on the renewal of art language and expression after Second World War. She has introduced thematic exhibitions of contemporary art in Bellinzona seeking to reflect the concerns of art and contemporary society: “Dimensione Disegno. Posizioni contemporanee” (2016), “In(de)finiti luoghi. Utopie architettoniche e realtà artistiche” (2017), “Memoria del Sublime. Il paesaggio nel secolo XXI” (2019) e “Icone vegetali. Arte e botanica nel secolo XXI” (to come in 2022).
abstract
The Museo Villa dei Cedri is an interesting starting point to understand how to connect artistic, architectural and natural heritage. Starting from the considerations that led to the thematic exhibitions “Memoria del Sublime. Il paesaggio nel secolo XXI” (2019) and “Icone vegetali. Arte e Botanica nel secolo XXI” (to come in spring 2022), the presentation will also explore the role of the museum in its own ecosystem, which is that of art, and its ability to position itself as a place of critical reflection on contemporary society. Does the Museum have a role to play in building the future of society? And can it be an active role?
u(bqt)lab 