Motions 2023 – Experimental Sound Event

Young and progressive musicians from the Belgian ensemble Nemø become machine operators and the machines become musical instruments. French percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Darrifourcq will perform the spatial-light-sound performance FIXIN, co-created with digital designer Nicolas Canot, which questions the relationship between humans and machines through the subjective perception of the passage of time in a minimalist, immersive and industrial atmosphere.

Motions 2023 programme @ Pogon Jedinstvo

Barbora Tomášková (SK)

In her solo performance, Slovak composer Barbora Tomášková creates unique soundscapes by the means of her hybrid instruments, based on the combination of live electronics with her self-made sound objects. The essence of Tomášková's music is rooted primarily in the ritual principles and the work with the subconscious.

Composer Barbora Tomášková combines live electronic music with acoustic instruments, and in this untraditional interconnection she creates complex compositions and colourful sound textures. She creates her own sound objects and uses them during her concert performances. With her approach to the sound, she bends the conventions of two worlds: the world of classical and the world of electronic music.
-Richard Michalík, dramaturg

Barbora Tomášková has been developing her path as a solo performer using electronics, live electronics finding her musical expression in combination with objet trouvé, as well as her own DIY sound objects, which she started designing and constructing during her studies at the University of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. All the sounds she works with, including electronics, grow out of the sound objects she makes; either raw and natural or after having undergone changes and electronic processes.

Focusing on technology and live electronics she developed tools of musical programming. By incorporating these two fields – the classical acoustic environment with electronics, she builds digital systems designed for performance, which provide space for improvisation and a more open way of interpretation, as well as notating scores.

For the concert in Zagreb, she prepared a unique performance – a concert for sound objects, live electronics, electronics, violoncello, and voice.

Hugo Morales Murguia (MX/NL) in collaboration with Nemø ensemble (BE): Automatic Means of Human Labour

instrument inventors initiative (iii) has commissioned a new work from Hugo Morales Murguia and Nemø ensemble, Automatic Means of Human Labour in which by means of different kinds of modified machines the musicians become a metaphor for the massive production of automatised processes. Repetitive tasks and seemingly futile actions generate intricate rhythms and mechanical patterns in which automatization and absurdity reflect upon the conditions of human labour and its inevitable obsolescence.The music dives into the capacities of the human body as a means of controlling sound by reiterative mechanical movements and its constant interaction with motorised equipment. The two performers manipulate a collection of musically modified ordinary machines: from power tools to sexual toys and electro-domestics, turning them progressively into prosthetic extensions of their own bodies.Musicians become machine operators and machines become musical instruments in a work that develops at the intersection between sound composition and physical performance, where sonic complexity emerges out of the multiplication of simple machines that create new imaginary instruments, attempting to match the precision, speed, and physical resistance of a complex motorised automatic system.

Hugo Morales Murguia and Nemø ensemble have developed Automatic Means of Human Labour at iii workspace in The Hague throughout 2022, with the financial support from Creative Industries Fund NL, The Performing Arts Fund NL, and the Creative Europe program of the European Union.

Sylvain Darrifourcq (FR): FIXIN 2020

FIXIN is a performance with a musician’s body augmented by multiple digitally controlled engines. As part of an ecosystem (extended version and sound installation) imagined by the percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Darrifourcq, in collaboration with the digital designer Nicolas Canot, it questions the relation of the body to automation and the repetition of movement through a minimalist and immersive universe of sound.

Following on from the research with MILESDAVISQUINTET!, Sylvain Darrifourcq built a sort of “meta-drum” with parts (tom-toms, snare drums, cymbals…) prepared and animated by engines scattered around the space (solenoid percussive tools, vibrators, and rotary engines).

The challenge is to make the engines communicate with the movement of the musician, continuously going back and forth from the machine to the body; expressing the double paradox of the automation of the human movement and the humanization of the machine (computer assisted programming) while posing the question: “Who influences whom?”

The sound creation is similar to industrial music: metallic tones, repetitive mechanical actions, and rhythmic layering.

In total darkness, the installation slowly reveals itself through a minimalist and epileptic lighting setup, only rarely showing the whole set.

Percussions, composition, conception:Sylvain Darrifourcq
Digital conception: Nicolas Canot
Object design: Max Lance
Choreographic advice: Liz Santoro
Co-production: Hector / Full Rhizome, Nemo / Arcadi / le 104, Théâtre de Vanves, Le Cube, La Muse en Circuit, Le Lieu Multiple, Murailles Music

With the support of: Dicream, Adami, Spedidam

Ondrej Zajac (SK)

For years Ondrej Zajac tried his best to make the guitar sound like something different. Always on a hunt for new sounds, afraid of being boring and disdained as unoriginal, he constantly rejected his past works to the point when the audience never knew what to expect during the next show.
However, the final destination was not to be found in foreign lands – but in his own self. Contemplating his inner world and bringing it on stage for everyone to see has become his new pursuit.

Here comes the anger, the love, the happiness, and the sadness. Everything together in music, which is still created on the fly, but without the rejection of the past. Old conversations are being read by computer and triggered by the frequencies of the guitar strings. Was it a real human being, or just a bot? Does this human/bot know his lines are part of a music performance? Flutes and drums are intertwined with pure acoustic elements of prepared guitar techniques. MIDI and computers and effects, all raging together but never in a way of music that would sound just as honest if it was performed with an acoustic guitar. Music, which is chopped, warped, reversed or just really simple if he wants it that way. And most importantly – the silence and melodies – two aspects that were never really present before but now they became the new building blocks of the story unfolding.

Influenced by everyone and nobody at the same time, Ondrej Zajac hopes to come, make an impact on you and be forgotten afterwards. This way, you will only know him as a feeling you have had once, unable to remember where and when but happy to remember it.

Martina Claussen (AT): Petrol

Quadrophonic Live-Set for voice, objects, and electronics, in collaboration with light and video artist Ivan Lušičić Liik (HR).

In a mesmerizing quadrophonic live performance, a sonic journey unfolds through the fusion of voice, synthesizer, and an array of different sound objects. These diverse sources of sound seamlessly intertwine, gradually morphing and evolving, creating an entirely new sonic landscape. It is an immersive journey where familiar sounds morph into the unknown.

Ziúr (DE) & Elvin Brandhi (GB)

Ziúr is an experimental producer and musician, and a fixture in Berlin's rich musical scene. She produces music that is expansive, rich, and diverse in texture, with sounds that are simultaneously machinistic and deeply anthropomorphic, toying with mechanical isolation and the chaotic spectrum of human emotion. Unlike a soundtrack or score, there is no film to which one can turn to give narrative to the music – there are only evocative sounds reaching from each song towards the cybernetic. In 2021 she released her third album, Antifate, after two earlier EPs: Blur, and Now Now, all to critical acclaim.

Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend, Wales, who builds aberrant beats from field recordings, tape, vinyl, instrument, and voice. Using sound and voice as an expansive language transgressing intrinsic systemics and inherited syntactical etiquettes, her live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Her creative momentum comprises a range of collaborations and an endless nomadism.

This new live collaboration was developed at BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts and premiered at Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Gibanja88 photos