18th Audio Art Festival: Electroacoustic Party

The echoes of the last Audio Art Festival have not died down yet the next edition is already upon us. This is no mistake! After 17 years of taking place in November, it has changed its dates and this year starts off in March.

On 19-21 and 26-28 March once again we’ll be tussling with the impact of modern technology on music. The festival basically presents fresh musical concepts and unions of sound matter and art. Artists invited from all the world will be presenting new instruments and explaining the application of technology, essential to creating “devices” that allow sound to be produced.

So what is there waiting to inspire us during the 18th Audio Art Festival? Well, the 20 March concert in the Contemporary Art Gallery, for instance, by Mexican Rodrigo Sigal, who combines chamber music with weird electronics. In some of his compositions the influence can be discerned of the Kronos Quartet – highly regarded for years, this American string quartet are also widely recognised throughout the world due to their music for Darren Aronofsky’s films π, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. 

In the same institution a day later on 21 March a musical performance awaits us by Wilson Sukorski. This artist, born in 1956 in Brazilian São Paulo defines himself thus: “composer; electronic musician, multimedia artist; sound and music content producer for radio/video/cinema/dance/theater, new musical instruments creator/designer and digital audio researcher.”

Phew! Still unimpressed? Well, get a load of this, topping all this off are Small Instruments. This popular group from Wrocław will be presenting their installation on 26 March, also in the Contemporary Art Gallery. Their instrumentarium is continuously being extended by further sound toys, bizarre musical discoveries and a whole mass of miniature sound-producing objects. Meanwhile, in the Academy of Music, appearing twice – on 26 and 27 March – will be Iminami, an extravagant Amsterdam theatre in an electro reincarnation.

After this festival, the horizons of your musical world will be considerably widened.