The Folk of Digital Primitive: James Barrett Sonic Lecture (8th July 2012)

Sunday's Sonic Lecture is given by James Barrett and entitled The Folk of Digital Primitive. As James describes it:

"This is not an urban avant-garde but a diffuse collection of people who came of age in a world were the image knows no boarder and sounds are free. Many live outside the major centres but communicate and publicise their work via the Net. Dowloading, uploading, forums and streamed media has created a global network of digital primitives who play the sort of folk music that few dreamed of 20 years ago. However, the present day bone and electricity groups follow in the footsteps of such luminaries as the Sun City Girls, The Flower Travelling Band, to name but two.".

The lecture will explore how the Internet in the last decade has produceed a global network of music made by low-fi, at home, DIY groups and released on CDRs by tiny music labels. James looks in particular at a scene that has produced bands such as The Jewelled Antler Collective, Sunburned Hand of the Man and The North Sea have plied their sounds on labels such as Foxy Digitalis, Secret Eye, Manhand, Music Your Mind Will Love You and Fonal Records. From his personal experience as founding member of the group 6majik9 and the Music Your Mind Will Love You collective amongst others, Jim Barret will talk about the intersecting Internet communities of these bands, the sounds they make and the creative arts model they represent.

Starts at 7.00pm (please arrive by 6.45pm). RSVP david at centrumberlin dot com.

Album launch and live performance: Phil Morris: Tal Steady Kill: TSK, with artwork by Ross Walker (1 June 2012 )

Phil Morris (aka Tal Steady Kill), makes serene and disquieting soundscapes using heavy and distorted analogue synth sounds influenced by John Carpenter, Brian Eno, Cluster and Vangelis.  TSK is his first album release as a solo artist. He plays with Koeaddi Three and Arc, Phil is from Essex, England and lives and works in Berlin. Phil/TKA performs music from the album on Friday 1st June 2012 and Ross Walker, who produced the album art, will display the work as part of the same event.

Rose Butler and Katie Davies Residency 14 - 21 May 2012

Rose Butler uses film and digital media to psychologically disrupt our sense of time and place. She is currently working on a video piece based in Berlin exploring particular sites and visitor's encounters with these sites and the mediation of their experience through tour-led introductions to history and memorial.

Interested in tactical measures by which society and territory are organised and controlled, Katie Davies makes films and installations which deal with both the private and collective human experience, global and intimate concerns in modes that are both analytical and emotional. Observations within the work often present a conflict of interest, reflecting what it might mean to occupy more than one position.

Rose Butler was recently short listed for the Jerwood Prize for Moving Image (for work made in collaboration with Kypros Kyprianou). Selected exhibitions include Contemporary Art Manchester. She has exhibited at Evolution Festival, Leeds; Site Gallery, Sheffield; The Cornerhouse, Manchester,

Millennium Galleries, Sheffield; Consortium Galler, Amsterdam; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Institute of Contemporary Art, London. Rose is a Senior Lecturer of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University

Katie Davies has exhibited her work in the UK and abroad including Border Visions. Connecticut, USA; Outpost Gallery, Norwich, ArtSway 2010, Istanbul Biennial 2009, Badhaus, St Gallen, Switzerland, Mains d'Oeuvres Contemporary Art Space, Paris, Centre for Contemporary Art, Palestine and Glasgow International. She was recently artist in residence at Yorkshire Artspace Society and is Associate Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.

The finnisage and talk took place on 20th May.

Sonic Lecture 7: The beautiful heuristic: Brian Eno, the 'non-musician' and his systemic approach (Daren Pickles)

Daren’s lecture (6^th May 2012, 7pm) addresses Brian Eno’s oblique influences and explores his oracle like abilities to pick artists, musical genres and working systems that have become part of the mainstream continuum. Daren Pickles has worked with creative audio technology for 25 years, from an apprenticeship as a sound engineer to a career in the music and film industries as a recording artist and sound designer. He has been a senior Lecturer in Music Technology at Coventry University since 2009 and is about to commence a PhD in musical feedback systems.

Sonic Lecture 6: So can music really change the world? (Nathalie Gravanor)

Nathalie Gravanor’s Sonic Lecture (Sunday 29th April 2012, 19.00) ponders the question with a sub title: rallying calls and anthems, pranks, opening alternative spaces and modes of distribution.

She covers both pro- and opponents of this thesis and questions whether either camp has any new ideas:“What exactly constitutes change? That seems to be a key question. This lecture will propose different possibilities for music to impact a larger group than just the singer and his entourage and thus hopes to offer some stimuli for a fresh discussion.”

Featuring the unavoidable protest singer pantheon Seeger-Guthrie-MacColl-Dylan-Baez, John Cage, James Brown, Beatles vs. Stones, Crass, Laibach, Plastic People of the Universe, a selection of election campaign songs, Ton Steine Scherben, Kraftwerk, M.I.A and others.

There are No Layby's in the Sky Kate Mackeson & Ruby Pester 27 February – 18 March 2012

 

During their residency Kate Mackeson and Ruby Pester developed an installation based on the 1990's entertainment show Gladiators. The UK TV programme, which aired in the 1990's, had members of the public battle against the show's own semi-professional athletes.  There’s No Laybys In The Sky examined ideas of the spectacle, excess and audience consumption within the world of sporting events. The artists investigated the significance of the winning and losing that underpins this absurd, fantastical environment, probing its mimicry within our day to day lives and experiences, and the impending plasticity of reality. The artists pose questions at the simple manifestations of duality that we consume on a daily basis and how we continually categorise and appraise success and failure.

Kate Mackeson works with mixed -media, print-making, installation and video. She is interested in thresholds, transitional and in-between states and often uses recurring processes, everyday materials and symbolism to develop a heightened sense of expectation. Mackeson uses these ideas to question personal boundaries, communication and the materiality of our exterior environments. In 2010 she co-founded Una Tittel - a network of multi-disciplinary artists and curators.

Ruby Pester creates interactive performance based projects that focus on challenging conventional perceptions. She uses  sculpture, installation, video, sound, costume and drawing and often responds to specific locations and communities exploring social exchange and the relationship between media, artist and society. She works with initiatives and individuals including Artconnect Berlin, Glasgow based artist, Nadia Rossi and is part of the Glasgow based artist group Now Now who create and host socially engaged art events acrossScotland.

The residency was built around two events: Love is a TrophyWorkshop (8th March) where the artists invited guests to compete to sculpt winning faces onto trophies; and the Finissage (10th March). 

Jonny Mugwump: Nothing But A Big Old Collage Sonic Lecture (NTS recording)

Jonny Mugwump's Sonic Lecture was broadcast on NTS Radio on Monday (20th Feb) - here is the playback recording together with the NTS Radio page hosting all the Sonic Lectures.