Transformation centers on transformations between music ↔ body, brain ↔ body, sound ↔ music, triggers ↔ events, matter ↔ energy, digital ↔ analogue. The events will move between underground experiences in R1 and sunny meetings at Trädgården, featuring seminal figures in experimental music, neuroscience and performance-art in cross-disciplinary dialogues and multimedia performances.
At R1 and Trädgården in Stockholm 30 May – 1 June, 2019.
Where Do the Waves Go? A documentary by Fabien Guillermont about Transformation.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS- RESEARCHERS:
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s (US) work ranges from hypnotic solo modular synth and voice explorations as Lichens, to acting, composition for film and playing in Om. Lowe’s music can bud from anything – an oscillator, a microphone, even from a pot plant using modular synthesizers. “They’re interchangeable, and have the potential to be ever transforming. Each module has its own specific function, be it an audio source, or a modulation source, or a trigger or sequencing source. With the individual functions of these modules, there are patch points – there are ins and outs – be they audio or control voltage patch points. You then use patch cables, to route the signal, and from that the modules themselves begin a dialogue. I’d compare it how to human brain works: the human brain has synapses and signal paths, and it’s all electricity-based. In that way it’s a machine that mimics the human machine”
David Rosenboom
David Rosenboom (US) is a composer-performer, interdisciplinary artist, author and educator, known as a pioneer in American experimental music. Since the 1960s David has explored the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interfaces with the human nervous system. David is currently exploring ways to relate the dimensional complexity of large-scale cortical functions and the EEG to musical perception and the complexity of music listening environments.
Séverine Samson
Séverine Samson (FR) is a cognitive neuropsychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Lille (FR), and in charge of the pre-surgical neuropsychological evaluation of epileptic patients at Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris. Her research focuses on the neurobiological bases of perception, memory and emotion using methods from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, psychophysiology and neuroimaging. More specifically, she used music as a framework for understanding the functioning of human memory and emotions. This evolution has led her to experimentally investigate potential therapeutic applications of music in the rehabilitation of cognitive and affective disorders. She addresses her research questions by analysing different neuropathologies of epileptic, degenerative, developmental and sensory origin. The multi-disciplinary approach used combines clinical research with the experimental rigor of basic research, at the interface of art, science and cognition.
Atau Tanaka
Atau Tanaka (UK) is a professor of Media Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he bridges the fields of media art, experimental music, and research with sensor-based musical instruments for performance and exhibition. Atau conducts research in embodied musical interaction. This work takes place at the intersection of human computer interaction and gestural computer music performance. He studies our encounters with sound, be they in music or in the everyday, as a form of phenomenological experience. This includes the use of physiological sensing technologies, notably muscle tension in the electromyogram signal, and machine learning analysis of this complex, organic data. At the other extreme, he studies user experience through ethnographic methods of participatory design where activities of workshopping, scenario building, and structured brainstorming lead an understanding of a mediums affordances in bottom-up, emergent ways.
Jean-Louis Huhta
Jean-Louis Huhta (DK) is a Copenhagen-based artist, composer, musician and DJ. He studied at the Electronic music studios EMS in Stockholm and Sound art at STDH. He specializes in electronic music, percussion, improvisation and experimental modular synthesizer performances. Part of the world of techno and acid since the early 90’s, he has also composed for contemporary dance, film and theatre.
Per Huttner
Per Hüttner (SE) is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm and Paris. He was trained at Konsthögskolan, Stockholm and at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. He has shown extensively in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. A dozen monographs on the artist’s work have been published in the last decade. Hüttner is the founder and director of the Vision Forum, an international experimental research network.
Samon Takahashi
Samon Takahashi (FR) is a French visual artist and musician. He is a founding member of the mobile laboratory OuUnPo since 2009, a founding member of the improvisation music band GOL since 1989, He also hosts the radio show Epsilonia on Radio Libertaire (Paris) since 1993.
Stephen Whitmarsh
Stephen Whitmarsh (FR) is a Paris-based neuroscientist and artist. His research methodology uses electrophysiological analyses of MEG, surface EEG and intercranial EEG. His artistic methodology centers on the EEGsynth and the organization of (international) art-science workshops, conferences and performances.
Robert Oostenveld
Robert Oostenveld (NL) is MEG Physicist at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His main interest is in developing novel methods for the analysis of MEG and EEG data with applications in cognitive neuroimaging. His scientific contributions include signal processing, source reconstruction, connectivity analysis and statistical analysis. He is a world-renowned authority on the methodological aspects of cognitive neuroimaging exemplified by his leadership in the development of the open-source analysis software FieldTrip. Robert is also the developer of EEGsynth hardware and software.
Ludvig Elblaus
Ludvig Elblaus (SE) is an artist and researcher working primarily with computational materials to create acoustic and electronic music, sound art, audio-visual installations, museum exhibits as well as contributions to collaborative larger works, such as opera, theatre, and dance performances. He received his PhD at the Sound and Music Computing group at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In his artistic practice he explores generative complex systems, emergence, endless variation and stochastic processes. Materiality and crafting is also central to his work, as well as experiential aspects of very slow and drawn out temporal structures and deep listening.
Kult Dopamin
Program
The growth of musical art in any age is determined by the technological progress which parallels it. … If we admit that the creative imagination of the composer may form musical ideas which, under the specific conditions of a given epoch, cannot be translated into sounds, we acknowledge a great dependence of the artist upon the technical position of his era, for music attains reality only through the process of sound.
Joseph Schillinger (1931), from: “Electricity, a Musical Liberator
Thursday May 30 (R1 Reaktorhallen)
Free entry
19:00 – 19:30 Introduction by Per Huttner & Stephen Whitmarsh
19:30 – 21:00 Performances by David Rosenboom & Atau Tanaka
Friday May 31 afternoon (Trädgården)
Free entry
16:00 – 16:30 Introduction by Per Huttner & Stephen Whitmarsh
16:30 – 17:30 Lecture by Severine Samson “ What the neuroscience of music tells us about how our brain works”. Followed by Q&A
17:30 – 18:30 Lecture by Samon Takahashi about the social and artistic history of brain-wave music. Followed by Q&A
Friday May 31 evening (Trädgården)
Free entry, 21:00 – 0?:00
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Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
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Jean-Louis Huhta
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Kult Dopamin
Saturday June 1 morning (Trädgården)
Free entry
11:00 – 12:00 Lecture by David Rosenboom on his seminal experiments with brainwave music. Followed by Q&A
12:00 – 14:00 Make music with your brain (Stephen Whitmarsh & Robert Oostenveld). Availability limited. Sign up on location.
Saturday June 1 afternoon (R1 Reaktorhallen)
Free entry
20:00 – 21:00 Brainwave music by Samon Takahashi & Stephen Whitmarsh
21:00 – 22:00 Performance by Atau Tanaka, Ludvig Elblaus, Robert Oostenveld, and more…
INFO
Transformation is organized by 1+1=3 in collaboration with Vision Forum
For questions, please email: stephen.whitmarsh@gmail.com
The project is supported by Musikverket, Stockholm Stad, the Nordic Culture Fund, the Swedish Arts Council and private sessions are held at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS).
