This
page is being constantly updated with details of all Cybersonica
contributing artists, performers and collaborators:
· ALT*CTRL
ALT*CTRL started in a smoky Camberwell
bar in London and rose up through legendary Brixton venues such
as the infamous Dogstar and the debauched Telegraph. Regular guest
spots playing live at Fabric, The Egg, The End, festivals and a
host of international gigs followed.
While focusing on promoting AV nights of an electronic,
dance-floor nature, the ALT*CTRL soundsystem were busy mastering
their own audio visual creations. Abstract visuals, 3D landscapes
and home-made heavily effected film work feature heavily, alongside
a bastardised selection of twisted breaks, freaky electronics and
wonky techno that leave you pulling shapes and grinning your face
off.
· body>data>space
body>data>space merge live audio-visual
interaction with telematics, the new generation of intelligent materials
and wearables computers. They take installations and live performances
into large-scale public environments and architectural builds, shifting
the relationship between the artist, the media/content and the user/audience.
Converging artist-led content with architectural
expertise to create both public and commercial outputs, body>data>space
has created a business that thrives on the cross-pollination of
ideas and practices between arts, creative industries and commercial
sectors. The group delivers content-led, community-connected, intelligent
and innovative projects in the UK and internationally. It specialises
in the participation of public and performers in real time environments
where the content generated expands perception and enhances human
attributes of relativity, identity, memory, touch and presence.
· Sophie
Clements
Process and rhythm are the two main themes
of Sophie’s work,; by forcing herself to use different processes
and media she keeps her work fresh and forward moving. Sound and
rhythm is inherent to her work, and is, in most cases created with
equal, if not more importance, than the visual aspect. It is the
way in which sound and image interact and reinforce each other,
that she takes most pleasure from. This is often realized in the
creation of the sound, and the rhythm of the editing.
· Brian
Duffy's Modified Toy Orchestra
MTO are a collection of abandoned and reconstructed
children’s electronic toys, played as instruments by a selection
of musicians. As a solo artist Brian Duffy has been performing,
lecturing, and demonstrating the MTO and the philosophical implications
of his experiments for six years. He is now joined by Laurence Hunt
(Pram), Darren Joyce (Dreams of Tall Buildings),
Mike Johnston (Plone, Mike in Mono), Michael Valentine
West (Twiggy and the K-Mesons) and Chris Plant
(Colour Burst).
· Dynamite
Fishing
Dynamite Fishing is an audiovisual collaboration
between Olly Venning (aka Pixel Juice), and Edd
Dawson-Taylor (aka Uncle Bunkle). Their style of
VJing is a welcome departure from the typical random patterns, kaleidoscopes
and fractals that flood the screens of clubs around the country.
The content they produce is a mixture of re-contextualised public
domain footage, graphic design, and their own 3D animations. They
mix all these elements to live music using audio feeds, MIDI controllers,
and a few unconventional input devices.
· D-Fuse
This year at Cybersonica, D-Fuse are screening
the DVD accompanying the recently published book VJ
– audio-visual art and vj culture,
which features documentaries, live performances and videos from
featured artists. “To my eyes,
the best VJs are creating a new, fluid interface between sound and
image – one that is genuinely mould-breaking and aesthetically
invigorating, and one that deserves to be recognized as a 21st century
art form…” Mike Faulkner, D-Fuse
· Max
Eastley
Max Eastley has been working with sound and
sculpture since 1971, investigating the relationships between nature,
chance, music and art. He has exhibited kinetic sculptures all over
the world, from Ireland to Latvia, from Mexico to Japan, some operated
by electrical power and some by the forces of the weather.
He is well known as a musician and
composer, having played and recorded with musical luminaries such
as Brian Eno, David Toop, Evan Parker, Thomas Koner and having recently
composed for the Siobhan Davies Dance Company. He is also involved
in the Cape Farewell project (www.capefarewell.com), in which scientists
and artists raise awareness of the effects of global warming on
the Arctic environment. He made three visits to Spitsbergen between
2003 and 2005 and has produced kinetic sculptures and music inspired
by those visits which have been seen in 2005 and 2006 at the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, the Natural History Museum London and in the Liverpool
Biennale.
· Eclectic
Method
Dubbed "the future of nightclub entertainment", their
fans read like a 'Who's Who' of musical innovation. Ranging from
Fatboy Slim and Gilles Peterson, to Norman Jay and Brian Eno the
virtues of Eclectic Method have been recognised on a grand scale
- punk innovators at the start of the 21st Century.
Their unique take on mixing music video and film snips like DJ's
mix records is a king-sized leap away from any preconceptions. Take
a healthy dollop of post-modern irony, a Britney sample here, a
rock riff there, an electronic dance anthem or two and a peppering
of pop classics and you're on your way to understanding their vibe.
Top that off with some rare hip-hop and film action mania and you've
got an all encompassing audio visual experience in a party atmosphere
like never before, shuffling together mainstream and underground
to create a live, visionary, high impact remix experience.
· Martyn
Ware / The Illustrious Company
Martyn Ware was a founding member of both
The Human League and Heaven 17. Vince Clarke is best known for his
work as a member of Erasure, Yazoo and Depeche Mode. The Illustrious
Company, founded in 2001, is their exciting joint venture in which
they use the latest innovatory sound imaging techniques and technology
to create 3-Dimensional aural soundscapes that completely envelop
the listener, allowing for an immersive sound experience.
· Fijuu
fijuu is a 3D, audio/visual installation.
Using a PlayStation-style gamepad, the player(s) of fijuu dynamically
manipulate 3D instruments to make improvised music.
By correlating manipulation
of 3D forms with audible signal processes in an intuitive fashion,
players of Fijuu2 encounter immediate relationships between what
is seen and what is heard, in essence, 'sculpted' compositions,
whereby sounds appear to have a materiality of their own.
· Ray
Lee
The spinning, whirling and pendulous sound
installations/performances of artist Ray Lee manage to transform
live music into a visual experience while simultaneously questioning
the orthodox manner in which science and philosophy attempt to represent
the universe according to currently fashionable trends. For Lee,
the body of work that he has produced over the last twenty-five
years represents a deep fascination with the hidden world of electromagnetic
radiation and, in particular, how sound can be used as evidence
of the invisible forces that surround us.
· Little
Boat and Perico
An original Bournemouth-based band who mix
spaghetti western, flamenco, Weimar cabaret and Mexican ranchero
to form their own distinctive style of music.
· Chris
O'Shea
Chris O'Shea is an interactive media artist
and researcher. His focus is on creating works that encourage new
methods of play and collaboration, challenging our perception of
space and physical objects.
In 2006 he was the curator and co-ordinator for
the Cybersonica Sonic Art Exhibition. This exhibition comissioned
5 new artworks, and displayed 7 existing works, that had an exciting
approach to sound through physical interaction and a cross discipline
approach.
· Shelley
Parker
London- based DJ, Shelley Parker has been
rocking dancefloors all over the UK and Europe. A fan of electro,
techno, acid, hardcore, drum & bass, grime and all shades in
between, she adeptly flicks between genres yet maintains a brooding
dark minimal edge underlying the mix.
· Someth;ng
Someth;ng draw on experience and expertise
in fields ranging from interactive and digital arts, audio-visual
engineering and software design to business management, advertising,
marketing, broadcast and print media, web design and development.
Someth;ng’s artistic work springs from research and experimentation
in interactive media, developing concepts that exploit the potential
of interactive applications in creative and engaging ways. Recent
works Headspin and Tape are presented
at this year's festival:
Tape, an
electro-kinetic sound installation, uses simple analogue playback
to allow users an arena in which to play with self-recorded sound
and explore the effects of playback and sound synthesis. Housed
in a transparent acrylic panel, Tape allows its user not only to
view the oft-hidden components needed to record sound, but also
to manipulate them as they see fit.
"Immersive" probably describes the effect
of the Headspin installation best. The visitor
is asked to put his/her head into a washing machine and set it spinning.
The surprisingly good acoustics of the machine's drum accompanied
by its different cycle speeds and visual effects, create an unexpected
result from a familiar and well-known domestic device.
· squidsoup
squidsoup present Freq 2
- originally inspired by the drone installations of La Monte Young,
it is part of an exploration into plastic audio waveform generation,
or “drawn sound”. Users are able to use their whole
body as an interface through which to create and control sound.
What you see is literally what you hear, as the drawn wave is immediately
audible as a real-time dynamic drone. Even very subtle movements
are detected and create immediate audio feedback.
· Stuart
Smith
Stuart Smith built a steam-Driven network
of real-time video performance tools, founded an innovative Audio/Visual
improvisation group called Laptop-Jams, performs with Avatar - An
improvisational visual
performance for Dancer, Animator and Sound Designer. He has been
extolled by the likes of Brian Eno and shows his work both nationally
and internationally.
Stuart's Speakolascope will be part of Cybersonica
- it is a simple installation that invites the user's participation
through a question projected on the wall. The person leaves their
message or feedback using a 'push-to-talk' microphone, which triggers
a video/audio recording. The response is immediately projected,
it is played back once and then other clips are projected at random.
The more users, the more clips to project.
· The
Sancho Plan
The Sancho Plan are a ‘rock ‘n
roll’ band for the 21st century – a rare alchemy of
accomplished musicians, refined animators, intuitive designers and
craftwise coders. Citing influences as diverse as Oscar Fischinger,
Len Lye, Wassily Kadinsky, Salvador Dali, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton,
Kruder and Dorfmeister and King Tubby they fuse together animation,
music and sound, gaming, technology and live performance to produce
unique live AV experiences.
· Troika
Troika is a multi-disciplinary art and design
practice founded in 2003 by Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastien
Noel, who met while studying at the Royal College of Art. Their
approach focuses on the contamination between the arts and design
disciplines and is born out of the same love for simplicity, playfulness
- and an essential desire for provocation.
Their work Schizoporotica is a
‘modern’ music box that acts as a ‘melody shredder'
, inspired by the old punch card system. It was and remains the
one example of digital information that is physically stored. The
object itself was designed mixing influences from old musical boxes
commonly found in upper class sitting rooms all over Europe at the
dawn of the 19th Century, and modern card systems found in everyday
life such as ATMs or car park ticketing machines. The
user tears the flyer apart and inserts it into the machine. The
machine then takes a picture of the flyer and electronically analysis
the picture taken pixel by pixel to recover the geometry of the
torn pattern. The highs and lows of this torn pattern will then
be used to create a melody by pitching base sounds up and down.
If a second flyer is introduced before the previous melody is finished
then the new melody will start playing on top, creating a polyphonic
harmony.
· Trojan
Sound System
Since its creation in 1968, Trojan Records
has led the way in presenting the very best in classic Jamaican
sounds, from the Rocksteady and early Reggae sounds that dominated
in the years of its launch, up to the modern styles of Dancehall
and Jungle. Formed in 2004 from London Sound System legends, the
Trojan Records Sound System represents the label in England and
throughout the world with hugely successful solo shows and performing
alongside some of the greatest names in reggae. |