As the world becomes increasingly networked into a mass of intelligent devices and feedbacks, how can music continue to respond to its complex interweaving of natural, social and technical processes? Three musicians take this question as a starting point in an evening created in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The TECHNOSPHÄRENKLÄNGE concert night is the third of three events within the CTM x Ableton series, running in parallel to the Loop – Summit for Music Makers, which takes place concurrently.
The evening also marks the start of the HKW’s new TECHNOSPHÄRENKLÄNGE concert series, curated together with CTM Festival and scheduled to appear at irregular intervals until 2018. Through music and sound, the series aims to explore our existence in and reactions to the technosphere, as the current composition of the world that results from the connection of human, planetary and technological forces. TECHNOSPHÄRENKLÄNGE is the musical arm of “Technosphere”, a research project that unfolds as a subsection in the larger 100 Years of Now programme of HKW, and that aims to examine how this sphere, whose global impact compares to those of the atmosphere and biosphere, can be described and understood, and how we can live and act in it.
http://https://youtu.be/xiTUGgYhQ-o
Lorenzo Senni will extend his reconnaissance and abstraction of 1990s rave music from the exclusively aural to the visual and tactile with his project, “Advanced Abstract Trance.” The Milan-based artist, who has released on Editions Mego and Boomkat among others, sees rave as a complex psychosomatic machine that allows for the modulation of psychological, physical and collective states.
Senni deconstructs rave’s multi-sensual texture only to reassemble it again in varying constellations, shifting our perception to the affective effects of the genre’s individual components, for instance by experimenting with the characteristic “supersaw” synth sound from the genre-defining Roland JP8000 synth, or by hijacking a track’s dramaturgy of “build-ups” and “breakdowns”. In his more recent works such as “Oracle” and “AAT (Advanced Abstract Trance)”, Senni also experiments with rave’s visual and haptic repertoire using lasers, fog, strobes or CO2 cannons.
http://https://youtu.be/I_3mCDJ_iWc
Blending the worlds of contemporary and electronic club music, San Francisco-based Holly Herndon returns to Berlin to again support of her second full length, Platform ( RVNG INTL / 4AD), this time together with an additional vocalist. Sampling the domestic and digital environments of her daily life, Herndon challenges the dystopic potential of a surveillance state and the spectre of a digital monoculture by launching an appeal for discussion and progress within dance music’s conversation, towards new ways to share and transmediate our individual and collective experiences. To achieve Platform, Herndon opened up her process to vital artists and thinkers from her creative circle,to underscores the need for new fantasies and strategic collective action. Herndon will also give a talk within the Loop Summit.
Canadian Tim Hecker explores the intersections of noise, dissonance and melody through dramatic and sophisticated drone performances that confront listeners through their physical and emotional immediacy. Hecker uses noise, omnipresent in nature and technology, to blur the distinction between natural and synthetic.
http://https://youtu.be/oClZk2GBYTA
His organic and highly abstract compositions absorb recorded sounds while also synthesizing new ones, and interact with the resonant qualities of the performance space to de-centralise the positions of performer and listener through fully immersive soundscapes. Hecker throws his listeners into stormy ecosystems of sound that seem to manifest beyond our usual timescale and the dichotomy of man-made and grown . Allusions to the forces of nature and their physical strength collide with deeply human melancholy to summon ostensibly conflicting feelings of fear, grief and amazement, contemplative meditation, euphoria, or anxiety. At Technosphärenklänge, Tim Hecker presents a special
immersive live performance with Berlin based visual artist Marcel Weber aka MFO providing a dramaturgy of athmospheric light.
Before and during the concerts, visitors are invited to experience the 360 virtual reality version of “Stor Eiglass”, the title track from Squarepusher’s new Damogen Furies album (WARP Records, 2015) in the K1 conference room. Collaborating with cutting-edge technologists Marshmallow Laser Feast, Blue Zoo and Rob Pybus, Squarepusher takes a further step into the future of digital music.
This event is recommended by Digital in Berlin. Check out our Facebook page to win tickets.
Technosphärenklänge w/ Holly Herndon, Lorenzo Senni, Tim Hecker with MFO, Warp Records
Sunday, 01 November 2015 | 19:00 CET
HKW / Haus der Kulturen der Welt | John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 | 10557 Berlin/Tiergarten
