Modulations

Event

The exhibition’s pictures are not in the CAN’s archives.

In 1913, Luigi Russolo published the manifesto L’Art des bruits (The Art of Noises). All the codes of music were shattered. Pierre Henry inaugurated musique concrète. John Cage refined auditory perceptions with his ‘prepared pianos’ and programmed silences. Later, in another register, the members of Kraftwerk declared: ‘We are not musicians, we are sound scientists’.
The rest is history: techno, house, hip-hop, trance, gabber, drum&bass, jungle, break-beat, ambient, DUB… In the end, definitions don’t matter. This weekend (the first in a series…) will be an opportunity to see, hear and share the phenomena generated by the meeting of ideas and technology. Technology has influenced the history of art in this century and has enabled artists who have mastered it to better understand and explore our worlds.

This weekend’s programme includes:

– Films by Iara Lee Modulations and Synthetic Pleasures.
– Videos related to the subjects covered in the films.
– Videos by Shawn Chappelle and Alex Iordachescu.
– Performances (Syntaxes éphémères) during which you will express yourselves with images and sounds.
– Web-conference to find out more about artists and sites related to electronic music.

Friday 23 and Saturday 24 April 1999 from 8.30pm.

Thanks to the use of technology, states of perception can be widened. The relation between music and image can generate physical and psychical sensations that are difficult to describe. Modulations, a first weekend dedicated to this theme had Iara Lee’s Synthetic Pleasures analyze the impact of new technology on human beings. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, cybersex and other current trends in technological development plunged the spectator into a vertiginous new definition of mankind and showed how technology influences art history allowing those who master it to better understand and explore our worlds. This movie was the starting point leading to a more precise subject matter, the breaking apart of musical structures and its consequences. Modulations another movie by Iara Lee analyzed the history of electronic music considering Luigi Russolo’s manifest L’Art des bruits (The Art of Noises) which, in 1913, tore apart the structures of melody and harmony common to musicians up to then. The performance Syntaxes éphémères played on a synthesizer on which each key corresponded to a sequence of images By playing different melodies, it was possible to obtain different image sequences. The audio-visual relation took on astonishing forms. The performance Early Techno consisted in the arrangment on the floor of old Ips by Cage, Henry, Stockhausen, etc. in order to analyze and mix them. Past and present were opposed again, rather blended in order to question the idea of contemporary art.

Ivo Zanetti translated by Simon Pleasance

April 23 and 24 1999