Radio_Copernicus

[ Commissioned works Berlin/Wrocław ]

Radio_Copernicus @ Akademie der Künste Berlin, 1 November - 31 December 2005


Zbigniew Karkowski, Radioph, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Tuesday, 1 November 2005, repeated at different times until 31 December 2005
The radio: an electromagnetic space, disembodied and without a location. Sounds travel through the air and obtain a physical presence in the places where they are received. Karkowski imagines this non-place as an electro-acoustic dataspace which repeatedly recreates itself from itself: Radioph is a generative radio piece, more a process than a work, permanent sound recycling which forms out of whatever is currently to hand – coordinated by Markov chains, i-ching operations and a meditating computer.

Raphael Rogiński and Cukunft, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Friday, 4 November 2005, 6:30 p.m.
Raphael Rogiński creates a sonic landscape out of the acoustic observations of his Warsaw klezmer band, Cukunft. He not only played guitar on their latest record, but he also accompanied the recordings with a microphone. This created a portrait of present-day Jewish culture and music looking for its roots. Modern arrangements of Mordechai Gebirtig’s compositions are mixed with field recordings of forgotten Jewish places and with reflections about Jewish music and its identity.

Duo Merzouga, BERLIN-WARSZAWA-EXPRESS, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Thursday, 10 November 2005, 6:30 p.m.
Computer musician Eva Pöpplein and electric bass player Janko Hanushevsky have long been interested in the phenomenon of urban sound, the immense, chaotic cloud of sound which permanently surrounds people living in our modern civilisation. On countless journeys, the pair have studied the varied soundscapes of different towns and cities, and they have collected innumerable snippets of atmosphere and noises. This resulted in a fascination with musical structures hidden in our “surrounding sound”. What we spend twenty-four hours a day blocking out suddenly sounds like music. BERLIN-WARSZAWA-EXPRESS consists of original sound recorded in Berlin and Warsaw and which the musicians see as a blueprint, as musical basic information. The composed music weaves itself into these spaces: noise becomes music, music becomes part of noise.
[ Duo Merzouga, BERLIN-WARSZAWA-EXPRESS ]

Maria Peszek and Elektrolot, Green Foog, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Tuesday, 1 November 2005, 10 p.m.
Maria Peszek is one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic Polish actresses of her generation, pursuing the development of new, creative concepts, particularly in her experimental theatre performances. Her project for Radio_Copernicus continued her collaboration with the avant-garde pop group Elektrolot and represents a joint undertaking based on the exploration of new and surprising sonic phenomena.

Sasker Scheerder, We Make This Known Here With All Due Reservations, R_C 2005
In cooperation with Offener Kanal Berlin/OKB Radio
First broadcast: Saturday, 12 November 2005, 6 p.m.
A double reading of the 1934 essay by Kurt Schwitters, Radio (Eine Anregung, den Radioapparat produktiv auszunutzen), known as "A Stimulus To Make The Most Productive Use Of Radio" in English. Transformed by the Rotterdam sound artist Sasker Scheerder, who conceived of it as a simultaneous performance in the studios of Radio_Copernicus and Offener Kanal Berlin. The work was broadcast simultaneously by two local VHF stations as a four-channel piece.

Wojtek Zamiara, Passanten_Minięcia, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Thursday, 17 November 2005, 6:30 p.m.
A project based on the author’s fascination with random processes in communication, above all in stories.
Many meanings
Many stories
Few languages: Polish, English, German, Russian
Individual interpretation of the story
This production is broadcasted simultaneously on two frequencies so that listeners can hear it as a four-channel production.

Robert Lippok, Parallele Linien, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Thursday, 24 November 2005, 6:30 p.m.
The radio piece "Parallele Linien" is composed of recordings and synthetic audio material, and listeners can hear how these elements run in four parallel tracks. Robert Lippok’s composition arose in connection with his exhibition in the Wohnmaschine gallery in Berlin. The exhibition will be opened at the same time as "Parallele Linien" is broadcasted on Radio_Copernicus in Berlin, so it is possible to hear "Parallele Linien" that evening as an independent piece in the ether/on the internet, or listen to it on the radio in the framework of the exhibition in the gallery.

Zukunft@BPhil, Remix-Asyla (after Thomas Adès), 2005
In cooperation with the Berliner Philharmoniker musicians.
First broadcast: Friday, 25 November 2005, 6:30 p.m.
In his composition "Asyla", the British composer Thomas Adès explores the levels of meaning to the word “asylum”: flight, uncertainty and statelessness are part of life as experienced by so many young people. Under the direction of Catherine Milliken and Hubert Machnik, the students of the Hermann Köhl school in Berlin approached Asyla using traditional instruments, everyday sounds and computer processes. They searched for their own language of sounds and created a new composition.


Radio_Copernicus @ Wrocław / Talking Back to Radio – Radio als Zuhörer – Artyści zmieniają radio, 1-31 December 2005


Stefano Giannotti, BOLLE, R_C 2005
Audiovisual installation and radio play with Jonathan Faralli
Opening performance and first broadcast: Tuesday, 6 December 2005, 8 p.m.
Bubbles of air pop in a small pond, creating a piece of music: in the performance and installation "Bolle" (Bubbles), random events in the landscape become the scoresheet for voices, drums and sounds. As in an animation film, the images are connected, right down to their details, with the music’s progress. In this way, visual elements generate musical elements parallel to their appearance, and "Bolle" becomes a kind of counterpoint between images and sounds.

Johannes Auer, free lutz!, R_C 2005
With Ana Jur, Peter Georges
First broadcast: Thursday, 8 December 2005, 7 p.m., live from the Municipal Galleries BWA Wrocław
The stochastic texts of Theo Lutz from 1959 are seen as a milestone in the history of computer-generated poetry. The radio project "free lutz!" by Johannes Auer, one of the best-known German internet artists, is based on the reprogramming of this pioneering work. At the same time, a web interface enables listeners to participate in the machine’s text generation. Listeners and computers thereby create the textual basis for the live programme, in which the speaker performs the resulting computer poetry in real time. Listeners can submit texts on this website: http://auer.netzliteratur.net/copernicus/

Agata Zubel and Cezary Duchnowski, ElettroVoce, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Saturday, 10 December 2005, 7 p.m.
A radio piece in which vocal artist Agata Zubel brings forth phenomenal sounds and displays the entire range of what her voice is capable of. Fine lyrical vocalisations alternate with broad, energetic expressions and finally transform into articulations which one would normally think no human body could produce. Zubel is accompanied by computer composer Cezary Duchnowski.

Mikolaj Trzaska and Andrzej Stasiuk, winterlich/bruchstückhaft, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Tuesday, 13 December 2005, 8:30 p.m.
Andrzej Stasiuk reads excerpts from his book “Winter”, saxophonist Mikołaj Trzaska composes music to it, and a radio piece is created. After the successful collaboration between prize-winning author Stasiuk and the Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukhovych, this is the second production which sees literature and music fuse with each other.

Peter Castine, Overnight Sensation, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Saturday/Sunday, 24/25 December 2005, for 20 hours
“In Zen, they say that if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If it’s still boring, try it for eight minutes, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. After a while you discover that it’s not at all boring, but instead very interesting.” (John Cage, Silence) “Overnight Sensation” is a radiophonic sound installation for your living room, your bedroom, your bathroom ... Overnight Sensation sounds different in each room, in each place, in each position. Is it loudest when you’re positioned between the speakers? Next to the wall? Behind the sofa? Sitting on the floor? Nearer the ceiling? The sound can change when you simply turn your head. And not just that: the sound also changes in the most subtle ways minute by minute.” (Peter Castine) – People who leave their radios on day and night can immerse themselves: for 20 hours, from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, Radio_Copernicus broadcast “Overnight Sensation”, a permanent radio installation without a single interruption. The sounds develope slowly and create an atmosphere of silence and relaxed concentration.

Heimo Lattner, Wrocław z.B … Eine Arbeit für Radio, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Thursday, 22 December 2005, 8:30 p.m.
“The following search terms formed the framework for researching in Wrocław, a process which ended in a radio play:
1) The town of memory in which the traces left behind by history intersect with thousands of individual stories.
2) The town of encounters in which people meet and which also affects people; the lists of how the everyday is invented and of the art of making beat a path for themselves and provide space for strategies and speculations to unfold.
3) The fictional town which threatens to annul the other two.” (Heimo Lattner)

Seekuh-Crew. Die große Seeschlange, R_C 2005
First broadcast: Friday, 23 December 2005, 8:30 p.m.
April saw the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish fairytale writer Hans-Christian Andersen. Andersen created scores of unforgettable heroes and heroines: the Princess and the Pea, the Brave Tin Soldier, the Snow Queen. His fairytales are timelessly modern and fascinate people of all ages. Beneath their pretty surfaces, these stories are about outsiders searching for happiness or are parables about people swept along by events. One of Andersen’s lesser-known stories, The Great Sea-Serpent forms the textual basis for this commissioned piece: Katja Klemt and Andreas Dobberkau read the texts, Georg Fischer creates many-faceted soundscapes on his instruments and Christian Schwanz produces the whole to form an all-encompassing acoustic experience.
Venues
Stralsund, Warsaw, Berlin, Wrocław
Dates
Stralsund: 15 July - 21 August 2005
Warsaw: 1 - 30 September 2005
Berlin: 1 - 30 November 2005
Wrocław: 1 - 31 December 2005
Participating Institutions
Universität der Künste, Berlin
Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Wrocław
Radio_Copernicus @ Akademie der Künste Berlin, 1 November - 31 December 2005
In collaboration with Dis_Positionen/Akademie der Künste Berlin








































































































Radio_Copernicus @ Wrocław / Talking Back to Radio – Radio als Zuhörer – Artyści zmieniają radio, 1-31 December 2005