MUSIC, MIND AND MACHINE

KARLHEINZ ESSL solo set with live electronics and modular synthesizers, world premieres:
Doing Math
Coastline extended
RH180ZOM
Loplop
FRANCISZEK ARASZKIEWICZ Deep Thought, performance for live electronics and brainwaves

Karlheinz Essl / Franciszek Araszkiewicz electroacoustic performance

This evening we present two strikingly different approaches to live electronic music that are nevertheless linked by their investigations of new relationships between human performers, technology and sound. Karlheinz Essl, a pioneer of algorithmic composition, is known for his performances with modular synthesisers and other electronic instruments of his own devising. His current work brings together composition, improvisation and generative processes, creating complex sonic structures in real time. The programme includes several new pieces and electronic sound performances, including modular instruments developed specifically for this project. In his Deep Thought project, the Polish composer and performer Franciszek Araszkiewicz connects the human mind with electronic sound. Using a tablet, electromagnetic sensors and a brain activity scanner, he converts neural signals into sound. In this, he follows the tradition of biofeedback performance, of which Alvin Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer (1965) is an important precursor. A simple visual layer reveals the relationships between the performer’s mental activity and the emerging sound, offering insight into issues such as conscious control, biological processes and the technological mediation of musical gesture.