Date: Thursday, Dec 11, 2008
Venue: SMART Project Space
Arie Biemondstraat 105/111 Amsterdam
www.smartprojectspace.net
Time: 20.00 hrs.
Entrance: 5 euros
Heidi Mortenson (DK) - Voice and Real-Time Sampling
Bio:
Heidi Mortenson grew up listening to the metallic sounds of her dad fixing cars in the garage and her mum playing the organ. Her first audio modulations began on a small cassette player, La Bamba was a favorite. As a teenager Heidi moved to Barcelona and grew up in the Spanish ghetto.
In Barcelona Mortenson began experimenting with recording herself singing inside a washing machine, rebuilding a telephone receiver into a microphone, hooking up with a walkie-talkie system and payed the rent from DJ gigs. After playing her very first concert Heidi was selected Resident Artist 2002-03 at the experimental LEM Festival in Graçia. She then packed her bags and went on a European tour with visual artist SOLU, with whom she later performed the Opening Act of Transmediale Festival 2004 in Berlin.
Entitled as a OneWomanBand Heidi then moved to Berlin. Here she iniciated a series of events called Wired Nights which idealy were a playground for her and her music friends, a place to improvise and try new ideas. The performances were often described as fun, chaotic and unpredictable theatre pieces of entertaining quality. The Wired Nights turned into the record label Wired Records which was founded by Heidi in 2005 when she was to release her debut album with money she had received from a fund.
Heidi makes colorful and textured songs with a nerdy and dazed approach; her sound grows from playful experiments and inventive production. Add emotional drive, a mentalist flavor and soul of old cartoon.
Heidi has toured Canada and the US east and west coast with two album releases. The danish music magazine Geiger selected her album Don't Lonely Me as one of the 100 Best Albums of 2007. Her latest project is 500 handpainted vinyls. The EP Diamonds & Underwear is a single sided 12", each record etched and painted by Heidi herself.
Heidi gained attention from her concert at SPOT Festival 2008 which got splendid reviews by the press. The music magazine Gaffa credited her 5 stars, Musiktidsskriftet Geiger wrote "overall probably the best concert of this year's SPOT festival and musically absolutely the bravest", the UK Telegraph stated "if Madonna really wants to start pushing popular music into new areas she should forget working with established American production talents like Timbaland and give this mad Dane a call"
Mortenson is also working as a producer for other bands and can on rare ocasions be seen playing with her bearded band The Uncontrollables.
URL:
www.nosnetrom.net/
Video Example:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTzBHMaYfQ
robotcowboy - Dan Wilcox (US/AT) - robotcowboy suit, Midi guitar, Controllers
Bio:
robotcowboy is a musical project which conducts sonic experiments using custom computer hardware and software. These devices are then field tested for extended space ranger use. A futuristic expatriate American Space Ranger combines wearable computing, midi guitar, and live energy to wander the digi-range as a robotcowboy playing for dying astronauts. This is a lofi-guitar-compu-show with algorithmic balls from a DEVOspud, laptop-stomping idiot wearing exposed electronics.
Ride along bit boys!
URL:
www.robotcowboy.com/
Video Example:
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuJkE789ag
Jamie Allen (CA/UK) - circuitMusic
Bio:
circuitMusic is a platform for improvisational audio circuit building with raw op amp components. It is live audio circuit construction, signals laid bare, experimental music. Performances consist of audio circuitry, breadboards, and other raw electronics.
Jamie Allen makes interactive art and sound makers with his head and hands. He believes technology can allow us to circumvent and reinvent traditional, commercial and hierarchical relationships to art and performance. His work in digital design, music, performance and public art creates physical relationships between people and with media.
URL:
heavyside.net/
Video Example:
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=G4vtSfT0gHw
Alex Nowitz (DE) - Voice, Wiimote, junXion, LiSa
Bio:
Alex Nowitz is a composer of vocal music, chamber music, electronic music as well as music for dance, theatre and opera. He obtained commissions by several ensembles and institutions such as the Kammerakademie Potsdam or the Staatsoper unter den Linden Berlin. In spring 2006 his first opera of an entire evening's length, for vocal ensemble, choir, orchestra, piano, harmonium, toy-piano and theremin, was premiered at the Theater Osnabrueck: "Die Bestmannoper" [The Best Man Opera], which is about Nazi criminal and mass murderer Alois Brunner and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.
Furthermore he is a voice artist, whistling and singing virtuoso who is performing in collaboration with musicians from various stylistic areas as well as interpreting composed new music. He is a tenor and countertenor who presents a big variety of diverse extended techniques, which are beyond the scope of purely classical singing. Until now, he gave concerts in Europe, Russia and North America.
In 2007/08 he was invited by STEIM in Amsterdam (STudio for Electro-Instrumental Music) to develop a set-up for live electronics as an extension for his vocal performances. He uses two gestural controllers (Wii-Remote controllers), a computer (MacBookPro) and STEIM-software (LiSa, junXion). Alex Nowitz wrote an article about his approach to develop and play the electronic instrument: "Voice and Live Electronics using Remotes as Gestural Controllers", which was published in eContact! by the CEC (Communauté électroacoustique canadienne/Montréal) on October 4th, 2008.
URL:
www.nowitz.de/english/index_engl.html
Video Example:
cec.concordia.ca/econtact/10_4/video/nowitz_selfportrait.mov