Leaky bodies and touchy software
A concert and exhibition opening featuring new music that explores instruments, bodies, software and hardware.
Edinburgh College of Art and BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) invite you to a concert featuring new music that explores instruments, bodies, software and hardware.
The first part of this event features a work called BAILE, Irish for ‘home’, written and performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett and commissioned by Yonit Kosovske for Limerick Early Music Festival and Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. In this piece, Xenia asks “Where is home? For millions of displaced people, this simple question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Home can be a place of nurture, safety, and ancestral roots, or a place of oppression, lack of opportunity, and loss. Homes can be lost but also found, regained, rediscovered, and made anew.”
Following this performance, Xenia will lead the audience through the amazing collection of keyboard instruments at this unique concert venue, leaving a trace of sounds from various keyboards she walks and plays you through the museum. The journey will end at a new, reactive instrument crafted especially for this stunning museum by sculptor and gilder, Henry Martin, sonified by Martin Parker. Martin will introduce the instrument and present a short performance before you get a drink.
As part of Martin's BRAID project, Machining Sonic Identities, he has been working with St Cecilia's collection, imagining new ways for the heritage sector to create innovative interfaces between AI and their collections. Here, Martin has built a digital model of instruments that we are not normally allowed to play. Metal parts of the sculpture are connected to this computer model, making it possible to explore and examine the sound world by touch.
After your drink, the concert continues with the Scottish premier of Je mets mon scaphandre by British composer John Aulich, written in collaboration with the Irish and Berlin-based bassoonist Olivia Palmer-Baker.
The work explores the feminist theory of the leaky body, which invites us to rethink the human body as fluid and amorphous, constantly reconfiguring in response to its environment. Here, the built-in spatiality and the leaky, unstable nature of the bassoon are brought into dialogue with this theory, amplified and translated with live electronics and reactive light. The electronics invite us to hear the bassoon through a number of different lenses, amplifying the smallest details not only in volume but in dimension, with the sound being panned around the entire room.
After a period of experimental concerts in Berlin and Basel earlier this year, this second and final version features in addition a reactive light design created by a further collaborator, the Spanish, Berlin-based light-designer José Del Avellanal Carreño.
We extend huge thanks to our funders and supporters:BRAID: https://braiduk.org/
Arts & Humanities Research Council: https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/
Goethe-Institut: https://www.goethe.de
Hinrichsen Foundation: https://www.hinrichsenfoundation.org.uk/
Supporters:
St Cecilia’s Hall and Staff at the University of Edinburgh Collections
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh College of Art
Reid School of Music
KLANGZEITORT: https://klangzeitort.de/
( ( NYT ) ) Art Space: https://www.instagram.com/nyt.art.space/
Kollektiv Unruhe: https://www.kollektivunruhe.com/
Musikkultur Rheinsberg: https://musikkultur-rheinsberg.de/
Image: UNESCO Week of Sound - Wed 18 October 2023 - Xenia Pestova Bennett (© photographer - Andy Catlin www.andycatlin.com).
Access
Please let us know if you require any support accessing this event by emailing eca.events@ed.ac.uk.
Please see ECA's privacy notice for more information on how your personal details provided will be used and stored.
A concert and exhibition opening featuring new music that explores instruments, bodies, software and hardware.
Edinburgh College of Art and BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) invite you to a concert featuring new music that explores instruments, bodies, software and hardware.
The first part of this event features a work called BAILE, Irish for ‘home’, written and performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett and commissioned by Yonit Kosovske for Limerick Early Music Festival and Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. In this piece, Xenia asks “Where is home? For millions of displaced people, this simple question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Home can be a place of nurture, safety, and ancestral roots, or a place of oppression, lack of opportunity, and loss. Homes can be lost but also found, regained, rediscovered, and made anew.”
Following this performance, Xenia will lead the audience through the amazing collection of keyboard instruments at this unique concert venue, leaving a trace of sounds from various keyboards she walks and plays you through the museum. The journey will end at a new, reactive instrument crafted especially for this stunning museum by sculptor and gilder, Henry Martin, sonified by Martin Parker. Martin will introduce the instrument and present a short performance before you get a drink.
As part of Martin's BRAID project, Machining Sonic Identities, he has been working with St Cecilia's collection, imagining new ways for the heritage sector to create innovative interfaces between AI and their collections. Here, Martin has built a digital model of instruments that we are not normally allowed to play. Metal parts of the sculpture are connected to this computer model, making it possible to explore and examine the sound world by touch.
After your drink, the concert continues with the Scottish premier of Je mets mon scaphandre by British composer John Aulich, written in collaboration with the Irish and Berlin-based bassoonist Olivia Palmer-Baker.
The work explores the feminist theory of the leaky body, which invites us to rethink the human body as fluid and amorphous, constantly reconfiguring in response to its environment. Here, the built-in spatiality and the leaky, unstable nature of the bassoon are brought into dialogue with this theory, amplified and translated with live electronics and reactive light. The electronics invite us to hear the bassoon through a number of different lenses, amplifying the smallest details not only in volume but in dimension, with the sound being panned around the entire room.
After a period of experimental concerts in Berlin and Basel earlier this year, this second and final version features in addition a reactive light design created by a further collaborator, the Spanish, Berlin-based light-designer José Del Avellanal Carreño.
We extend huge thanks to our funders and supporters:BRAID: https://braiduk.org/
Arts & Humanities Research Council: https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/
Goethe-Institut: https://www.goethe.de
Hinrichsen Foundation: https://www.hinrichsenfoundation.org.uk/
Supporters:
St Cecilia’s Hall and Staff at the University of Edinburgh Collections
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh College of Art
Reid School of Music
KLANGZEITORT: https://klangzeitort.de/
( ( NYT ) ) Art Space: https://www.instagram.com/nyt.art.space/
Kollektiv Unruhe: https://www.kollektivunruhe.com/
Musikkultur Rheinsberg: https://musikkultur-rheinsberg.de/
Image: UNESCO Week of Sound - Wed 18 October 2023 - Xenia Pestova Bennett (© photographer - Andy Catlin www.andycatlin.com).
Access
Please let us know if you require any support accessing this event by emailing eca.events@ed.ac.uk.
Please see ECA's privacy notice for more information on how your personal details provided will be used and stored.
Image: Olivia Palmer-Baker.