The Sonic Acts festival is well-known for interdisciplinary projects and the focus on developments at the intersections of art, technology, music and science. The festival consists of live performances, a conferance, film programme and an exhibition. The fourteenth edition will take place 23-26 February at various locations in Amsterdam

The theme for this edition is ‘Travelling Time’ and offers an experience of time and ideas relating to time. Time is a complex and ongoing technological developments continually change our notions of time. Communication networks operate at light speed and computers process data in real-time without human mediation, resulting in a gap between machine time and the human experience of it.

Masterclasses
In collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum and STEIM, Sonic Acts will host a series of Master Classes as part of this year’s festival theme Travelling Time. The master classes will be supervised by Catherine Christer Hennix, Peter Kubelka, Olaf Nicolai, Pauline Oliveros and Tino Sehgal

The master classes provide a unique opportunity to work with five internationally renowned artist whose work critically reflects on time and timing. In a concentrated and intimate setting, participants will gain insights into the ‘artist’ concepts, creative processes and methods of composition and production through hands-on workshops and seminars.

The deadline for applications is February 12. Send a biography and a short statement of motivation to take part in a specific master class to masterclass@sonicacts.com.

Dates & locations
The masterclasses take place in Amsterdam at STEIM, SMART Project Space and de Balie.

February 20 – Olaf Nicolai
A German artist whose conceptual approach and use of diverse media question the way in which we view our everyday environment. He also translates theories from science and the arts into aesthetic-artistic idioms, rendering them accessible in a new context. His works deal with the perception of time in the reception of art. Nicolai has participated in international solo and group exhibitions. His works were shown at Documenta X, and at the 49^th and 51^st Venice Biennales. Several of his works can be found in public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thyssen Bornemisza Art

February 21 & 22 – Catherine Christer Hennix
Composer, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, she worked with illustrious figures such as La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, who were very important for her own work. She has frequently collaborated with the American anti-art philosopher, composer and violinist Henry Flynt. Hennix also draws inspiration from Japanese Gagaku music and early vocal music of Perotinus and Leoninus. All her major compositions, including The Electric Harpsichord, are regarded as part of an ongoing, endless cycle. Hennix’ two-day master class will investigate the relationship between modern music, programming and linguistics, and relate the latter to mathematical structures.

February 22 – Peter Kubelka
A multifaceted artist and theoretician who has worked in film, cooking, music, architecture, speech and writing. He communicates through lectures, which also use non-verbal elements  “to free our world view from being the exclusive property of language.” Kubelka’s cinematographic work is short and highly condensed. His “Metric Films” preceded and laid the foundations for structural cinema. Kubelka will lead a master class on film and cooking.

February 23 – Pauline Oliveros
Composer, performer and humanitarian, she is an important pioneer in American music and electronic music. She has explored sound for five decades, breaking new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation, she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that is profoundly affects those who experience it. Oliveros will lead a Deep Listening session.

February 23 – Tino Sehgal
A British-German artist whose works, which he calls “constructed situations,” involve one or more people carrying out instructions conceived by the artist. What all of Sehgal’s works have in common is that they reside only in the space and time they occupy, and in the memory of the work and its reception. The artist himself describes his works as “constructed situations,” whose materials are the human voice, language, movement and interaction, without the production of physical objects. His pieces are choreographies that are regularly staged in museums or galleries, and continuously executed for the entire duration of a show. In 2012, he will present a newly commissioned work for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London.

Live preformances
The acts we think you shouldn’t  miss.

Eleh, mysterious minimal electronic music project, best when played very loud

Mark Fell, one half of SND, experimenting with rhythms

Youth Lagoon, new kid on the dream pop block

Last Monday we already told you about the Raw Art Fair that starts today in Rotterdam, but today it’s also the beginning of Re:Rotterdam. This art fair is organised by Galerie10 and wants to provide another kind of view of the modern art. By the way, if you are in Rotterdam this week go see Art Rotterdam & Object Rotterdam as well! Sunday is the last day to visit these fairs.

Ibo Pompe Born in 1975 in Berkel-Enschot, Netherlands. Graduated at the academy for visual arts in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 2002. Living and working (as an artist) in Tilburg, Netherlands. He work explores the relationship between intellect and intuition. Between these extremes there seems no clear line, they run more smoothly into each other. The behavior of animals and people seem opposite. The fact that animals act instinctively makes their behavior very pure, very sincere. Pompe misses this in humans.
The rapid social changes now provide even more extreme marks of those interactions. Besides figurative and abstract visual elements he also uses lyrics in his work. These texts can be disempowering and have a relativistic effect, but they can also work in relation to enhancing the image.
All these elements are expressed in different ways in his work; a drawing can stand alone, but he also uses collage-like techniques where meaning arises from the composition.

Banks Violette, whose interests both in minimalist form and in the transmissions of subcultural communities have determined the course of his artistic practice since 2000, has been increasingly drawn to collaboration as the conceptual support for his installations. These collaborations have, more often than not, paired Violette with Stephen O’Malley, the musician most frequently associated with the drone metal band Sunn O))).

A battery of materials, and their deployment in stage-like and other performative and theatrical platforms, has also kept the practice grounded within a rich matrix of art historical, philosophical and socio-economic associations. As likely to use steel and salt as fabric and light, Violette shifts a viewer’s perspective by always implying more than what is on view. There is always a ghostly other that sits besides the installations and which frequently exists long-afterwards in the memories of spectators.

Source

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a “ready-made artist” and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today. But if the artist herself is the subjective equivalent of a urinal or a Brillo box – as displaced, deprived of its use value, and exchangeable as the products she makes – there is always the possibility of what she calls the “human strike.” Claire Fontaine uses her freshness and youth to make herself a whatever-singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. She grows up among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production, détournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private property.

Sigrid Calon graduated in 1993 at the academy of Tilburg. The first few years of her professional career she worked mostly as a designer. Since 2005 she chose to be a visual artist and works steadily on her artwork. Her art exists in the urge to explore, discover and create. Forcing new connections and the looking at the obvious from a different angle.

Research in identity is an important theme in her work. What is the essence, is there a new truth? Here she tries to arrange the chaos of possibilities and visualize it in clear, pure and fresh way. Aspects like intuition, ratio and humour are of importance.

Stad 11

Occupied Space IV

Sonic Acts is a really cool festival. Spreading over 4 days (23-26 februari), the bi-annual Sonic Acts in Amsterdam bring a diverse line-up from everything like classical composters to experimental pop, beatless dubstep and contemporary techno. The line-up includes the likes of new names like Youth Lagoon and to technopioneer Model 500 to the self-made instrumentents by Ellen Fullman.

But it’s not just music. Arts, visuals, conferences, expermental technologies… It’s pretty hard to explain what Sonic Arts is about. So we’ll just quote the festival itself:

“Since its inception in 1994, the bi-annual Sonic Acts festival has questioned, examined, assembled and exhibited contemporary and historicaldevelopments at the cutting edge of art, technology, music and science. The festival consists of numerous live performances, an internationalconference, an extensive film programme and an exhibition, complimented by a publication. Each edition has a specific topic. Over the years, Sonic Acts has become internationally renown as an exceptional festival for technology art with specific attention for aesthetics and research into interactivity, new forms for presentation and interfaces, interdisciplinary projects and exploring new alliances between different disciplines.

You can buy tickets here.

Gaudeamus Muziek is giving away 3×2 tickets for Enfant Terrible presenteert Elitepop. It’s on Thursday the 2nd of February in Huis a/d Werf, Utrecht. Elitepop is an evening with electronic live music from the universum of Dutch label Enfant Terrible. All you have to do is send an e-mail to win@incubate.org and put ‘Enfant Terrible’ in the subjectbox.

A total of five acts will give a performance that night. Those five acts are, Logosamphia, Woud, Neurobit, Puin + Hoop and Neugeborene Nachtmusik. These artists all have an electronic background that’s between pop and art. Logosamphia is coming with a live performance which tends to noise and improvisation. Lo-fi, experimental, ambient and improvisation are the keywords of Woud. Neurobit is performing with Nintendo Gameboys and DS-devices to create minimal music. The last to Puin + Hoop is making improvisation with experimental and Neugeborene Nachtmusik creates dark and ritual post-electro music.

These five artist all have one thing in common, improvisation. A great way to spend your thursday, don’t you think? So send an e-mail to win@incubate.org and win those tickets! Good luck.

What’s up! is an exhibition that contains the youngest artpainting in the Netherlands. For this exhibition thirty artists are selected that give a representative overview of today’s contemporary art of painting in the Netherlands.

What’s up! originated from the need of a broad audience, they wanted to get an overall view of the art of painting. What is contemporary painting? What is going on and what came forward in the past years of contemporary painting? The duo that created the exhibition are Moniek Peters and Gerrit Willems. They wanted to show the work of artists that are at the beginning of their careers, but who already gets recognition for their work. On the other hand they want to show work from artists who are relatively unknown. By putting those two together they are creating a perfect balance for this exhibition. What’s up! is at Dordrechts musuem in Dordrecht. The exhibition will last until the 15th of April. Go check it out!

(Pallast by Tjebbe Beekman)

(Sink of the Bottom by Pim Blokker)

(Untitled by Koen Delaere)

Jasper James is a photographer from England and works both in London and in Beijing. He made a portrait series called ‘City Silhouettes‘. James caught the reflections of his subjects on glass windows and the outcome are beautiful silhouette pictures. Check out his website to see more pictures.

Via Laughing Squid

Matthew Davis, a Berlin-based artist, made these surreal paintings. Davis puts his brush in oil and lets it drip into small pools. Then he lets it dry for a couple of days and adds a new layer of oil to the painting to create a multi-dimensional look. It creates an extra meaning to the paintings and the colours really pop out!

Via Colossal

Iemza is a street artist from France. Unfortunately there isn’t anymore information about the artist but these mural artworks are eerie and very monstrous. These series consists of faces and monsters and it appears Iemza makes his art on abandon houses or walls which make the image come to life! Great set of photos and it’s worth to check out is Flickr.

The Vancouver based-artist James Nizam made these visual artworks named Dwelling Series. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2002 and he graduated with a BFA in visual arts. With group shows in the Vancouver area, he now has forthcoming group shows in London, Barcelona and Rotterdam.

Two artists Joschi Herczeg and Daniele Kaehr made these series of photos, named Explosion.

‘In their series Explosion, they built a custom-made detonator, which is connected to the cameras and synchronized to snap a photo at the very moment of the explosion.  In this way, they were able to capture motion and time in a split second of an explosion.

Their fascination lay in making order out of chaos and freezing an ephemeral creation; each image is like a chance sculpture – the artists themselves were uncertain of the shape, colour and size they would form. The explosions take place in a domestic setting to play upon feelings of anxiety and unrest.’

Via Inspiration Grid

Brad Kunkle was heavily drawn to the world of Maxfield Parrish and the Pre-Raphealites in his younger years:  “A subtle, supernatural beauty seems to be hiding under the breath of women –worlds where something beyond our natural perception is waiting to be found.” His minimal palette is inspired by the grisailles of early masters and the haunting quality of antique photographs and daguerreotypes. Brad’s work appeared in International Artists, American Art Collector Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur. American Arts Quarterly and Kunst. His first solo exhibition sold out opening night in April 2010 at Arcadia Fine Arts in New York City.

You may know Nick Helderman from his project during Incubate 2011. His latest project is for Impossible. A team of photographers that saved the last Polaroid production plant for integral instant film in Enschede. Because of this, The Impossible Project team made sure that more than 300.000.000 (!!) perfectly fine Polaroid camera’s can still be used.

For The Impossible Project, Nick went to Le Guess Who?! in Utrecht last weekend and shot a series of brilliant photos. You can see some of his pictures below. You can watch the complete series here.

“Titled “The beauty of an ugly addiction”, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens confronts viewers with questions about the general smoking ban introduced in Belgium some months ago. Surrealistic, melancholic and theatrical but especially controversial pictures of smoking kids are used to visualise the contradiction of the unhealthy cigarette and the immense attraction of smoking.”

Oh, btw, the cigarettes are made of cheese.

And the complete series (or click here for a bigger version)

We found these wonderful drawings on InspireFirst, and we’re absolutely hooked. They’re made by Julian De Narvaez. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, he graduated as a graphic designer on  la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 2002, and he got a Web Design Creation degree on the same University 2 years later.

His paintings are small fairytales, sometimes a bit cartoon-esque, but full of symbolism and always immensely detailed. Almost all of them have a weird perception of depth or logic. On first look, they seem to be designed for children’s books. But when you look closer, you’ll find that there’s something sinister. In the drawing itself, or in the atmosphere the drawing creates.

“In the days of moslem sex-shops, oil-hunting and antismoking campaigns people do realize more and more that they are consigned to absolute loneliness and isolation.

The human race keeps on growing and now its population has become so numerous that it doesn’t matter anymore how many people are there on the planet. New cities, tons of paving, glass and steel, night bars, sushi, nuclear power stations, denominations. Being flooded with the roar of the civilization people begin to keep silent and to wait for the right moment to stay with the nature face to face.

These are the rare moments for people to feel calmness, emptiness and the pulsating nature’s fear.”

- Pavel Tereshkovets about ‘White Silence’

So that means you can experience the first experiments with electronic music by Dick Raaijmakers in the Fifties, next to the most recent see-through technological installations by Daan Roosegaarde. The first video installations and interactive artpieces like Jeffrey Shaw‘s Legible City, and Erik Hobijn‘s controversial Suicide Machine next to the augmented reality rabbit Tibb.

And not only the EXPO is definitely worth a visit. We’re big fans of Matthew Herbert as well. Matthew recenty helped with Ridley Scott’s ‘Life In A Day’ soundtrack and Björk’s ‘Biophilia’. And he recomposed Mahler’s 10th for Deutsche Gramophon. On STRP he will perform his ‘One Pig‘ project live.

‘One Pig‘ is the story of one farm animal in particular, that was being followed from his birth untill his death and after that. Matthew Herbert recorded it all. He documented the life of the pig from birth to adulthood to, eventually, the slaughter. Due to English laws, he couldn’t record the slaughter itself, but he could document the process before it, the cooking and the consuming. And if that’s not enough, he made instruments from the remaining bodyparts: a drum of the stomach, an instrument based on the blood etcetera.

The result is an ode to the lifecycle of an otherwise anonymous animal. A work that brings up questions and insight in the presence of an animal in a society that underestimates its use and meaning.

Thanks to the great people at STRP, we’re able to give away 2×2 tickets for Matthew Herbert‘s performance, with a visit to the EXPO included on Friday November 18. If you want those tickets mail us the coolest picture of a pig you can find to win@incubate.org. Oh, and don’t forget to put ‘STRP’ in the subjectline!

Good luck!

Vancouver-based artist Andre Petterson, made these beautiful half painted/half object photographed media artwork, named Here and There. He wants to capture the essence of a split-second in time. Petterson based his work on exploring various themes of lighting to create elements of mystery. Speaking of mystery, this is a huge subject in his works. He wants to highlight the important elements and let the mind fill in the rest.

Petterson looks at his artwork just as painters look at a painting, he is fascinated by fabric and movement. He believes that the integration of movement and fabric are similar to brushstrokes. Looking at these pictures of his artwork, you can see that the focus is set on painting, photo-based works, steel sculpture and photography.

via Colossal

To feed that awareness, we need art. Artist Guy Denning is a self-taught English artist currently living in France. He posts a new drawing every day on his Facebook. Amongst these works, there are some amazing paintings he made regarding the 99% protesters. These works are really awe-inspiring.
(via Collosal)

Chris McVeigh from Halifax, Canada is an author, illustrator, photographer and a funny dude. The funny part is showing throughout his photographs by using non other then LEGO. Everybody knows LEGO and probably played allot with it when they were younger. We all made buildings, cars and stories with the bricks, plates and plastic dolls. McVeigh is grabbing this idea to another level and made funny pics by making LEGO illustrations/set-ups. A LEGO MC Hammer, a pie and allot of Star Wars references he made it all! Here are a few of these funny LEGO illustrations. More photos can be seen at Inspire First

Can you imagine that this is made by a 14 year old? No, we didn’t believed it at first but then we read that Madhi Chowdhury is a 14 your old boy. Chowdhury lives in Toronto, Canada at this moment and does these amazing digital illustrations for a hobby! If Madhi continues with these digital illustrations, he probably will get big within the graphic world!

He made several different illustrations, which have different themes. For example he made illustrations of ‘The Great Directors’ and ‘My December Break’. Chowdhury also made single digital drawings, from Darwin and Natalie Portman. You can see all his work on Behance.

Here are a few digital illustrations:

Eternity is a collaboration between Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming. They mounted 30 clocks on a large sheet of white acrylic and aligned the 36 hours and minutes hands is such a way that they spell ETERNITY. Every 12 hours you can read the word.

(via Today and Tomorrow)

Dimitar Solakov (Sofia, Bulgaria) studied photography at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. His main medium is photography. In his pictures he aims to capture everyday moments that enable him to make statements that are both personal and documentary.

During Incubate his project ‘Youth‘ will be shown. The project shows parts of the lives of several groups of adolescents (his friends and acquaintances) and of individuals in these groups. In addition to their pictures, it includes panoramic landscapes and various pictures of bugs, flowers, animals etc. The project consists of individual series forming one whole composition, which depends on the architecture of the space where it is to be exhibited. The photographs vary from 20X30cm to 50x70cm in size. They are printed on photographic paper and are pinned to the wall. Some of the photographs may overlap with one another, again depending on the exhibition space.

This Saturday Solakov will give a presentation and interview about his work at the Bibliotheek Tilburg. Check out more info about this happening by clicking this link. In the meanwhile, check out this preview about his project ‘Youth’.

Check out the guys from VR/Urban on their ongoing worldtour with their SMSlingshot project. They are also going to be present during Incubate so don’t hesitate and drop by these guys to share your own messages on the walls of Tilburg!

VR/Urban is a collective of public media inverntionistas working together to create public media realtime installations. The aim of all projects is to reclaim urban screen for the public. In tradition of situative art and graffiti culture, VR/Urban augments existing city structures with digital and interactive media-art. The collective strongly believes in embodiement, accessibility and the tangibilty of information, so that each installation has a very performative and challenging character.

In this new series we’ll interview some of the contenders in our New Jacks 3.0 program. New Jacks is what Incubate is all about: helping artists to hatch. With New Jacks 3.0 we have asked five young artists that recently graduated at local academies to present their autonomous view on the theme of this year: We Are Incubate.

In this first edition we’ve interviewed Joost Jansen. Here is what Joost has to say about his work: “I, Joost Jansen (1985) am crazy, colourful and creative. I trust my intuition while making fashion related inspiration and prototypes. I make unique objects and magazines and have my own clothing line.” For New Jacks 3.0 I will be broadcasting live from a place in Tilburg.”

1. Kun je jezelf kort voorstellen?
Ik ben Joost Jansen: knotsgek, kleurrijk, kreatief.

2. Wat kunnen we verwachten van jou op Incubate?
Een transprante eendags kunstenaars residentie met fantastische kunstenaars en ontwerpers

3. Wat vind je van de andere New Jacks deelnemers?
Fantastische mix, was al fan van een aantal, dus is erg leuk eens iets samen te doen!

4. Wat zijn je plannen voor de toekomst?
Slikslee kampioen van Schiermonnikoog worden vanmiddag om 15:30.

Last year, Incubate worked together with high school students for the first time. Students learned about free speech, advertising, public spaces and printing techniques and used that to decorate regulated poster walls.

This year @ducate continued in a collaboration with artist Koen Delaere and Buro CIST (Cultuur in Scholen Tilburg). This year we chose to let students of primary schools design their own screen printed posters. Which six-hundred of them did.
A selection of the designs are printed in a larger number and spread throughout the city during the festival. But you can see some of the posters already at the VMK Faxx Building, where the Open Source Expo will be held from 12- 18 september.

An overview of all posters can be seen at the Duvelhok venue during Incubate.