August 8th 2024
from 7:30pm
Centralgarden
Untere Donaustraße 41
1020 Vienna

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“Donau Strom” will be the next episode in my ongoing underwater-feedback-soundsystem project which I have been working on for some time now: Two waterproof microphones and an also waterproof loudspeaker are hanging in a flowing river, in this case a branch of the Danube in Vienna called “Donaukanal”. Microphones and speaker are connected to a mixer on land and record sounds under water as well as sound (created on land or recorded under water) is played through the speaker. Microphones and speaker are gently moved by the flowing river and the constantly changing distances and angles between microphones and speaker create feedback modulations happening within the combination of speaker and microphones.

Thus the river becomes an instrument, a player in an experimental musical improvisation in a mixed setup of electronic and analog musical instruments or other sound-creating devices.

For this episode I have the great pleasure of being joined by the Californian robotics and sound artist Kal Spelletich. Kal has been exploring the interface of humans and robots for 43 years, using technology to put people back in touch with real-life experiences. His work is interactive, requiring participants to enter or operate his pieces, often against their instincts of self-preservation. He probes the boundaries between fear, control and exhilaration by giving his audience the opportunity to operate and control fascinating and often dangerous machinery.

He has been featured in SC-Fi books, NASA, films, and TV shows (from SLACKER to The Matrix), volunteered with the notorious robotics collective, Survival Research Laboratories, and helped pioneer early Burning Man. He has exhibited hundreds of times on 3 continents in 33 countries showing art pieces using robotics, fire, laser-based pieces, walking BB-Q’s, and Robotic Orchestra to Installations. Despite all of this he is deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism.

On his proposal for his performance he writes:

I propose a sound/video performance with custom made machines and robots. Two videos are projected – one is a live feed of the robots I create the sounds from and the second video functions as a score for me and for the audience to follow. In each city where I perform I shoot landscape videos that are used as a score.

More about Kal Spelletich:

http://kaltek.wordpress.com/
https://www.tttelematiccc.com/galactic-scale-inquiries-into-the-nature-of-the-cosmos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal_Spelletich