Tuomas A. Laitinen @ EMS 20-24 February, 2023
Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist who works with video, sound, glass, chemical and microbial processes, as well as algorithms to explore the entanglements of multispecies coexistence. Laitinen composes situations and installations that inquire into the porous interconnectedness of language, body, and matter within morphing ecosystems. In recent years, Laitinen has been working around questions of ecology, mythology, and processes of knowledge production.
Since 2016, one strand of Tuomas A. Laitinen’s artistic practice has touched upon the research into cognition and consciousness in other-than-human minds, focussing on octopuses in particular. This endeavour is emerging through different forms: glass objects made for octopuses, multiple video and audio works, and a series of glyphs—made both with glass and as a font—derived from research on octopus arm movements.
Laitinen released his debut album Sapiduz (Öm sound / Svart Records) as TAL in 2022. Sapiduz is a shapeshifting body of sounds containing traces of early music, mutated vocals, and granular electronic composition techniques. Analogous to Laitinen’s other works as an artist, the album is an entanglement of symbiotic processes and worldbuilding where the (mythical) past is attuned to submit questions about emerging futures.
2022 marked the premiere of TAL & Sapiduz Ensemble’s audiovisual performance at Flow Festival Helsinki.
Laitinen´s works have been featured at the 21st Biennale of Sydney, the 7th Bucharest Biennale, Screen City Biennale 2019 (Stavanger), Radius CCS (Delft), Vdrome (online screening), SADE LA (Los Angeles), Amado Art Space (Seoul), Moving Image New York, A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam), Art Sonje Center (Seoul), Helsinki Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, and MOCA Shanghai.
Photo by Diana Luganski
Laitinen received The Fine Arts Academy of Finland award in 2013, the AVEK prize for media arts in 2021, and is nominated for the 2023 Ars Fennica prize.
Myriam Bleau @ EMS in February, 2023
Myriam Bleau is a composer, digital artist and performer based in Montréal. Using music and sound as a point of departure, she creates audiovisual performances, video works, installations and interactive interfaces that articulate sound, light and movement. She’s interested in the performative, both as a codified cultural manifestation, and as an embodied reenactment of symbolic systems through human and non-human agencies, including machine learning.
Her hybrid practice explores porous spaces between the physical and the virtual world, between the natural and the synthetic. Her work has been recognized and presented internationally, in festivals such as Prix Ars Electronica (AT), Sónar (ES, HK), Transmediale (DE), Sonic Arts Award (IT), Elektra (CA), Mutek (MX, CA, JP, AR), ISEA (CA, KR), ACT (KR), L.E.V et LABoral (ES), Scopitone (FR), Café Oto (UK).
Photo by Agustina Isidori
myriambleau.com
Luciano Maggiore & Louie Rice @ EMS 14-19 February, 2023
NOPA PAON: A project by Luciano Maggiore and Louie Rice performing score bases works - both acoustic and amplified.
The project was originally conceived to perform works by other artists as part of an event series at Cafe OTO in London. The series acted as a research period informing the action-based pieces that the duo are currently writing. These explore physical actions and vocalisations in response to automated lighting or diffused sound. The performances are site or situation-specific, most recently pieces for strobe lights and a sequence of actions at LUFF festival in Lausanne, and at Yarmonics Festival in Great Yarmouth.
The two have previously explored historical Fluxus works at Live Arts Week in Bologna and Standards in Milan, which led them to develop a series of performances that borderline on dance, using very simple repetitive physical actions. Having both developed separate solo and collaborative electro-acoustic practices, they continue to explore a shared interest in auditory phasing and an expansion of the spatialisation of sound beyond the stereo field, but aim to reach beyond the confines of electroacoustic music to develop a type of performance referencing conceptual and performance art, folk singing, dance choreography and minimalist composition amongst other things.
ERASMUS+: Nils Rougé @ EMS 20 February - 25 March, 2023
EMS welcomes Nils Rougé back as an ERASMUS+ intern!
He is a French sound designer and musician who is currently studying at the Theatre sound department of ENSATT, L'École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtrehe (National School of Theatre Arts and Techniques) in Lyon.
Nils Rougé develops his interest in sound in many ways:
he runs an electronic music project, creates soundtracks for theatre, radio and short films, has studied sound in cinema for two years in a preparatory class, and playes as bassist and singer in a post-punk band.
He is currently working on a Master thesis about the sound aesthetics of mental spaces.
Photo by Milo Garcia (@milojohnny3000)
Jenny Berger Myhre @ EMS 13-23 February, 2023
Jenny Berger Myhre (b.1991) is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, video and photography. She seeks to remove the expectations of virtuous musical gestures by focusing on the sounds in themselves, and the mental images they produce in us, inspired by listening as a relational act — a way to connect
to the world and to other beings. Her music is created with field recordings, fragments of melodies, computer generated sequences, modular synths and lo-fi electronics — resulting in soundscapes with references to both the electro-acoustic tradition as well as experimental pop music.
Jenny's work revolves around personal documentation and archives, intimacy, memory, reality and re-contextualisation.
Most of her artistic practice is focused on collaborations. Since the release of her debut album “Lint” in 2017, she has been working extensively with artist Jenny Hval, both through visual collaborations such as music videos and live visuals, and performing live in various settings and projects.
Berger Myhre has made several commissions for Borealis (Bergen), Radiophrenia (Glasgow), OnlyConnect (Oslo),
Insomnia (Tromsø) and Skanu Mezs (Riga).
She is curating F/eks - a concert series for electronic music and experimental pop in Oslo,
and released her second album Here is always somewhere else on Breton Cassette in July 2022.
Photo by Helge Brekke
Halldorophone @ EMS 2022-2023
I juni 2022 hade EMS nöjet att ta emot en instrumentdeposition, en prototyp av en ny halldorofon. Instrumentdesignern Halldór Úlfarsson arbetade på en tidig prototyp under sitt residens på EMS redan 2013. T o m september 2023 kommer det unika prototypinstrumentet att finnas tillgängligt för EMS studioanvändare och besökande gästtonsättare. Halldór vill också göra det möjligt för professionella musiker och tonsättare inom den elektroakustiska musiken och ljudkonsten som inte är EMS-användare att ansöka om ett kortare residens, upp till tio dagar, för att utforska instrumentet i EMS studios. Om du är intresserad av att lära känna halldorofonen är du välkommen att ansöka här (scrolla ner). Urvalet sker löpande.
In June 2022, EMS had the pleasure of receiving a prototype halldorophone. Instrument designer Halldór Úlfarsson worked on an early prototype during a residency at EMS as early as 2013. Until September 2023 the unique prototype instrument will be available to EMS studio users and visiting Guest composers. Halldór would also like to make it possible for professional musicians and composers in the field of electroacoustic music and sound art who are not EMS users, to apply for a shorter residence (up to 10 days) to explore the instrument in EMS studios. If you are interested in getting to know the halldorophone please apply via the link (scroll down). Applicants are selected continuously.
Se en kort introduktion med Orfeas Moraitis till EMS halldorofon/A short intro by Orfeas Moraitis to the halldorophone at EMS:
Halldorophone EMS ( SHORT) - YouTube
Photo: Mia Hellqvist