Musical Utopias #6: The Thrill of Losing Control

Instability and a delightful work of chaos

Maya Verlaak

Maya Verlaak's new work Conditions places the six performers of Ensemble Klang in an unstable environment. The musicians shape the conditions of the virtual space, performing in reaction to its ever-changing dimensions.  

Tatsuru Arai

Japanese composer/sound-graphic programmer/creator of Gesamtkunstwerk Tatsuru Arai creates work that depict the fundamental physical nature of the universe in the form of perceptional experiences. In Re-solarization, an audio visual solo performance, we see nature appear distorted by technology – as the work progresses we’re left questioning where the border between nature and the digital work sits. In the flowers we see in cities, there are traces of human and cosmic history in the background. In the video we see A.I. transforming these flowers, allowing them to lossom and bloom, and then disintegrate and flake away. Similarly in the audio, musical styles from the past to the present are generated and distorted using techniques including A.I. to create what the Arai calls Hyper-Serial-Music.

Oceanic

Going out with a bang, Job Oberman (Oceanic) & Ensemble Klang join forces once again to close out the festival. As an associate maker with Klang in 2021-22, DJ and producer Job Oberman created the multimedia work ‘A Sonically Open City’, which was called ‘a delightful chaos [of] avant-garde techno’. Following the success of his latest album ‘Choral Feeling’ he returns to work with Ensemble Klang once more to build an evening-length work exploring the sonically-immersive and ecstatic elements of club culture.