AudioCulture | Europe – A Sound Panorama
Festival with concerts, discussions and workshops
20-22 Oct 2011 – ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

The festival AudioCulture places aesthetic emphasis on compositions that work with “field recordings”. In the case of this creative approach, sounds are composed which – originating in the acoustic environment, the field of audible phenomenon – are recorded with a microphone and, to a certain degree reproduce reality. The recorded sounds, however, are not necessarily related to the original; they are often processed, made clearer or modified and arranged within new musical or narrative reference systems. Sounds are conceived and elaborated into musical elements, and new temporal structures. Thus, composed panoramas emerge that question the relationship to reality or else consciously play with the duality of reality and idea. By way of a special art of microphoning, the recordings are often of a particular conciseness, and are expounded and made perceptible in the existing acoustic nuances in the soundscapes invariably ignored in the moment in which they occur in everyday life. With their acoustic photographs, the composers create new perspectives, new acoustic-scenarios and extend the horizon of hearing and the imagination beyond the works themselves.

The festival’s point of departure is the project »Europe – A Sound Panorama« initiated in 2010 by the Goethe-Institute Belgrade, Deutschlandradio Kultur and ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics. The core of the work revolves around a Europe-wide request for five-minute radiophone or electro-acoustic compositions conceived such as to convey an impression of the peculiarities of one of the selected regions of Europe. From a total of 186 submissions, the international jury selected ten compositions by creative individuals from a great many countries in Europe. Under the artistic direction of media artist Thomas Köner, they have now been invited to Karlsruhe for one week in October to elaborate from their works a European co-production for the dome-formed spatial sound system at the ZKM, and a radio version for Deutschlandradio Kultur; these are to be presented on October 22, 2011.

Program
Thurs. October 20, 2011, 6 pm, ZKM_Lecture Hall
IMA | lab No.6 »Field Recording«
Workshop discussion with the participants of the European project “Klangpanorama”/ Panoramic Acoustics
and Thomas Köner. Moderation: Julia Gerlach

Fri., October 21, 2011, 8 pm, ZKM_Cube
»Sound Fields«
Kirsten Reese: “Deckkraft” (UA, 2011)
Thomas Köner / Asmus Tietchens: “Contact the Youngling”

Sat., October 22, 2011, 6 pm, ZKM_Medialounge
»Sound Art @ Het Apollohuis«
Workshop discussion and CD presentations with Paul and Hélène Panhuysen
For the archive exhibition “Het Apollohuis”
Moderation: Julia Gerlach

Sat., October 22, 2011, 8 pm, ZKM_Cube
»Europe – A Sound Panorama« (premiere, 2011)
European competition, workshop and concert
“Europe – A Sound Panorama” is a Europe-wide call for proposals for a cooperative project under the artistic direction of media artist Thomas Köner.

With Susanna Caprara, Katrinem (Katrin Emler), Francesco Giomi, Konrad Korabiewski, Stefan Maleševi, Etienne Noiseau, Tamer Fahri Özgönen, Softday (Mikael Fernstroem & Sean Taylor), Pablo Sanz Almoguera, Ladislav Železný