Still from Creatures audiovisual, by Jem the Misfit and André Uhl. Preview premieres Friday in Berlin.
Electronic and digital visuals are expanding in their expressive potential, as live and real-time instruments, performances, and interactive installations. But the venues and contexts for that work remain understood in terms of narrow, older categories: the gallery and video art, the club and “VJing” – and now, increasingly, via commercial patrons (search engines, trade shows).
What happens when clubland and art-land, the design world and the music scene can encounter one another in open spaces?
unrender is one humble way we get to try to answer that. Hosted and co-curated as a collaboration of CDM with Lehrter Siebzehn, we work with their temporary open project space in Berlin to show a range of what’s happening and what’s possible.
And, you know – it’s a party. It’s free and open to artists and visitors alike, to hope we get to know each other better and discover new people and work.
Here’s what the first installment looked like, through the eyes of a GoPro camera (shot, nicely enough, unsolicited!):
We’ll join each other again in person on this Friday, the 30th of May, in Berlin near Hauptbahnhof. Event info:
Facebook event
Resident Advisor event
Lehrter Siebzehn
And we’ll also continue this narrative for everyone here online. First, a preview of what’s in store.
Jem the Misfit has been a shining example of the elegance and restraint still possible in dance music visuals, playing to big venues like Timewarp Festival, Mapping Festival, and Fusion Festival and working with artists like Paula Temple, but with her own unique, geometric, understated style. She teams up with one of my favorite artists, André Uhl, to produce a collaborative AV show based on his new EP Creatures. I can’t wait to see the output of their work together. Teaser:
Creatures AV Show Teaser from Jem the Misfit on Vimeo.
The Creatures music:
Nenad’s Sonata for Convolution and Feedback is a hypnotic, original audiovisual synthesizer, crafted in custom code and inspired by analog synths. Image and sound are one – and they’re one intense barrage to the senses. An earlier version, in video:
sonata for convolution and feedback from nesa on Vimeo.
“Scanned Image” – Marcelina and Gösta Wellmer.
Marcelina Wellmer, working with programmer Gösta Wellmer, has a piece in which office equipment produces its own self-image, scanners and printer forming a kind of self-aware, always running kinetic sculpture.
Rainer Kohlberger’s Moon Blink is an immersive sensory onslaught. Made with a stroboscope, it produces spatial patterns in both sound and image, enveloped in fog.
Plus, to provide additional stimulation for live visuals, there’s the Italian electro-acoustic trio (guitar, drums, laptop) ACRE, producing gorgeous and unexpected post-jazz.
And that’s just for starters.
Also on the program – more music, more structures, more artworks, more ideas:
Caroline Rose Whiteley (DJ)
Kohwi (DJ) https://soundcloud.com/kohwi
INSTALLATIONS
Haye Heerten http://haye.heerten.info/
Letters Are My Friends http://www.lettersaremyfriends.com/
Emmanuel Pidré aka NZNZ http://www.emmanuelpidre.com/
Michael Ang http://michaelang.com/projects/
Marcel Schwittlick http://mrzl.net/
Tina Zimmermann http://www.tinaz.net/
Doors open 20:00 with installation viewings. Live performances begin at 21:00, sharp.
Free entry.
More on CDM online soon.
Lehrter Straße 17 10557 Berlin
(head through the entry into the courtyard toward the back)